After the event...

[image: david bennett]

Next week, I am dropping in to: After the event

...before heading off to Jodrell bank to talk to postgraduate students, drawn from different disciplines, about harnessing creativity. I haven't been to Jodrell bank in a while, since i was a kid in fact and i can't quite remember that... but its been in the news quite a bit recently... i was pondering the content of the talk whilst walking my dogs this morning... what was the thing that sparked their interest in the first place, (the students, not the dogs) to sign up to these events (its a series of talks and events - i can see my whippets, back row, snoozing away) what's happening in their lives ... i can't possibly know... so casting my mind back... i thought about the things that drove me to go that extra mile (Jodrell is not exactly down the road)... back to that old ches'nut... all of my internal motivations and drivers go back to my mum and my dad...(my mum is danish and my dad is nigerian and i am born in the UKkkk) and the feeling of being an outsider looking in... of not quite fitting... its these kinds of things i guess that lead me to end up doing what i do... driving change by looking to the outside to get closer to something apparently less like me, to shift my perspectives, shatter any illusions i might have... increasingly my desire and drives lead me astray, departing from myself, learning from people different from me, only to arrive back where i started, with me and a greater sense of what it means to be human... that's why i value diversity, it makes me think differently...

...anyway - i realised today (being in my local library of all places) that everything starts local, but having another source of "home"... increasingly i am thinking global about how i can make connections, open channels to other cities... and in particular, africa, india, china... tony blair said in a recent interview that when he stepped away from government office, he realised that with this whole obsession with the middle east, he'd missed the fact that the global centre of the world has shifted. No sh$t.

There was one art exhibition, from a while back, that had me in tears (of joy), i'll have to locate it and a link -
A more recent one is the telectroscope

Does this help me with my talk... possibly nottttttttttt... i think i will just show them some simple innovations, that started small that have inspired me... and also what happens when you act local and think global...

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