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!

inspiration postponed

Phone call from Ramila Chauhan, who has been my main contact with the organising team behind Get Inspired 2010, the Hindu-focused festival planned for the middle of August this year at Leicester Racecourse. She tells me that they've decided to postpone the event by twelve months, because the more work they've done on it, the more opportunities have opened to them to hold a bigger and better event but they they wouldn't be able to do justice to all those new kinds of input if they were to go ahead on the dates as planned. I think this is a good decision and shows real vision and forward thinking on the part of the organisers. I'm going to stay involved and ensure that the people I've introduced to the project and the organising team stay in the loop.

get (still more) inspired

This evening I'm at Shree Jalaram Prarthana Mandal community centre, Narborough Road, for a meeting of the group planning "Get Inspired 2010", to be held at Leicester Raceourse, Sat 14 and Sun 15 August.

Find out more about Get Inspired 2010:
http://ochs.org.uk/sites/all/files/Get%20Inspired%20Presentation_V6.pdf

GET (EVEN MORE) INSPIRED!

At the community centre opposite Shree Jalaram Prarthana Mandal (photo above), Narborough Road, this evening, for a meeting with the Get Inspired 2010 team. Get Inspired 2010 will be a public celebration of Hindu life, promoting the diversity of Hindu culture, values and philosophy to people of all ages and from all faiths and beliefs, as well as showcasing Hinduism as a sustainable and environmentally friendly lifestyle for the 21st century and beyond. The organising team are hoping to attract 10,000 visitors to the event itself at Leicester Racecourse and Conference Centre (Saturday 14, Sunday 15 Aug) and are intent on reaching a global audience by creating a lively online presence.

A group of community-minded individuals drawn from virtually all Hindu groups in Leicester is behind Get Inspired 2010. They've come together in recent months locally to promote the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies - an academic institution of international standing. I attended the meeting in this same venue that started the countdown to Get Inspired 2010 (see blog entry, Tue 30 Mar). I was struck immediately by the potential of the event and have been trying to help in any way possible since then. That has consisted, mostly, of introducing some of the organisers to other people in the city whom I believe would be interested in promoting the event by a variety of means, e.g. Amplified Leicester (and relevant legacy projects), Citizens' Eye Community News Agency, CreativeCoffee Club, Global Education Leicester-Shire. I'm glad to say that everyone I've helped come into contact with this project - and with the people organising it - seem only too keen to help.

There are 16 people here this evening, for a meeting that lasts about two-and-a-half hours. We're in a smaller upstairs room this time, as the bigger ground floor space we had for the launch meeting is being used by a yoga class. Attendees speak about the event in general, as well as the particular areas they are assigned to look after:

• Temple Zone - featuring large models of six iconic Hindu temples in India
• Kids' Zone - fun and educational activities, built around the core values of Hinduism
• Grandstand area - focusing on the Bhumi ("Mother Earth") project
• Stage - featuring performances from a range of artists
• Food zone - on-site catering (which will be entirely vegetarian, with vegan options too)

A variety of charity stalls and commercial exhibitors are also being courted to take part in the event.

The main contribution that Leicester Council of Faiths can make is in assuring the success of the Conference Zone. On the Saturday, the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) are jointly sponsoring a public conference; then on the Sunday there will be an invitation-only event. I've been asked to obtain support from the Council of Faiths for both of these. I am also involved in promoting Get Inspired 2010 through social networking and getting information out to schools.

AMPLIFIED LEICESTER: TECH SURGERY

Amplified individuals use social media and the web to enhance their abilities to sense their world, create shared resources and act collaboratively. We meet fortnightly at Phoenix Square Digital Film and Media Centre. This morning, Ash Brown hosts an informal "Tech Surgery" bringing together those who need help with social media and those who can advise them. Folk bring along their laptops, iPhones, Blackberries etc. Tables are devoted to twitter, Facebook, MySpace, You Tube and my favourite (of course) blogging. I get the chance to talk with Ash for a good bit late in the session, when we discuss the affordances, constraints and effectivities (they're E301 words - look 'em up if you're that bothered, faithful reader) associated with different forms of blogging available (principally Wordpress v Blogger).


Content is the most important thing for me. I'm not all that competent with design elements (in fact, I feel pretty backward at all that). I like Blogger and use this format because it allows me to forget about design and just get on with the writing.


Today I've persuaded Alastair (my firstborn) to attend. I've been encouraging him to come to events like this for a while, so he can make some good contacts for more effective deployment of his artistic skills. He's an excellent musician (with a degree in guitarcraft from the Academy of Contemporary Music), a witty writer and MC. I know all parents think their children are the bee's knees, but I'm happy to say that I'm right on the money about him.

I have a chat with Dipika Hindocha, who is volunteering with the Get Inspired 2010 project. She's looking at ways of using the Amplified network to publicise the forthcoming event. Sounds to me like she's got plenty to give back here too.

get (more) inspired!

Another meeting early this evening with friends from the "Get Inspired 2010" project. I'm glad to be with Ramila Chauhan and Manish Thakrar at Phoenix Square Digital Film and Media Centre.

Amplified Leicester Showcase

To Phoenix Square this morning (I should live in this place!), for the Amplified Leicester Showcase event. Amplified Leicester is a city-wide experiment designed to boost the innovation capacity of Leicester and share new skills which are fast becoming essential in 21st century workplaces and communities. In 2009/10 Amplified Leicester offered a small group of participants from across the city the chance to:

• benefit from Leicester's huge diversity of people and cultures;
• generate new ideas quickly;
• think like a futurist and see the bigger picture;
• organise and collaborate better;
• be persuasive in different social situations;
• share and develop creative ideas;
• manage the stream of information bombarding us every day;
• choose the best people with whom to collaborate;
• make the most of different kinds of resources – social, economic, creative.

Every fortnight participants attended lectures and workshops and in between meetings worked together via Twitter, Facebook and other social media applications. They filmed interviews in their communities and shared the videos online.

The project has been inspired by (and is based on) research done by The Institute for the Future at Palo Alto, California. The amplified individual is (consciously):

• highly social;
• highly collective;
• highly improvisational;
• highly augmented.

At the end of (this part of) the project the participants are showcasing their work and expanding the conversation to include more people from the city of Leicester and beyond. This one day event at Phoenix Square Digital Media Centre includes practical workshops run by the participants themselves, presentations of their experimental projects, and talks by the project team. Keynote speaker, Andrea Saveri, an independent foresight and strategy consultant based in Berkeley, California, was unable to travel here for the event for medical reasons. However, she still delivered her speech via skype. The theme of her talk was locating the Amplified Leicester experience within a global context. Leicester is ther first and only amplified city in the world!

I missed out on the chance to participate in Amplified Leicester. I believe I was the first person to apply to be considered for the project, but withdrew my name almost immediately when I realised that work commitments would have proevented me from attending the fortnightly sessions. but I've been a camp follower of the project all along and have lent whatever assistance I could to it, even just by "bigging it up" (especially in this blog).

This is undoubtedly an excellent project and I have many good things to say about it. If you can sense a "but" coming, it's not a new one or that different from one that I have to raise with many of the events and activities, groups and organisations with which I've been involved over the past few years. There tends to be something of a "disconnect" between Leicester's faith communities at large and what we might call the "mainstream" cultural life of the city. Now, no doubt that some of those involved with a project such as Amplified Leicester are people of faith or strong beliefs. And there are individuals who would appear to be easily identified as members of the faith communities themselves. I'm talking about something different and (I believe) deeper.

As part of my ongoing efforts to overcome that "disconnect", I invited Ramila and Ravi from the "Get Inspired 2010" team to come along today so that I could put them in touch with a few people who might be able to help them promote their event coing up in August. I'm pleased to see that they appear to benefit from this, as I had hoped.

Find out more about Amplified Leicester:
http://www.amplifiedleicester.com/

GET INSPIRED 2010

At the community centre opposite Shree Jalaram Prarthana Mandal in Narborough Road this evening. I've been invited to attend the launch for a forthcoming public celebration of Hindu life, an ambitious event to be held at Leicester Racecourse and Conference Centre over a weekend in the middle of August.

Get Inspired 2010 aims to educate, inform and promote the full breadth and diversity of Hindu culture, values and philosophy as well as to showcase the Hindu outlook on living a sustainable and environmentally friendly lifestyle. It takes as its target audience people from all over the UK, from all ages and all faith groups. It is looking to attract over 10,000 visitors to the event over two days but will also reach out to a global audience through its PR and marketing initiatives.

This event is being organised by a group of community-minded individuals drawn from all Hindu faith groups, who have come together over the last few years to promote the work of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies - an internationally recognised academic institution. I understand it's also building on the legacy of "Get Connected", a successful and fondly remembered event held in Leicester in 2004.

Sadly, I won't be able to attend Get Inspired 2010, as it's being held at the same time as the Summer Sundae Weekender at De Montfort Hall and Gardens (I've just forked out £250 for a three-day family ticket for that!)