Blog

Occasional thoughts on life, learning and creativity

  • Below is an excerpt from Chinua Achebe’s 1998 essay, Africa is People. The full article is well worth the read for anyone interested in availing themselves of a fuller understanding of how the continent’s many plights came to be. And I’ll say the same for Achebe’s The Education of a British-Protected Child, an eloquent and……

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  • So… comic books. An oft maligned artform. Juvenile to some. Geekish to others. Often regarded as the crass and tacky little brother to more ‘serious’ formats for storytelling – films, novels, theatre etc. And so how happy was I to stumble upon the quirky, fun and yet (impressively) illuminating YouTube channel, Comic Book Girl 19,……

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  • “What we’re entering is a world in which we can’t even tell our students what they should know 5 years from now. Because in fact we’re entering a world where the average half-life of a skill is moving from about 30 years to 5 years.” This is a quote from a commencement speech delivered at……

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  • It’s true – You don’t exactly expect to find your thoughts being drawn to the writings of a dead academic (even a great one) whilst watching a Marvel movie, but if there’s one thing that becomes clear whilst watching Ryan Coogler’s quite frankly epic rendering of the Black Panther mythos, it’s that this is a……

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  • The Habit of Art

    There’s this strange nebulous space you tend to occupy as a writer, or even, perhaps, a creator or storyteller of any kind; a sort of hovering furtive interstice between here and elsewhere, wakefulness and daydream, vivid yet vague; like a mental version of twilight. Which is why I loved stumbling across this excerpt from Jane Vandenburgh’s Architecture……

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  • I’ll be honest, I’ve never really thought of myself as a teacher. In fact, I barely think of myself as a speaker, despite having delivered talks at events, workshops and community venues on a number of occasions now. It’s just always been, to me, more of an acquired skill than a natural one; something I……

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  • Dancing in the Moonlight

    The thing about films, especially the great ones, is that they’re revelatory; they unveil the human experience, annotate humanity. Something I was reminded of when attending the previews for Barry Jenkins’ mercurial debut feature, Moonlight, in Manchester these past few weeks. I was there to film vox pops for the distribution company, capturing audience responses……

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  • So you may recall that I’d mentioned interviewing Samm Henshaw a while back for The Nubian Times, which, on a personal level, was a very fun experience. I mean, the guy’s arguably the most talented soul artist to emerge from these shores in the last two decades. Not only that, he was a seriously fascinating……

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  • I’m told public speaking is consistently ranked as many people’s greatest fear… yeah, that’s right – above heights, spiders, snakes, clowns (I still don’t get why anyone likes clowns) etc. In fact, in many surveys public speaking is even ranked above the fear of death. Which, in my opinion, is all the more reason for……

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  • Elevator Fiction

    Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to give the reader a story worth reading in 500 words or less… So said the email I received requesting I submit a piece of flash fiction for inclusion in an anthology to be published by Crocus Books. And so, never one to shirk a challenge,……

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