Joined Up Typing

Finally we have some proper snow in Cornwall… It’s been about 5 years in the making, but today the weather let rip and gave us a good dousing of the cold white flakes.

As per usual, as soon as the first flakes fall they shortcircuit everyone’s driving ability and we have major gridlock everywhere with my lovely lady taking nearly an hour to travel between Pool & Redruth… To avoid the prospect of trying to get down then back up two notorious hills, even she had to leave the car a few minutes away from home, but good job too because anyone else who ventured further would have had to abandon their no-longer trusty steeds to fate, sledgers and idiots who think that because they have a Scooby, they can drive like Colin Macrae. This idiot could not even go 10mph without hitting 2 cars, even when the smarter kids on the street suggested he give up. Anyway, he distracted our community copper long enough for the kids to start bombing down the hill again!

Check out some pics of the new craze that’s hopefully not sweeping too hard, but skimming down a hill near you. I would have joined in but I did not have anything slidey that…

a) …belonged to my grandad/older brother/Cormac

b) …I cared about too little not to trash - my sponge.

And, contrary to popular current opinion, a bin lid doth not a slidey thing make…

Oh well, here’s fingers crossed for a snow day tomorrow.

I have just been reading the Guardian’s article about the government via Ethan Eismann’s blog and here is my impression…

Funding for creative enterprises is pretty good for some areas in the UK. Across the rest of the UK, the “arts” receives lottery money and other funding, but probably not as much as some of the people would hope for - is it ever enough?

The area I live in received large amounts of money for lots of projects, not just creative  ones, under the EU’s Objective One funding.  This is changing in 2008, but more money will be coming in http://www.objectiveone.com/index.htm

With Objective One a lot of money has been funneled into generating new industry streams and the creative industry has been a major recipient with numerous organisations offering grants & funding for the creative industries - for example, some “funding funnels”:

http://www.flickernow.org

http://www.creativeskills.org.uk

One issue I have with the Objective One approach is that it is very much “gravy train” for a large amount of middle-class people and I feel that a lot of money does not trickle down to those who need the most help, instead they are patronised by various projects that often only skim the surface.  However, creativity is only recently becoming a recognised way of making money rather than something to take up your spare time -whether this is bad or good is a topic for another time.

It is nice to see that the government has recognised that creativity is such an important part of education, if for the wrong reasons.  Their pledge should hopefully help to counter a worrying trend in education that has seen timetables drop many creative subjects and reduce the time devoted to others in favour of science, maths, business and things seen as useful for making money.  Having worked in creative projects with schools I found it very frustrating that the only time some kids got to do creative stuff was outside school time, so if the government is not spinning us a big line, we will hopefully get some cool stuff happening again. This should also please the teachers who are fed up with the governments “measure everything” approach to education which has made lessons driven towards passing the measurement criteria applied to schools rather than making sure kids get an interesting and well rounded education.  Finally teachers may be able to get a bit more creative with their lessons - which will be a welcome break from the “Teaching for SATS” culture that seems rife in schools at the moment.

So, we will probably be seeing more projects for the likes of Creative Partnerships, Youth Music & other organisations who try to promote creativity for young people. This in turn is good for me, because I like doing projects with young people that gets them being creative… http://glenpike.co.uk/portfolio/automaton.htm