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Wetlands documentary

Apr 20, 2022 | 2 comments

Late last year I spent some time in Aveiro, Portugal filming a short documentary, which was released officially last month. 

Wetlands has already been accepted to three major international film festivals (Venice, Paris, and ‘Life Screenings’ in Florida) and is shortlisted for several more including the UN Habitat Better Cities Film Festival.

It’s about the real culture of Aveiro, and how the city is affected by the imminent threat of ocean rise due to climate change and by the loss of cultural heritage and traditional industries.

I’ve had some fantastic feedback about the documentary, and it’s also been used as part of Aveiro’s bid to become the European Capital of Culture 2027. So far, the city has made it into the final 4 and will be presenting again to the jury in the coming months.

It’s here for you to watch free online. Hope you enjoy.

No instrumentals please, we’re British

Sep 16, 2013 | 2 comments

“When was the last time we had an instrumental UK number one?” I ask, apropos of nothing in particular.

A little out of the blue to be sure, but the question had popped into my head and the topic is entirely in keeping with the kind of abstract ‘media, popular music & culture’ themed conversation that tends to get lazily batted about on a Friday afternoon in our office like a game of keepy uppy with a partially deflated helium balloon.

It is, after all, a research centre for media and culture – and Craig and I tend to handle the music industry side of things – so basically, this is more or less what we do for a living.

“Ooh, that’s a good one,” says Craig. “One for Twitter.”

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The Ninjas at the bottom of the garden

Jul 24, 2013 | 0 comments

Meeting in Ninja HQ

“Things have changed,” said Felipe Altenfelder as we pulled out of the airport carpark. “You’ll notice some differences.”

I’d arrived in São Paulo to start work on a documentary film about Fora do Eixo – the network of independent music collectives I’d become fascinated with over the past few years. This is a group of mostly young people spread around this continent-sized country, who have organised their own separate economy – putting on festivals, distributing records through live gigs, and using principles of solidarity economy, communal living and political activism in order to make independent music sustainable.

For someone like me, this is fascinating stuff.

“We’re still doing the music, of course…”

That’s a relief. I’d just flown for 11 hours and spent thousands of someone else’s pounds on getting this far.

“It’s just that now we’re quite busy with the revolution.”

He said this so matter-of-factly, I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. Turns out I had. They are quite busy with the revolution.

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The boy is eating an apple

Sep 30, 2012 | 0 comments

I’m learning Spanish. I’m just beginning, but I’m quite pleased with my progress so far. A little bit each day, and this time next year, I’ll be able to ask where the bank is, order a cup of coffee with no milk, and tell people to seek independent legal advice when being offered a publishing deal with a subsidiary of a record label.

The system I’m using is called Duolingo, which has all sorts of things to recommend it. It works on written as well as spoken Spanish, it’s online, you learn at your own place, and it’s completely free.

The reason it’s free is because one of the side effects of learning the language is that you end up translating pieces of text as you go along, and those pieces of text are real world web content. The aim of the site is to use language learners to eventually translate the whole of the internet into as many major languages as possible.

It’s a really inspiring project – and well worth watching the video (above) in which they guy who invented it explains how he came up with the project.

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First few days in Venezuela

Apr 18, 2012 | 0 comments

The Caracas crew in the barrio

I’ve been in Caracas since Friday with my friends Jez, Ruth, Alex, Rich, Will and Leo… and I’m at a bit of a loss to describe my experience to date. Amazing, inspiring, and occasionally terrifying would about cover it.

We’re here as part of an Un-Convention event being held at Tiuna el Fuerte – a ‘cultural park’ celebrating it’s 7th year.

As part of our time here we’ve been up in some of the most dangerous barrios in the world, meeting rappers and music producers working within poor, excluded and isolated communities in Venezuela.

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What if Birmingham IS shit?

Mar 31, 2012 | 17 comments

Let’s get this out of the way right up front: I like living in Birmingham. I moved here from New Zealand with a job to return to, phoned them after 6 months and said “sorry – I’m not coming back”. That was nearly eight years ago.

But I am sick of this city competing for greatness.

Any time Birmingham has the opportunity to enter something in which we might emerge being considered ‘the best’, we’ll spend millions on our bid for selection. And guess what? Those other people we’re in competition with like their home town too. We pin so much on winning, and we fool ourselves into thinking that the outcome is anything other than arbitrary.

The empty rhetoric of ‘Birmingham is amazing’, ‘Birmingham is full of inspiring people’ and ‘Look how great Birmingham is’ is worse than unhelpful. It places us in a pointless competition with other places and centres our sense of self-worth around, on the one hand, what others think of us and, on the other, a series of vacuous mantras that if we repeat often enough, perhaps we’ll come to believe.

Meanwhile, our leaders are considered to be our champions and representatives to the outside world, rather than in charge of making things better. If there’s anything that Birmingham is the most amazing at, it’s putting faith in marketing as the solution to all things.

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