My 8 year old son is learning guitar. After a few months of rote-learning standard riffs and chords, he is beginning to experiment with his own tunes and chords. “Daddy,” he says as he fingers an improbable combination of notes. “Is this a real chord? It sounds kind of cool.” On balance, he spends as much time creating his own sounds as he does practicing the songs and scales his guitar teacher provides him. Both types of practice are important and both help to wire his developing his brain differently. In this TED Talk by brain surgeon Charles Limb, he …

Today, my Gran is on her deathbed, and with family assembled around time seems to have slowed down a little. Fond memories of my childhood have flooded back – me and my sister spent countless weekend with her and Pa. They have remained together forever, married for 70 years and have a 1930’s-gritty-style of tenacity, courage and will to live and be together. They are Scottish through and through and their Glaswegian ways have never left them. My friend Chris Corrigan replied to an earlier tweet with some comforting words … “there is nothing more incredible to be in the …

I am a bit slow off the mark with this year’s Reverb – Reflect on this year and manifest what’s next! Reverb is a daily blog post based on an offer from the folks at Reverb. Here is today’s challenge … ‘December 12 – Body Integration This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn’t mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present? (Author: Patrick Reynolds)” That moment came for me on Day 4 of a facilitation gig I did in Sydney with the folks from …

If you have my previous posts, you will be aware that I spent time working with the folks from Australia’s contemporary Circus and Physical Theatre sector. The event was called the Flashpoint Forum and was hosted by the sector’s peak body ACAPTA. When the 2 days of Open Space was over on the Friday, everyone (26 plus a few others) came back together on Saturday. I’ll admit to feeling nervous about this day. I was asking myself questions like … “why don’t we simply continue Open Space for another day?”. Here’s a story the group created, performed and recorded in just …

Here are some other games we played as a group on Day 1 of Open Space at the ACAPTA Flashpoint Forum in Sydney. The games were run by Dan Aubin, Artistc Director with CirKidz. As I said in my previous post, seeing a whole group of people at a conference make room to just ‘play’ (and move other conversation topics to prioritise this) was so refreshing. I noticed a significant change in the connection between participants after this 2 hours of play – a new social-contract between people seemed to emerge. Here is a copy/paste of Dan’s Open Space offering …