Know Design

On thursday night we were very honored to be invited to be part of the judging panel of the Birmingham Civic Society’s Next Generation Awards Programme. The project has involved over a thousand young people in several schools across Birmingham. Teams are made up between 6-9 pupils and are asked to consider life in Birmingham 20 years from now, the social issues Birmingham may face and what they might to do to solve the associated problems.

The final was made up of the top four winning teams from King Edward School, Baverstock School, Priory School and Small Heath School who each made a presentation to the panel. Issues covered litter, graffiti, and the environment however it was Small Heath’s presentation on the elderly that came across as the best thought through, most personal as well as most entertaining - suggestions included more bungalows, Nintendo Wiis and better anti-wrinkle cream!

We were joined on the panel by Rob Langley of Clarke Associates and (the recently graduated graduate-apprentice) Jason Norris now of Deloitte. It was a very different way to spend an evening anyway, brilliant fun, and reassuring to know Birmingham will be in safe hands in years to come - and a free Nintendo Wii on retiring is a great prospect.

I’ve been short-listed for Birmingham Future’s Young Professional of the Year 2008. I’m down to the last three of my category, but we won’t get to know the winner until on the night of the awards which is in May – so keep your fingers crossed for me!

I’m very pleased to say that I’ve just joined the board of directors of Worcester-based youth theatre group C&T. It’s all part of the Young Professionals on Arts Boards scheme I’ve taken part in run by Arts and Business and I’m the very first person taking part to be matched with an arts organisation.

I attended the C&T board away day last week and it seems like a really great group of people. Everybody seems very enthusiastic about C&Ts work which is not surprising as it’s mix of technology and applied drama result in some very entertaining productions from the young people that they work with. The board’s mix of members should result in a bit of healthy debate on all manner of issues, which I’m told is very healthy and something I’m sure I won’t shy away from.

As well as attending regular board meetings for the organisation, a major role of board membership is obviously advocacy. I have to say though that I feel a surprising amount of enthusiasm for the organisation considering when I started the YPOAB scheme I had no idea who I wanted to be involved with. C&T have been a perfect match though and in truth it’s very easy for the geek inside me to find any platform in which to get excited about the uses of technology. C&T are currently developing a national network of employed artist/educators called animatuers who each work very closely with a local school in their area to develop drama using technology surrounding both school subjects as well as social issues. C&T’s very welcoming artist director Paul Sutton can certainly articulate all of this far better than I so if you’re not familiar with C&T take a look at their website.

Paul has also been hosting some of the ‘board training’ sessions for Arts & Business which have been very enlightening. I took part in a ‘Personal Impact’ training day last week so I can now officially take command of any situation - all very Derren Brown (look into my eyes!!).

This week is the last of the training days which will be focusing on the slightly more tangible subject of presentation (powerpoint/keynote to the ready then!?). It’s an area I’m reasonably confident in, however I do tend to make far more sense on paper rather than face to face. Yes believe it or not, this is as good as it gets.

Anyway, I’ll keep up to date on how the training goes and any further developments with C&T.

Not sure, but it just felt like an earthquake outside. That or a very big goose just landed on our roof. The birds have suddenly started singing at 1 in the morning, so something big has happened.

We’ve kind of officially launched this site now and so far most people have had only positive things to say about it. We’ve actually had a lot of really good feedback from the people we’ve asked and it’s definitely making us address a few things that we hadn’t thought of. I think we’ve perhaps got a bit of work to do on driving people to use the sub menus a bit more and perhaps to drive people to the blogs (but if you’re reading this then i guess something’s working).

It’s not all been plain sailing. It would appear that we sent an e-flyer out today, to people (announcing the new site) which coincided with me making a fatal error with a bit of code resulting in a few miss-aligning page elements (as in a 400px gap between menu and content) - not very professional I know, but we soon resolved it and it’s a lesson in always expecting the unexpected when it comes to CSS, as well as testing, testing and further testing before launch.

Thanks to everybody that’s come back with comments, I know we were asking fairly pointed questions to you, but people seem to have really thought about the site functionality and usability, not just the aesthetics which is good to know.

We sent out an email today to say Happy Valentine’s with this truly halloween imagery. It kind of follows on from the christmas card theme and shows off what we’re actually capable of with a camera and photoshop if we put our minds to it. Try not to have nightmares.