SO. FAREWELL THEN, SUGHRA AHMED

At the Bombay Pavilion, Victoria Park, for a surprise going-away party in honour of Sughra Ahmed. Sughra has been a stalwart of Leicester Council of Faiths all the years I've been in post. She has recently resigned from the Board of Directors as she is leaving Leicester to take up a post with the Woolf Institute, based at Cambridge University. That's her cake in the photo above, with her edible face on it.

Sughra has worked as a Research Fellow in the Islamic Foundation’s Policy Research Centre, based at Markfield Institute of Higher Education. She remains a Trustee of the Interfaith Network UK. She published Seen and Not Heard: Voices of Young British Muslims. She organised flashmob iftar during Ramadan and “Picnic in the Park” thereafter, feeding homeless people and refugees, coordinated through Facebook. She has been of considerable help to me in my post, most notably when she came forward to be one of a panel of speakers at the Amplified Leicester event I hosted at Phoenix Square in March 2011, Amplified Communities of Faith or Belief. I also recall, in particular, how she lit up our display in Highcross on a busy Saturday afternoon during Inter Faith Week 2010, like a flame attracting moths, at ease with the crowds that busy day, able to persuade people to stop and talk or to to take literature as they passed by. She did that gig better than just about anyone else ever involved in it. Not what I expected from someone whom I had thought of up till then as being something of a dry, closeted academic. How wrong could I be about a person, faithful reader? Seeing her in action that one afternoon completely rewrote the script. She also organised a successful seminar for Leicester Council of Faiths during Inter Faith Week 2012, under the title, Faith in Family.

There's a good turnout in her honour this evening and it's clearly been kept secret, to judge by the look on Sughra's face when she arrives.

Several friends and colleagues say their bit about how they got to know Sughra, what she means to them and how they're going to miss her. In the photo above, Rupal Rajani (from BBC Radio Leicester) is doing just that.

We all wish Sughra well in her new role and in her future. Personally, I'll miss her calling me "Georgie". I can't imagine anyone else doing that until I'm sitting all day in a high-backed leather chair, wearing a drool bib and being told to eat up while being fed Ready Brek by means of a plastic spoon. I'll be staring into the distance, trying to recall ... someone ... or something ... Anyway: good luck Sughra! Keep in touch.

CREATIVECOFFEE CLUB: REBORN!

It’s the other Wednesday, so I’m at Phoenix Square Film and Digital Media Centre for the fortnightly meeting of CreativeCoffee Club. That’s two meetings in a row I’ve made – a feat I haven’t achieved since I don’t know when.

In a subtle innovation this morning, we have a couple of “table experts”, whom attendees can meet one-to-one for a quarter of an hour of free advice.

As you’ll see form the picture above, faithful reader, I still find it hard to get a photo inside Phoenix Square that makes it look like there's a decent number of people here. Is it because I’m taking pics on my iPhone? We must have 20-odd attending CreativeCoffee Club this morning – I’ve tried to squeeze in as many of them as I could.

The regular session is followed at noon by the first meeting of a new committee formed to take stock of the past and present of CreativeCoffee Club and to chart its possible future. The meeting is convened by Cheryl Gill, Enterprise Support Officer at LCB Depot and Phoenix Square. Cheryl took charge of CreativeCoffee Club in April and will hold the reins till March next year. Emma Moore, Jed Spittle and I were on the short-lived committee that met only once eight months ago and which (despite our best intentions) managed to lead CreativeCoffee Club down a bit of a dead end. Steve Bowes, Russ Pacey and Ben Ravilious are also in this new committee today.

I’ve been having a bit of trouble with my hearing over the past few weeks. Every so often, my right ear switches off, which leads to some unusual effects (and to me looking a bit rude sometimes, I imagine). In this meeting, I hear Ben saying that he’s acting as “Neville’s Advocate” quite a lot.

We oldies provide a little bit of historical context, especially for those relatively new to CreativeCoffee Club. When CreativeCoffee Club relocated to Phoenix Square from its first home in the Graduate Bar at De Montfort University, it continued its pattern of meeting on alternate Wednesday mornings. One of the other Wednesday mornings would be occupied by a monthly public meeting of Amplified Leicester (same time, same venue, if a different room). Those sessions of Amplified Leicester featured innovative speakers (some of them from other parts of the country, a few from other parts of the world), more formal presentations, more structured participation. Amplified Leicester was the filling in the sandwich then, with a slice of CreativeCoffee Club on either side. That allowed reasonable differentiation between the two kinds of meetings and allowed each to develop its own character – even though, more often than not, it was the same crowd attending both (and one Wednesday morning out of four free). If someone didn’t take to the more relaxed nature of CreativeCoffee Club, they could come to Amplified Leicester – and vice versa. In the last phase of Amplified Leicester these public meetings moved to Wednesday evenings. Once Amplified Leicester came to an end in summer 2011, we were left with two slices of bread but no filling – nice bread, but all the same … Two floppy slices of bread, flapping around in search of a decent filling isn’t the most attractive prospect.

In terms of charting the future, we begin by discussing ways to refresh the brand. An immediate decision is made regarding the name. From now on, it’s going to be Creative Coffee Leicester (CC Leic for short, which matches up nicely with the Twitter feed: @CCLeic). I never got “CreativeCoffee Club”. I couldn’t understand why those first two words were run together like that, with the initial C in “Coffee” set upper case. I could see no logic or sense in it, no benefit or good effect arising from it – and no one I asked about it could explain it to me. I couldn’t find one person, involved in the network or outside it, who could understand it themselves or explain it to me. Why not run all three words together and make all three initial Cs upper case? Being different for its own sake is just annoying. It’s juvenile. A punch in the face is memorable, but I wouldn’t want another one. I don’t need or want funny spelling to make something memorable. The experience should be memorable for the right reasons to those who have had it and desirable to those who haven’t had it yet.

Well, that’s been one of my biggest moans for years and now it’s been dealt with. Mind you, I find people saying “Creative Coffee” annoying in the same way as when you hear people saying “Thomas the Tank”. What’s that? Just leave it, you say?  Hmmm …

Actually, that won’t matter now, as we’ve also agreed to drop the word Club from the title. We don’t want to make it sound cliquish or exclusive, that you have to apply for membership, or that some people are in and some are out.

A straw poll was conducted at the meeting on 4 April, asking attendees to answer the following questions (among others):

• Should we should from fortnightly meetings to monthly meetings?
• Should we introduce ourselves at the beginning of each session?
• Should we wear badges / labels?
• Should we have speakers?

We say yes to occasional speakers. We can encourage potential speakers by offering this as a networking opportunity which will be to their for the benefit as much as it is to their listeners. More “table experts” too – although there’s no reason why they shouldn’t always be brought in from outside the regular attendees.

At the start of a meeting, we could have a kind of “Open Mic”, giving newbies an opportunity to introduce themselves and for Committee Members to announce “Parish Notes”.

There’s a new website under construction, which is obviously the topic of much of our conversation today. We discuss its content and its style. The site could feature profiles of those who use Creative Coffee frequently and regularly (as used to be on Amplified Leicester’s ning). Each person’s profile could show their response to a small set of questions (e.g.):

• “Why do I come to Creative Coffee?”
• “What do I get out of Creative Coffee?”
• “What do I bring to Creative Coffee?”
• “Who do I hope to meet at Creative Coffee?”

There's more discussed than I've recorded here. Cheryl takes fuller and more professional notes of the meeting, which she’ll circulate soon. We’ll be meeting again immediately after the next Creative Coffee session on Wednesday 13 June.

TECHNOBIOPHILIA: THE FUTURE OF CYBERSPACE

At De Montfort University, Hugh Aston Building this evening, for Sue Thomas's Professorial Lecture, The Future of Cyberspace. This is my second visit to Hugh Aston today. I was here this afternoon for the launch of the new PhD internship scheme, jointly offered by De Montfort University and the University of Leicester.

Now, before talking about the lecture itself, I have to start by crediting Prof Sue Thomas as having been one of the biggest influences on my post – though without her intending it, or knowing it. As founder and guiding spirit of Amplified Leicester and CreativeCoffee Club (for the years it was funded by DMU), she's helped create many opportunities to meet, connect with and get to know interesting people, many of whom were interested in me and my work for Leicester Council of Faiths. I've come to rely on many of these people as part of my professional support network. Some are my friends. Sue didn't do this deliberately of course, nor did she do so deliberately for me. Undoubtedly there are many people able to say similar things about how they've benefited from Professor Sue's work. It was largely through situations and networks she established and into which I was welcomed that I came to see how my work (and the institution I work for) could be located within varied, often surprising, strands of the wider cultural life in the city of Leicester - and beyond. Significantly, it was also through these networks that I became aware of the affordances of social media and how I might exploit them in my work. My involvement with CreativeCoffee Club and Amplified Leicester helped set the tone for the last four years and more of my work. For good or ill, faithful reader, you could call Prof Sue Thomas the Godmother of this blog! After all, I'm a big fan of giving credit where it's due.

In the earliest days of my post when I was a bit clueless about how to get off the ground, I attended the second-ever meeting of CreativeCoffee Club, back in the days when it took place at DMU Graduate Bar every other Wednesday morning (handy for me, since I lived only ten minutes walk from there at that time). Some folk wondered what, as an employee of a faith-based organisation, I was doing there. There were times when I wondered that myself! But this was the first such group I was able to tap into - and the beginning of serious networking on my part over the last five years.

I wasn't part of the first, formal iteration of Amplified Leicester (which was essentially a course) though I wish I had been. I reckon I was not only the first person to apply to be on it, but also the first to withdraw my name. I just couldn't make that kind of regular weekly commitment fit my unpredictable work pattern at that time. So I could have been a peripheral figure as far as Amplified Leicester was concerned, but I wasn't content to let that happen either. I still got as much as possible out of that, even if I had to do so as a twelfth man.

Both CreativeCoffee Club and Amplified Leicester feature extensively throughout this blog (see, for example, the post on Amplified Communities of Faith or Belief, a panel presentation that Sue asked me to convene at Phoenix Square Film & Digital Media Centre, Wednesday 23 March 2011).

Well, as far as this evening is concerned: it starts off typically, for a Sue Thomas event, when we're asked to ensure that our phones are turned on, so we can tweet throughout, using the hashtag #technobiophilia. Technobiophilia: Nature and Cyberspace is the title of Sue’s forthcoming book, due out in 2013. Find out more about it here. I'm unable to do much tweeting, as there's no service for O2 in the lecture theatre.

Here's Sue's own synopsis of the main themes of her lecture, taken from her website:

The act of entering cyberspace was, along with the entering of outer space, one of the most profound experiences of the twentieth century. In 1969, humans landed first "on" the moon (July), and then "in" cyberspace (September) with the connection of the first two nodes of the internet. Today the mountains of the Moon remain neglected and unexplored, but cyberspace has evolved into a deeply familiar habitat whose geography has been shaped by those who built and used it. This lecture will explore the evolution of the landscape of cyberspace from its creation as an unpopulated wilderness through its exploration, colonisation, cultivation, settlement and growth, and offers some predictions for the future of this most exotic place.

Rather than paraphrase or summarise the whole lecture (succinct as it was, lasting hardly more than 35 minutes), I advise you to follow this link to the slides. I'll pick up on a few things that were of special interest to me though.

It's hardly possible to discuss the future of cyberspace without reviewing its past and considering how it’s come to its present situation. To this end, we kick off with a fascinating video, The Internet of Things. In her review of the past and present of cyberspace (the realm we enter when we connect to the internet), Sue pays special attention to its relationship with nature. As the lecture progresses, this becomes her central concern. There’s long been an assumption that one is opposed to the other, that the virtual world and the natural world are mutually exclusive – an assumption Sue tests out in different ways at various points this evening.

Sue highlights how the metaphors we use to talk about cyberspace (and our experience of it) are so frequently drawn from nature. This is of special interest to me as it connects with Lackoff & Johnson's Metaphors We Live By (1980) a book that I've long found influential. But natural things don’t naturally belong in cyberspace. We put them there because we want them to be there - and this is a function of biophilia (definition: “The innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes” E.O. Wilson, 1984).

Biophilia is not just aesthetically pleasing. It soothes us in cyberspace. Sue extends Wilson's definition to the new term, technobiophilia: “The innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes as they appear in cyberspace.”

Sue leaves us with a vision of the future of cyberspace involving, at the very least, not seeing it as being oppositional to nature. Being connected to one doesn’t necessarily mean being disconnected from the other - indeed the only viable future for both involves reinforcing that relationship, which might take us down some unusual and unpredictable roads. This is illustrated with a weird and wonderful video, Philip Beesley's Hylozoic Ground. This term, hylozoism, is a new one to me: the philosophical point of view that all matter (including the universe as a whole) is in some sense alive. Now there’s food for thought!

CREATIVECOFFEE CLUB

At Phoenix Square Film and Digital Media Centre this morning for CreativeCoffee Club. Another good turnout, with just as many, maybe more, as at the last session a fortnight ago (at least two dozen people today - including, for the first time, a babe in arms). A very positive feeling about the session today, a palpable buzz in the air - and that's not just thanks to the caffeine!

Patrick Welsh (Marketing Manager at Phoenix Square) and I have an interesting discussion about "ownership" of CreativeCoffee Club. What's the relationship between CreativeCoffee Club and Phoenix Square? Is this a loose, informal group of people who met for a while at DMU Graduate Bar, currently meet at Phoenix Square and at some time in the future might meet somewhere else? Is CreativeCoffee Club an integral part of Phoenix Square's programme? Who runs it? Who makes it work? What can be done to make it work better?

We don't reach any conclusion about this, but it's an interesting question to ask, with obvious implications for promotion and publicity, retaining the existing membership (if it can be said to have such a thing) and bring in new people. Take, for instance, blogging. At the moment, that's only done here, by me, attached to the Council of Faiths website. So it reflects my interest and involvement - and that of the organisation for which I work. But there's more to Creative Coffee Club than just what I see in it and what I get out of it. Should it have a blog of its own? If so, who would do that? Can it be done collectively?

One veteran of CreativeCoffee Club (and of the late, lamented - by me, at least - Amplified Leicester) tells me that this shouldn't be thought of as a networking event any more; that we might as well be meeting in the pub. My response to that is that if we were meeting down the pub at 10 o'clock on a Wednesday morning, then it would say something very different about us as a group! My feelings are that CreativeCoffee Club is that it's loose, relaxed and low-key (which, for some people, can mean it's frustratingly baggy, shapeless and unmanageable) and that it doesn't work to try and mould it into some other shape followed by other groups and meetings of which we might have experience or knowledge. There are other networking events happening in and around Leicester - and some of us take part in those too. If CreativeCoffee Club is a square peg, it can't be battered into a round hole.

Since I keep telling anyone who's interested (and plenty who're not) that I'm the longest-serving member of CreativeCoffee Club (having been here since the second-ever meeting at DMU in the autumn of 2007) I think I'm entitled to take the long view. Some folk questioned why I was coming to CreativeCoffee Club at all (including some of my employers), but from my point of view it's paid off, in spades. I don't have a product to promote, or a service of the kind that others have here. It's been a process of building credibility, trust, even friendship - that others attending see my open hand, understand my agenda (and don't think there's a hidden one). In the context of attending and supporting CreativeCoffee Club at Phoenix Square, that paid off for me (and for Leicester Council of Faiths) with the Faiths Film Festival during Inter Faith Week 2011. Getting that put on was the perfect example of pushing at an open door. Phoenix Square even went the extra mile by having one of our banners on display for a whole month leading up to that event and for the week of the festival itself.

I have an interesting chat about social media with one chap, here for the first time today, which reflects on the nature and purpose of CreativeCoffee Club itself. Twitter, for example, could be said to be dynamic, non-hierarchical, to evade standard ideas about management and ownership. Get the picture, faithful reader?

Listed below are some of today's attendees. These are live links; click on them to go straight through to the relevant website or Twitter account.

• Bipin Anand touchRainbow Productions @touchRainbow
• Kim Campion The Alternative @AlternativeKim
• Craig Clarke @Beatroot
• Doug Cubin GIS Coordinated Ltd @gisco
• Ian Davies Leicester People's Photographic Gallery @IanDai
• Shell Edwards Make-Up Artistry @_makeupartistry
• Emma Fay Emma Fay Make-up & Concept Artist @EmmaFayMua
• Cheryl Gill LCB Depot @lcbdepot
• Dave Johnson Silverleaf Studio @Silver_DJ78
• Toby Jones The Awesome Consultancy @awesomeforhire 
• Olga Kras OK-CreArt @OlgaKrasCreart
• Cheryl Leadbetter Povric @PovricByCherylL
• Trevor Locke Artsin Productions @ARTSIN
• Ben Ravilious Ultimateweb Ltd @benrav
• Farhana Shaikh The Asian Writer @farhanashaikh
• David Sinclair Sinvision @sinvision
• Edd Smith Purple Claw @purple_claw 
• Jed Spittle Manic Music Productions @manicmusic 
• Mohan Subra Subra Designs

Why religion shouldn't enjoy special favour

Today's Leicester Mercury carries the final "First Person" column by Allan Haye, in his capacity as Humanist Chaplain to the Lord Mayor of Leicester.

I've enjoyed his contributions to the ongoing conversation of the city through these columns - indeed, I've posted most of them here. I can't say I've agreed with everything he's said in his columns, but I've tried to represent him uncensored here - and largely without making intrusive comments of my own, either in the blog or the printed or online editions of the Leicester Mercury.

On the occasions when Allan and I have discussed the merits of him having his own blog, he's said that he doesn't really see the point when I'm doing such a good job of representing his views in mine!

Maybe I should say that I've agreed with him more often than not - and that I agree with virtually everything he has to say in this final piece.

I'm sure it's not the last we'll hear from Allan (who is a director of Leicester Secular Society) in the pages of the Mercury. I look forward to meeting him again at the various places and events where our paths tend to cross: Amplifed Leicester; SACRE; Christians Aware Faith Awareness courses at Christchurch, Clarendon Park Road; and at Philosophy in the Pub at the Swan and Rushes.

Why religion shouldn't enjoy special favour 

Allan Hayes reflects on his year as humanist chaplain to the Lord Mayor of Leicester 

My year as Chaplain to the Lord Mayor has been an interesting and rewarding experience; meeting people from different communities has been a particular pleasure. The year started with some tension over the Civic Service in the cathedral. It proved impossible to agree on a way that I as a humanist could give a short address in what was a Christian service. As a consequence the Lord Mayor, the Lady Mayoress and I felt unable to attend the event. 

The same problem could arise for any other non-Christian chaplain. This raises the obvious question: in a diverse city with people from a variety of religions and with many who do not belong to a religion, shouldn't a civic event be one in which we can all feel part and to which we can all contribute – a celebration of today's Leicester for all by all? I think so. 

I have tried to encourage dialogue and improve understanding by my letters and other activities. I am grateful to the Mercury for carrying these and to individuals and organisations that have helped. 

During the year there have been repeated attempts to pin words like "aggressive", "extreme" and "militant" on secularists and atheists and accuse them of trying to exclude religion from the public space: this is a dangerous tactic, but fortunately, we have largely avoided it in Leicester.

Secularists recognise that religions are important to many and should contribute to the public debate, but insist that this must be done openly and through the normal democratic process: religions should not be embedded in the state structure or specially privileged. We are joined in this view by many within the religions who favour a secular state.

However, while pursuing dialogue and understanding, we should not overlook the facts that are being created on the ground.

The urgent issue now to my mind is whether our schools will help our children grow up together or will separate them by religion. The new free schools can be proposed by a local group or an outside body and be approved by the Secretary of State with very little local consultation. For a start, a Hindu free school, eventually to take 420 pupils, is opening in Evington in September next to St Paul's Roman Catholic school. I am told that other free faith schools are being proposed in the city. Change could come quickly and could damage both community schools and social cohesion. My experience as humanist representative on the Leicester Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE) shows me that most families are very happy with how our community schools deal with religion. I would ask that if they hear of proposals for faith schools they get in touch with local head teachers and discuss the situation.

 Read this article on the Leicester Mercury website, along with reader comments: http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/news/religion-shouldn-t-enjoy-special-favour/article-3525744-detail/article.html

MAKING IS CONNECTING: FAILURE TO LAUNCH

Today should have been the launch event for David Gauntlett's book, Making is Connecting at the Whitechapel Shed, London. I had planned to go down to this, with Harry (10) and Gracie (9). It was punted as a family fun day of arts and crafts activities, putting into practice some of the themes of the book, offering a taste of an alternative (but traditional, tried-and-tested) way of bringing people together in productive and creative ways that go beyond just protesting. But it's been cancelled because the venue has been closed. Irony or what?

David presented on Making is Believing at Amplified Leicester in February and I blogged it here.

I love this book. When I did my presentation at Amplified Leicester in March, I encouraged everyone there to get a copy. Well, I didn't have any product of my own to promote. Visit the website for Making is Connecting.

CREATIVE GARDEN HAS BLOSSOMED

This article appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

Creative garden has blossomed

Phoenix Square Film and Digital Media Centre recently hosted "Creative Garden" – a day-long event celebrating the wealth of creativity on the local scene, writes George Ballentyne.

Just about every available bit of space in the venue was packed with people showing their wares, demonstrating their skills and promoting the arts in business. The inside of the building was filled with stalls.

Visitors were treated to a variety of talents on display: fashion designers, film makers, jugglers, musicians, photographers, poets, writing services – even designers of apps for smart phones.

There was also a variety of talks, workshops and seminars on how to identify,nurture and promote creative talent and practical advice on how to use it to make a living.

Creative Garden was put together by the team behind "From Dawn to Dusk" [sic] with the collaboration of the LCB Depot in Rutland Street. The event drew on a wide range of contacts and contributors, showing how a successful network of imaginative and artistic individuals and businesses has become well established in and around Leicester over the past couple of years.

With events like this (alongside other activities such as CreativeCoffee club and Amplified Leicester), Phoenix Square continues to establish itself as a centre which attracts creative people from the city, county and further afield – and as a hub from which that creativity flows back out into the wider community, touching schools, colleges and the universities, offices and businesses, shops and public spaces.

AMPLIFIED COMMUNITIES OF FAITH OR BELIEF

This evening it's the long awaited (by me, anyway) panel presentation for Amplified Leicester at Phoenix Square film and Digital Media Centre: “Amplified Communities of Faith or Belief”. The whole presentation was recorded; you can watch it on vimeo.

Groups working in the Protected Characteristic of Religion or Belief (as described in the Equality Act 2010) are some of the biggest users users of social media. But for what purposes? Each of the panellists shows how their organisations use social media to different ends - some surprising and unexpected - related to extending spheres of influence; promoting effective social action; engaging children and young people; fostering rational discussion and debate.

In the photo above, Sue Thomas, Professor of New Media in the Institute of Creative Technologies at De Montfort University, introduces the panel (left to right, Matt Hughes, Richard Hopper, Sughra Ahmed, me).

Matt Hughes Matthew works at the Samworth Enterprise Academy, a Church of England school in Leicester which has focuses on the Christian ethos in education. He manages IT provision there, which involves response to social media. He also runs a training, design and development social enterprise called Engage Multimedia who work with various charities and community groups in the local area.

Richard Hopper Richard is a science researcher at De Montfort University. He is also Secretary of the Leicester Secular Society, the oldest active one in the world – and still based in the first meeting place in the world purpose built for secular discussion. Richard recently set up a Facebook group to promote the society. The group now has over 50 members.

Sughra Ahmed Sughra is a Research Fellow in the Islamic Foundation’s Policy Research Centre. She is a Trustee of the Interfaith Network UK and Director of Leicester Council of Faiths. She recently published Seen and Not Heard: Voices of Young British Muslims. She organised flashmob iftar during Ramadan and “Picnic in the Park” thereafter, feeding homeless people and refugees, coordinated through Facebook.

I’ve done a good job selecting interesting panellists – too good a job! Each of them gives a presentation lasting ten minutes then takes a few questions. A few too many questions maybe. The cumulative effect is that, having left myself to last, I have hardly a couple of minutes to sum up and to say something interesting about use of social media by the Council of Faiths. I hope I manage to do that; for once, less really is more!

How new media unites communities

There's a wee piece in the Leicester Mercury today promoting our Amplified meeing this evening. It's not quite right in a number of ways, but every little helps!

How new media unites communities

The increasing use of social media by faith and belief groups will be discussed at a free event organised by De Montfort University (DMU) in Leicester tonight.

One of a series of monthly talks by Amplified Leicester, the discussion will be held at Phoenix Square Film  and Digital Media Centre, on Midland Street, Leicester from 7pm until 8pm.

Amplified Leicester is a project run by DMU exploring how new media can help diverse communities in Leicester work together.

The discussion will be chaired by George Ballentyne.

Sue Thomas, DMU's professor of new media, said: "Each of our panelists will show how their organisations use social media to different ends – some surprising and unexpected – to extend spheres of influence, promote effective social action, engage audiences, and foster rational debate."

The talk is free of charge but you should pre-register at: http://www.amplifiedleicester.com/

WHAT IS AMPLIFIED LEICESTER?

Thanks to John Ager, for allowing me to copy and paste this from his blog. It's actually a guest post on John's blog, by Sue Thomas (photo above), Professor of New Media at De Montfort University in Leicester. I'm a big supporter of Amplified Leicester, as you'll have seen, faithful reader, but I particularly wanted to circulate this post because it promotes the panel I'm convening for the next session later this month.

In today’s networked world, many skills which we may already have but not recognise as special are coming to the fore. The Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California, have identified a skill set which they call ‘amplified’. It features qualities such as "Cooperation Radar" – the ability to sense, almost intuitively, who would make the best collaborators on a particular task, and "High Ping Quotient" – responsiveness to other people’s requests for engagement; propensity to reach out to others in a network. You can read all ten of them here. The language may be very Californian, but the skills are ones we would all recognise. And social media is helping us to do them even better.

In 2009 I ran a project called "Amplified Leicester" which brought together 30 very different Leicester people and helped them develop their ‘amplified skills’. That project is now over but this year we’ve been hosting a series of talks and panels at Phoenix Sqaure where we look at ‘amplified’ approaches and discuss how they can be used in specific contexts. So far we’ve looked at politics, police, and crafts, and this month we’re considering faith (or not) in a panel discussion convened by George Ballentyne of the Council of Faiths and called Amplified Communities of Faith or Belief.

George’s guests are a very varied group – Sughra Ahmed of the Islamic Foundation, Richard Hopper of Leicester Secular Society, and Matthew Hughes of Samworth Enterprise Academy, a Church of England school. It takes place at 7.00 pm Wednesday 23 March 2011 at Phoenix Square. Do come along to hear what they have to say and join us in the Screen Lounge afterwards to continue the discussion. It’s free and open to all. Book online here and join the Amplified Leicester community here. We look forward to seeing you! The Twitter hashtag is #ampleic for all Amplified Leicester related tweets.

Amplified Communities of Faith or Belief: 2 weeks & counting

Two weeks to go and 23 people have already signed up for "Amplified Communities of Faith or Belief" on Wed 23 March, 1900-2000, at Phoenix Square Film & Digital Media Centre. If you're intending to come, please register on Eventbrite for your free ticket: http://ampleic230311.eventbrite.com/

AMPLIFIED COMMUNITIES OF FAITH OR BELIEF: 3 WEEKS & COUNTING

Three weeks to go and we've got seventeen people signed up as of the time of posting this blog entry. Tickets are free, but you really should register. Seventy people signed up for the last session ("Making is Connecting" with David Gauntlett): the first Amplified Leicester meeting ever to sell out! I can't imagine we'll be such a draw next time, but you never know ...

Click the link to Eventbrite and register to attend "Amplified Communities of Faith or Belief" on Wed 23 March, 1900-2000, at Phoenix Square Film & Digital Media Centre, Midland Street, Leicester. All the information you need is available here: http://ampleic230311.eventbrite.com/

AMPLIFIED LEICESTER: MAKING IS CONNECTING

David Gauntlett

It's the last Wednesday of the month, so I'm at Phoenix Square Film & DigitalMedia Centre, for the regular meeting of Amplified Leicester. I've missed the last two meetings, so I'm glad to be back in the swing of things (especially as I'm convening the panel for the next session, at the end of March). This is the first of Amplified's evening session to be fully subscribed: 70 people have registered on Eventbrite.

The speaker is David Gauntlett, Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Westminster (and a local Leicester lad). He's the author of several books, including Creative Explorations (2007), which was shortlisted for the Times Higher Young Academic Author of the Year Award, and Making is Connecting: The social meaning of creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0 (2011). He produces the popular website about media and creativity in everyday life, theory.org.uk. There's also a great website dedicated to Making is Believing, which will reward repeated visits.

Through making things, people engage with the world and create connections with each other. Both online and offline, we see that people want to make their mark on the world, and to make connections. David Gauntlett discusses the rise of a "making-and-doing" culture, where people are rejecting traditional methods of teaching and learning and more passive forms of engaging with the world, such as television, and developing their own skills ans making their own entertainment.

David's talk is easy-going and professional in equal parts, displaying a level of presentation skills which show someone totally at home with the technology (maybe I'm thinking here about how I'll come over next time *gulp*). He made what, to some, may be an obvious point, but I still think worth making: that creativity didn't start with the world wide web, that the creativity we enjoy and value online is part of a continuum, both historically (he made nice extended references to John Ruskin and William Morris) and socially (regarding the kind of creativity that goes on under the radar and has often been identified with the activity of women).

This is all meat and drink to me, in keeping with the discussion of creativity in which I've been immersed while tutoring the Open University third-level (honours) linguistics course, The Art of English. I love it when the different threads in my life join up like this.

I get a moment at the the end to trail the panel I'm convening for next month's session, on Amplified Communities of Faith or Belief. I leave out copies of the Council of Faiths flyer with all our social media details on it and set a little homework - that those interested in coming to our session check out what we're doing with social media already and think of ways we could improve on it.

As we're leaving the session, Richard Hopper (Secretary of Leicester Secular Society, who'll be on the panel next month) tells me that William Morris gave his first public lecture in the Secular Hall on Humberstone Gate. Nice one.

AMPLIFIED COMMUNITIES OF FAITH OR BELIEF (3)

Picked up the March brochure from Phoenix Square this evening and there on p. 15 is the box trailing the March meeting of Amplified Leicester. I have to confess that it's a thrill to see my own name in the programme, in close proximity to those of Woody Allen, Colin Firth, Ken Loach and ... uhm ... Yogi Bear.

INTERFAITH FORUM FOR LEICESTERSHIRE: RELIGION & THE MEDIA

At County Hall, Glenfield (seat of Leicestershire County Council), for a meeting of the Interfaith Forum for Leicestershire. The topic this evening is "Religion and Media". I'm doing part of the presentation: one third of it, to be precise. First John Florance (BBC Radio Leicester) speaks on the topic in relation to broadcast media, then Nick Carter (Chair of Prospect Leicestershire and the Leicester Multicultural Advisory Group - LMAG) on print media. John (centre) and Nick (right) are in the photo above, with Resham Singh Sandhu, who chairs the meeting. I'm on last, speaking in relation to social media.

We have a good turnout (filling the Sparkenhoe Committee Room, with around 50 attendees) despite considerable competition this evening. Just a few doors away, top TV celebrity historian Michael Wood is giving a talk about his BBC series, The Story of England, which narrates the country's history through the story of Kibworth, a Leicestershire village that predates the Domesday Book. If I weren't in here speaking, I'd be in there listening to him!

Athea, from Faiths Forum for the East Midlands, brings the latest edition of their quarterly newsletter, Know Faith! issue 05, hot off the presses. It has good coverage of Inter Faith Week 2010, including our exhibition at Highcross and our feature in The Wave.

John Florance is Producer and Presenter of the Breakfast Show, on BBC Radio Leicester, Sunday mornings, 0600-0900. He gives a potted guide to the history of BBC Radio Leicester, including the birth of the BBC's Asian Network, which began in Leicester in the 1970s and still shares its premises. It's a statutory duty for local radio stations to have a programme on the topic of faith and ethics. John's show has a largely Christian audience, composed of older people up early to get to church. This doesn't stop the programme from carrying news and features about the diverse faith communities of Leicester. He lauds the good communication and positive relationship between the faith output and the newsroom. He is aware of the station's responsibility to promote good relations and better understanding among local faith communities. John also produces the "Thought for the Day" slot (he's asked me this evening if I would do a few of these - only 90 seconds long, thankfully!) He makes a few practical suggestions about getting heard on BBC Radio Leicester. Most importantly, tell him what's going on, rather than moan about it after it's over - and been missed. He also gives a few tips on how to write, submit and follow up on a good press release. He ends by acknowledging that those who genuinely know Leicester don't see it as a multicultural paradise - but one in which lively, courteous debate (some of which can - indeed should - be conducted on local radio) helps iron out the wrinkles among and between communities of differing background, practices and traditions in our city.

Nick Carter was editor of the Leicester Mercury for 16 years, having left the post two years ago in January 2009. During his tenure (says our Chair this evening), the paper covered faith community issues more sensitively and sympathetically than it does today. This evening he briefly considers how the place of faith in mainstream British society has changed radically, since he started as a junior reporter with an evening newspaper in Slough in 1975 (when religious news was made up of little more than church social events and traditional Christian festivals) and how the mainstream media has not kept pace with this change. He proposes that the media (especially local media) has a responsibility to dispel misinformation and lack of understanding. In this day and age, it's easier than ever for such opinion to find a platform, which makes the responsibility of "traditional" media all the more serious. The media as a whole has failed to understand the changing nature of religion, of communities and of their potential audience and customer base. They are now struggling to catch up - and for the most part, they have missed the boat as their audience has fragmented. Nick makes a plea for inclusion in the media of "soft news" - without setting the threshold too high, before faith issues are admitted into the mainstream as "hard news" when crises emerge. Without the background of "soft news" that would promote understanding and sympathetic coverage of faith and cultural issues. this is not as negative or pessimistic as it might first appear as he has a number of observations and suggestions for practical improvements.

My contribution is on social media, speaking about Leicester Council of Faiths' foray into Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, iPadio and - of course - blogging. I also give a puff to Amplified Leicester. I talk the audience through each of these (including my amusing anecdote about King Abdullah of Jordan reading my blog - unprovable either way, of course) and give a little live demo of a few in action. I come across like an enthusiastic twelve-year old at Show and Tell: "I've got a blog!" "We're on YouTube!" "Have you got as many facebooks fans as we have?" At the end of their presentations, John and Nick get a quarter of an hour of reflective, interesting questions; I get none. I think I've pummelled the audience into submission (but later this evening and early next morning, I get a lot of visitors to the blog).

I finish the evening here by recording half a dozen short video interviews with some of the attendees for our YouTube channel.

Amplified Leicester: aftermath

Sounds dramatic, doesn't it? Just a bit of shameless attention grabbing (to go with my usual shameless self promotion).  Would make a good title for the sequel of a hit film about AmpfiedLeic though ...

All it really means is that I wasn't able to attend the talk this evening (a panel on "Amplified Policing"), but did get down to Phoenix Square Film and Digital Media Centre in time to catch up with those who did. I prevailed upon Noel Singh to give me a lift down from the Bishop's Lodge in Springfield Road (where we'd both been attending the Faith Leaders Forum) down to Phoenix Square (well, it was just about on his way).

Since I'm convening the next panel session in two months time (on "Amplified Communities of Religion or Belief") I thought it good that I come down and show my face, check in with Prof Sue and Jayne.

I spend  some time talking with Dr Allan Hayes (of Leicester Secular Society) who got to hear Baroness Warsi's talk at Leicester University last week. At last I find out where it was held (in the David Wilson Library, which has new lecture facilities downstairs). Allan has submitted a "First Person" column to the Leicester Mercury about the talk, which I look forward to reading.

Find out more about Amplified Leicester (and sign up):
http://ampleic.ning.com/

amplified communities of faith or belief (2)

A surprising but welcome email this evening from Jayne Childs, who coordinates the monthly meetings of Amplified Leicester at Phoenix Square Film and Digital Media Centre. She writes requesting my agreement (and that of the three others involved in the panel I'm convening on "Amplified Communities of Faith or Belief" in March) to having the session filmed and posted online. I'm delighted at that suggestion - in fact, I'd hoped we'd be able to do that, but hadn't put the idea forward myself yet.

amplified communities of faith or belief (1)

The booking form for the panel I'm convening for Amplified Leicester on Wed 23 March at Phoenix Square ("Amplified Communities of Faith or Belief") is now live on Eventbrite. Visit this link for more information about the event and to register (tickets are free):
http://ampleic230311.eventbrite.com/

IT'S THOSE TOUCHRAINBOW GUYS!

Popping into Phoenix Square Film and Digital Media Centre just before 1700, in the cafe-bar I find the three guys from TouchRainbow Productions: Jiten Anand, Pritesh Varia and Bipin Anand (l-r in the photo above). I'd worked with them on Leicester Speaks (AKA Local Democracy Week) last year and in the planning of Get Inspired 2010 (though this didn't come off) before that.

Pritesh greets my arrival as "a sign", telling me that they're working on a plan for a new project that they want me to be involved in. They show me where they've written my name on a big, involved spidery diagram, but they can't tell me what it is yet.

I talk with them about the upcoming documentary festival being held here in a fortnight. They haven't heard of this, but quickly show their enthusiasm for getting involved. I've been asked if there's a short documentary on the topic of faith(s) in Leicester, but haven't been able to come up with anything. The guys express surprise that no one's made such a film before. I hope that thought might grow into something in their creative heads.

I show them the flyer for my panel in March at Amplified Leicester and the three of them promise to come and support it. I wonder if I should ask them to video it (with Sue Thomas's consent, of course).

Just a few minutes after I sit down with them, my son Alastair appears in the cafe-bar. They've never met each other, but shortly after I introduce them, they're discussing possible joint music and video projects. What a great place for creativity Phoenix Square has become! And for the second evening in a row, it's really busy; we're asked that, since we're not eating, could we move somewhere else and free up the table for diners. That's a first!

CreativeCoffee Club

To Phoenix Square Film and Digital Media Centre for the first CreativeCoffee Club of 2011 - well, the last quarter of an hour anyway. Today, I've got younger son Harry in tow - and when we're just about to get off the 31A at Northampton Square, my older son Alastair phones and says he's in Belvoir Street. So a couple of minutes later we meet up and the three of us troop into Phoenix Square together at 1145. But it's always worthwhile showing your face at CreativeCoffee Club, even if it's just for a short time; you never know who's going to be there, or what's going to be in the air. This is borne out for my two sons as much as it is for me today. Harry talks with John Coster and Tina Barton about having an article about his recent audition for "Britain's Got Talent" published in The Wave, while Alastair and John talk about joining up on a new internet radio venture based at Phoenix Square.

This morning, I get first sight of the flyers for the next three sessions of Amplified Leicester. I'm convening a panel for the March session, on "Amplified Communities of Faith or Belief". Nice little blurb about the meeting, even if I say so myself (well, I would say that, wouldn't I - since I wrote it myself). I take away a bunch of the flyers, to drop off here, there and everywhere. Here's the blurb, for your information, faithful reader:

7pm Wednesday 23 March 2011
Amplified Communities of Faith or Belief

Convened by George Ballentyne, Leicester Council of Faiths, with guests Sughra Ahmed, Islamic Society of Britain, Richard Hopper, Leicester Secular Society, Matthew Hughes, Samworth Enterprise Academy. Groups working in the "protected characteristic" of faith of belief are big users of social media. but for what purposes? Each of these panelists will show how their organisations use social media to different ends - some surprising and unexpected.