Very pleased that our Confluence podcasts are now available on walk · listen · create. Click on ‘links’ to listen. walklistencreate.org/walkingpiece/p…

Hello Rome…

These podcasts are fabulous - Place-making and the rivers of Lewisham.

‘Unless you have a creative education, you don’t have a complete education’. Very refreshing change of tone here in relation to the importance of the arts in schools. Positive stuff all round, in fact, in this interview with Lisa Nandy. theguardian.com/culture/2024/s…

Giving someone a two year prison sentence for throwing soup at a painting is just insane. I’m sympathetic to Just Stop Oil but I’d say the same if it was a right wing protest. You can get a milder sentence for GBH… ‘Make an example’ is appallingly substitute for justice.

Finally got round to reading @StuHennigan's review of 'Culture is Bad for You' in Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal. Brilliant, blistering piece that captures how the 'creative industries' have been hollowed out not only as institutions but as states of mind. Well worth a read! poetrybirmingham.com/current-issue

Amazing to see the Being Human Festival programme go live for another year yesterday. Ten years(!) of celebrating the humanities and their vital connections to everyday life. I remember working on the 2014 festival in what feels life a different world... beinghumanfestival.org/festival-events

For Being Human Festival this year we are doing a collaborative Goldsmiths/ Horniman Museum and Gardens 'Landmarks late', exploring how humans mark the land and how the land marks us. There'll be augmented reality, 'sonic postcards', talks and much else. Come along! horniman.ac.uk/event/horniman…

Excited to see the UCL Press page for 'Playing the Archive: from the Opies to the Digital Playground'. I've a chapter in here on family memories, archives, urban wandering & hopscotch. Thanks andrew burn, John Potter 💙, Dr Kate Cowan, Julia Bishop for including me uclpress.co.uk/book/playing-t…

The rise in tuition fees is likely to be completely offset at most unis by the rise in NI Employer Contributions, leaving them no better off. We need much deeper thinking about the future of the sector or it'll be too late for some. Hopefully this is the start of that process...

Great to be at the Goldsmiths Prize Ceremony this evening. A real affirmation of the importance of risk taking literature, and of the arts and storytelling generally, in the midst of very dark times. Goldsmiths, University of London

Such a fantastic evening yesterday at our Landmarks Late with the Horniman Museum, as part of @BeiHumanFest. Bringing Goldsmiths, University of London arts and humanities creativity, criticality and JOY to a dark political week. An amazing performance from IRIE! dance theatre capped off the proceedings:

Bluesky is really picking up momentum now, isn’t it? I’ve been on there for a while now. Same handle as on here @drmichaeleades… Give us a follow if you’re heading over there for a Musk free new home.

News at the moment is just bleak. The world’s richest man is going to great lengths to try to personally bring down an elected govt in one of the world’s ‘stable’ democracies. Basically just because he can. If that’s not a dystopian start to the new year, I don’t know what is…

David Lynch… Fuck… Where even to start? I watched Eraserhead on Channel Four on a tiny TV in my parent’s house when I was about 15 and it was the key to a door in my mind that I didn’t know existed. I’ve never been the same since. R.I.P theguardian.com/film/2025/jan/… #davidlynch

If the UK really wants growth it should rejoin the Single Market. This is by far the simplest and easiest single thing it could do to help the economy. Better than airports, free ports and AI pipe dreams. This remains off the table for reasons of mind numbing political idiocy…

Civic participation goes hand in hand with civic frustration. I’ve been reporting a persistent issue with fly tipping near me to councillor Cllr Martin Abrams 🕊️🍉 and others for months. Literally nothing has been done on this fixable issue… Any wonder people are getting frustrated?

Are we going to have to go through a whole cycle of history and invent everything again? Trade unions, international law, multilateral institutions, consensus based politics… None of this perfect but Jesus Christ we’re going to miss it when it is gone (soon, at the current rate)

Rest in peace David Johansen, last of the New York Dolls. Beautiful and trashy, right to the end: theguardian.com/music/2025/m...

Great seminar today bringing in partners from local homelessness charities + housing associations to speak to students about work they are doing in SE London. Homelessness and precarious housing are huge, growing issues in our area and across the UK.