Meta interlude: why do reviews?

A fair whack of what I've written on this blog consists of reviews. Here are a few reasons why:

• I find writing reviews relatively easy. Always have. Right back to those halycon days scraping the bottom of the free CD pile for the student newspaper.

• Reviews sharpen opinions - it's a way of working out how I think or feel about something. Or how I feel about something now, in the case of some very early posts about fantasy novels I used to treasure by Donaldson, Eddings and May.

• Communicating my enthusiasms to others. I accept that I'm not anyone's primary source of information on, say, Iron Man 3, but the best recommendations come from friends, right? And I just might be someone's first encounter with Ulver or Spider Robinson, or provoke an equally enthusiastic response.

• Making a broader point - sometimes a review spills over its boundaries and allows me to board a wider train of thought, like the wierd as an antidote to post-Tolkien cliche in fantasy, or the rugged modernism of metal music.

One final point: I very rarely write a wholly negative or take-down review. Life's too short to waste on reviewing bad product, unless its so mindbogglingly terrible it feels like a public duty or an act of personal cleansing (hello, Your Highness on both counts)

Edited to add: I read a lot more than I actually review, so I've just signed up to Good Reads to share my reviews there, rate books I read but don't review, and see if I can pick up some more recommendations for my fairly eclectic tastes.

Campaign groups: try being more Troi

Last time I blogged about the Friends of the Earth Campaign Organisers programme (which FYI is now live and seeking applicants) I was mulling over how to explain a potentially complex proposition simply.

All I needed to do, it seems, is remember that Star Trek The Next Generation is an excellent way of making sense of the world and group dynamics. 

Naturally, what follows below is my own decidely unofficial thinking, and if you want 'hat-on' explanation and discussion you should go to the link above or the Campaign Hub. But writing this here allows me to be a little more playful, more experimental and try this out with you.

So, let me know what you think. :-)

The Campaign Organisers Programme is a way of helping our local campaign groups be bigger, better and more successful by helping them be more like Deanna Troi.

Confused? Allow me to explain.

We have great Picards, ship's captains in a non-hierarchical sense, coordinators of local groups, leaders, people with their eye on the overall plan and direction.

We also have lots of brilliant first officers (Rikers bearded or otherwise) - campaigners, issues experts, field commanders. As a campaigning movement, how could we not have these people?

We could always, use more Picards, more Rikers. They're awesome,

But what we also really need - and what the Campaign Organisers Programme is designed to give us - is more Troi's.

People with both eyes on the involvement, nurturing and empowerment of others. People who bring other people into a group, who understand their wants and needs and help them get involved, creating spaces for support and shared learning. 

Campaigners, yes, but catalysts too.

Because the only way this movement of ours is going to grow long-term, the only way we're going to change things as much as we want, is if groups look after their people, old hands and new crew alike, and help them grow.

There are local groups out there already doing much of this, and I'm not saying a Picard or a Riker can't also be something of a Troi at the same time. Equally, I know from my own experience in groups how difficult it is to keep your eye on two bottom lines simultaneously, however compatible they might be.

So, the role matters and needs dedicated attention. We know what our own best practice is and we can run a kick-ass training programme to share it. We know we can learn from other movements like Transition too. 

Let's make it happen then. Consider signing up yourself, or recommending it to others inside or outside local groups.

Campaign Organisers: a new tradition of empathic campaigning. Build the movement. Nurture others. Win the game. Be more Troi.

Are you in?


Postscript: here's the Facebook debate my Trek metaphor originally provoked. Many thanks to Dave, Matt and Stu for their contributions.

One of many reasons why you should read some William Burroughs

From Nova Express (1964) the literary equivalent of the one-take tracking shot.

He set up screens on the walls of his bars opposite mirrors and took and projected at arbitrary intervals shifted from one bar to the other mixing Western Gangster films of all times and all places with word and image of the people in his cafes and on the streets his agents with movie camera and telescope lens poured images of the city back into his projector and camera array and nobody knew whether he was in a Western movie in Hongkong or The Aztec Empire in Ancient Rome or Suburban America whether he was a bandit a commuter or a chariot driver whether he was firing a 'real' gun or watching a gangster movie and the city moved in swirls and eddies and tornadoes of image explosive bio-advance out of space to neon...

And that's one of the most coherent, legible pieces of the entire book.

Over the past few weeks I've been dipping into Nova Express.It falls into that rare category of books that are tremendously hard to read (because of Burroughs' cutting up and remixing of his own and others' work throughout) but feel one-hundred-percent worth the effort.

Where language fails, the imagination leaps in, fills in the blanks, tries to creates value. Burroughs' dub writing here asks not just your attention but your participation as well.

But any clarity the reader gains is transient - no sooner have you grabbed at words as your eyes fall down the page, and pieced together some coherent narrative, than it is eroded by the linguistic chaos in the next paragraph.

Entropy wins out in Burroughs in the most magical way.

A bit of amateur mid-90's pop-art collage

This university flyer collage is being retired to the loft. I put it together a couple of years ago as a way of saving part of what used to adorn my wall (my wardrobe, my door, every inch of available space... )

Note flyer for my brother's old band Host centre bottom. :-)

Stern Rabbit reminds Cat to have her vaccinations

Seriously. Talk about peer pressure. Although the ferret in the background seems slightly embarrassed to be there.

Every local campaign group should have an animal costume...

... and Southwark Friends of the Earth had a polar bear during the golden days of The Big Ask. It was a little bit toothsome, and had an occasional tendency to scare the hothouse flowers of Dulwich, but most people loved it.

My fondest memory of 'being the bear' is being attacked by a small child with a sonic screwdriver at the Nunhead Cemetery Open Day and having to repeatedly collapse to the floor in defeat.

More 'being the bear' photos (not all me) at the Flickr account.Photos by various members of the Southwark group who I'm sure won't mind me putting them up.

Ten attempts towards a nutshell explanation for Campaign Organisers

As we gear up this week for opening applications for Campaign Organisers, I'm keen to really get our pitch - my 1 minute nation of what the essence of the project is - absolutely nailed. I've just drafted a letter to local group coordinators which I think does that for local groups pretty much. 

I expect that I'll share that here next week when it's run the internal gauntlet because it will be in the public domain by then and hey, it'll be (mostly) my writing.

The one missing element as far as I'm concerned is what I call the 'nutshell explanation'. The one-liner, which by metaphor, analogy or straight-talking takes it out of the realm of Friends-of-the-Earth-speak, tells the listener what the project is about and gives them something to chew on.

Here are some latte-length personal thoughts:.

• It's a training programme for the next wave of kick-ass Friends of the Earth campaigners
• It's giving local groups the third point of the grassroots holy trinity - we've had the campaigner and the group coordinator; now we have the organiser as recruiter and empowerer
• It's like giving every starship captain their own Deanna Troi (too geeky?)
• It's giving local groups a toolkit for growth.
• It will mean more, bigger and better groups.
• It's a 21st century take on the county network
• It's bringing nurturing to the centre of local group culture.
• It's the biggest potential evolutionary step of local groups since the 1990's, BUT we'll be giving them the tools to do it on their own terms.
• It's about helping local groups achieve a more even distribution of the best of what they do now.

And finally, once more with kittens!

Who could resist such a tempting offer? Although if I'm reduced to LOLcats it's probably a sign I should take a break from brainstorming...