Occasional thoughts on life, learning and creativity
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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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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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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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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,……