Occasional thoughts on life, learning and creativity
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Thrilling, moving, visceral – at some point you run out of words to explain the feelings that run through you after watching Michael Buffong’s stunning adaptation of King Lear. I went to the showing at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre last night and loved pretty much every minute of it. The dark, modern soundscape, the ridiculously… Continue reading King Lear: A World Where Race Doesn’t Matter?
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So I finally plucked up the courage to go and see Batman v Superman. I’d done my best to avoid the mounting number of mixed reviews. I’d held the negativity surrounding the release at arms length. I told myself, whatever my misgivings about the casting of Ben Affleck as Batman, and whatever the film’s flaws,… Continue reading 3 Surprising Reasons Batman v Superman is the Worst Superhero Movie Ever
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Let me explain… I was directed recently to this clip on youtube. Take a look first (it’s just over a minute long), then read on. So here’s the thing. I’m not ashamed to say that after watching it I couldn’t breathe for a full minute from the laughter. You know the kind of laughter I… Continue reading Laughter: The Uncivilised Friend
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So, in the lead up to Christmas I stumbled upon a drawing set someone had given me the previous year; a neat shallow tin of sketching pencils which, I thought, was a pretty cool gift, the kind of nostalgia-laden offering that had conjured up notions of taking stock and adjusting my lifestyle, i.e., I used… Continue reading Anatomy of a Self Portrait
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Now I suppose you could say I am sitting here for a number of reasons. For instance I’m sitting here because a car accident some years ago pushed my insurance premiums to such extortionate levels that to have kept the car anyway and paid them would’ve seemed somehow immoral. And so I didn’t, I got… Continue reading Smelling the Roses
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Uncommonly sunny weather today so thought I’d share some brief snaps I took in and around my beloved hometown of Manchester (and Salford) in north-west England. Starting with the unusual emblem you see above. It’s the Worker Bee. Since the Industrial Revolution it has become one of the city’s most enduring emblems; created to commemorate… Continue reading Love Your Streets
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Is art just not a big deal to people these days? This is the question I found myself asking last week after opening an email from one of my favourite charities, IdeasTap. I’ll explain… IdeasTap was founded nearly seven years ago by Peter De Haan with the aim of helping creatives build careers in the arts.… Continue reading Who Cares About IdeasTap?
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So here’s the thing. Charlie Beckett is a former news editor with more than 20 years’ experience of international journalism. He’s worked in established mainstream outlets including the BBC and ITN’s Channel 4 News. He is also a professor at the London School of Economics and the founding director of POLIS; a think-tank for researching the… Continue reading Why is Good News No News?
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Films, eh – two hours of sitting still with strangers, often in dark eerie spaces, locked in silence by the shared commitment to stare at eighty square feet of lit canvas. Seems we’ve come a long way from tales told around the campfire. Still, what remains the same is how those tales can be good,… Continue reading The Good, the Great & the Ugly: The Top 10 Films of 2014
Micah Yongo 