Recently a news story about a folk music session at the Greenbank Pub in Bristol caught my eye. It’s become popular for being inclusive of all genders and abilities and has received funding from Arts Council England (ACE).  Many people would agree that our major cultural institutions should have the investment they need to be … Read more

Even among committed optimists, in which camp I usually try to count myself, there will be those struggling in the dark days of January to find any straws to clutch at as we anticipate the next moves of the Labour Government in 2025. The most recent sobering news was the unprecedented drop (outside of the … Read more

Everyone is so busy! We’re facing competing demands, achieving a happy work/life balance, increasing concerns about money and the rising cost of living. We’re all fighting challenges on a daily basis that are hitting us from stage left, right, above and even below. As a project manager working on umpteen complex projects at once, I’ve … Read more

‘Please reopen our theatre!’ Singers and orchestral players obviously, but also florists, tailors, wigmakers, metalworkers, hoteliers, restaurateurs, accountants, gasfitters, mechanics, all desperately pleading for work, with theatres closed in the midst of economic crisis and a public health emergency. Not a social media campaign led by Andrew Lloyd Webber against DCMS during the COVID pandemic, … Read more

As we head through 2022 have you noticed that you are starting to think and talk about your life and daily activities in terms of before-Covid, during-Covid and after-Covid? Of course, it isn’t strictly accurate to say “post-Covid”, because it hasn’t gone away and may not completely for many years to come, if ever, but … Read more

What to say to people at parties. Someone asks me what I do for a living, and I have to say that I worked for 35 years in local government IT and now I do consultancy. I see the panic in their eyes. How soon can they find they need the facilities, or their glass … Read more

Miscellany: “An unorganised collection or mixture of various things” (Merriam Webster), yes that feels like a reasonable description for this blog. This month my only rule is not to mention the words C—d or P——c as frankly I think we’re all thoroughly tired of that topic.  I thought about calling the blog a ‘potpourri’, but … Read more

Books? It’s true that if you mention ‘library’, even today most people first think of a place with a lot of books. But there are libraries that don’t have any books. One of my favourites is DoSpace, which describes itself as ‘technology library’, and of course digital access to public library services everywhere continues to … Read more

Well I guess arguably it did for some, and the same was said of the arrival of the ‘talkies’ in the 1920s, which ended the career of not a few silent movie stars who were capable of hamming it up for the cameras, but whose diction left a lot to be desired. But perhaps the … Read more

All the talk at the moment seems to be about ‘Levelling up’, though I’m unconvinced anyone knows exactly what the term means. Not that this has stopped the UK government renaming the DCHLG as the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, in so doing causing ‘local government’ to drop off the end, much to … Read more