This week I’m back to work. Y’know the kind where you can send a bill at the end of it all. It feels good and not just for the billing! I’m glad that it’s a couple of gigs opening space – did the first one yesterday and was thrilled to find that most people had never been to such a thing and didn’t know what to expect from an unconference. In the closing circle, someone said they were an “unconference un-convert” (by which they meant a convert to the cult of “un-” I think!) and lots of people chimed in that they too felt that way. The best bit of feedback was one guy who said that he’d told his wife when he’d left in the morning that he’d probably be back after lunchtime, because he expected it to be a bit boring – he’d had to message her midday to let her know that he was hooked and would be there to the end. Which is nice.
I’ve been making some new signs to use, collecting words from old newsprint and collaging them together (like the featured image on this post) – it’s a kind of punky, DIY style that takes me back to my youth. I realised looking at them yesterday that they reminded me a bit of that Sex Pistols album artwork. Which is appropriate for the principles – eg “Never mind the bollocks… when it’s over, it’s over!”
I hope this aesthetic comes across as something an AI would never dream of making.
I’m going to tweak them a little bit (there’s a fine line between “punky, DIY aesthetic” and “a bit shit”) and then I’m going to post them somewhere for people to download as a set, with some simple instructions on how to use them to open space yourself. I’ll let you know when they’re done.
I was sorry to miss the festivities last week at Essex Hall to mark the last issue of the Dark Mountain journal. I hear it was a splendid evening. Dougald, Ed and Liz recorded an episode of The Great Humbling in the very shop where Liz and I will be hosting the coffee morning on Friday. Lots of interesting chat about culture – it felt like an affirmation of my commitment to Living Culture as a long-term theme.
Don’t let the audio on the podcast put you off visiting us at Essex Hall – it doesn’t sound like being in a fishbowl in real-life, (most) human ears work differently from audio recorders!
