Author: drnicko

Awarded an MBE for services to arts-based businesses, I am passionate about generating inspiring, socially engaging, creative practice within educational contexts both nationally and internationally.

Questions for teachers: what’s your Galileo moment?

Jumping out of our archive today was the “Galileo – and still it moves” project. This involved working with a group of year 5 children to explore the planets and in doing so, develop their literacy skills: particularly their speaking, listening and writing skills.

We started off by exploring Galileo and what he went through when he challenged the orthodoxy of the day ie the sun revolving around the earth, rather than the other way around. Of course, many of the adults in the room explained to the children about how terribly he was treated and what a genius he was and how he suffered for his knowledge. All of which is no doubt true.

Although perhaps it’s not. One of interesting moments was when a young boy, when being told by a teacher that Pluto was a planet, challenged the teacher with the recent finding that Pluto was no longer deemed a planet but a dwarf planet, or a rock cluster of minor significance or just a large ice pack or something to that effect (who knows?!) Mr Teacher then responded to the challenge that as far as he was concerned, Pluto had been a planet when he was at school, still was a planet, and would be for the rest of his days.

The irony of Mr Teachers response was of course not lost on the Year 5 boy who sat through the rest of the lesson with a slightly bemused look on his face. What we deem as knowledge is as uncertain and as flaky as it was in Galileo’s day.

So, what’s been your Galileo moment?

More details about the Galileo project here.

Calling all schools: Aspire to present at Advantage Oman Competitiveness Forum in Muscat, Oman.

His Highness Sayyid Faisal Al Said, Chairperson, Advantage Oman has recently invited our director, Dr. Nick Owen MBE to present at the Advantage Oman Competitiveness Forum to be held between 30 November and 5 December 2013 in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman.

‘Advantage Oman’ an international competitiveness forum to discuss the critical importance of identity and vision, good governance, enterprise, education, sustainability and technology in creating a stronger, more robust, competitive Oman. Nick will be presenting on Aspire’s work in Life Long Learning and Enterprise and is looking forward to building new relationships and business opportunities in the Middle East and further afield.

Other colleagues from Australia, Singapore and the USA will also be contributing to the programme – as well as our very own Liverpool Chamber of Commerce with whom Aspire has been working with closely recently in the fields of international trade and business start up programmes. For further details about the programme please contact us at info@aspire-trust.org.

I will be taking the opportunity whilst I am out there to establish links with local schools – so if you would like to connect your school with schools in Oman, please get in touch!

Latest press information here.

Who should be the public champion for HS2?

The difficulty with the Not-So-H-HS2 campaign is that has still to find its champion – someone who can wave the flag, force the big boys to cough up bucket loads of cash and enchant the good burghers of Great Missenden that property blight is good for them and their grandchildren.

Some have suggested that they need the equivalent of Seb Coe. This is difficult for the Not-So-H-HS2 campaign because Seb lead the Olympic campaign dance over a mercifully brief 7 years from the announcement in Singapore to the closing ceremony in Stratford when Russell Brand cavorted amongst the drug free athletes in a drug fuelled frenzy with his acolytes and assorted celebs.

Not so the Not-So-H-HS2 campaign who have the unenviable task of keeping that party going for a mere 30 years. There’s not a figurehead on earth who has that kind of staying power, not even Richard Branson, despite his recent foray into immortality technologies.

No, what Not-So-H-HS2 Ltd need is a mythical figure who can keep the troops rallied and on permanent message well after this, the next and probably the next 6 governments. Someone who will live on well after all of us have been laid up in the sidings.

So – here’s your chance to contribute to the urban myth that Not-So-H-HS2 is turning into. Answers welcome below!

HS2 has nothing in common with the projects of Balnibarbi.

Swift’s Gullivers Travels tells of the Academy of Projectors established by the Balnibarbians: inhabitants of the land of Balnibarbi.

Balnibarbi’s Academy of Projectors was all about developing projects which were aimed to improve society.

They included a man who spent eight years extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, another whose project plan was to reconstitute human excrement back to its original food components and another who had designed a new method for building houses, by starting at the roof, and working downwards to the foundations.

Clearly ingenious people, the future grandchildren of the Bainibarbians are not related to those who have brought forth the master project to end all projects, the not so H of the HS2 rail project.

HS2 would not be a suitable subject for Swiftian satire, rooted as it is in rigorous thinking, exemplary planning and water tight financial projections.

Want to start a business in Wirral? Why not start right here, right now?

We’re coming out of recession. The banks aren’t lending. Its nearly winter. There’s a million and one reasons why there’s never a right time to start up a business. And a million and one why it’s the right time.

You get to shape your own future, rather than have it shaped for you by distant beaurocrats. You get to develop your own ideas, unhindered by the pressures and politics of more noisier colleagues who are always putting you down. You get to shape the culture of your workplace rather than being the unwitting object of other peoples cultural outdated cultural habits. You get to employ people, create jobs and make a difference to others around you.

Sure, none of this easy, and none of this makes for sleepless nights and a stress-lite existence. For a sleep-full and stress-empty life, you might be better retiring to the hills, writing your memoirs and feel comforted in what could have been, what would have been, and what should have been.

But if you have an idea which is itching to get out, which will contribute to your community, your society and the people around you, then now is absolutely the right time to set up your new business.

Aspire Trust is now offering business start up services for all Wirral residents (or those who want to set up a business in Wirral). We offer:

Advice and guidance on income generation and funding
Structured 1:1 support and group based programmes
Cross trading opportunities with other new businesses
National and International trading links
Customised programmes for your own business requirements.

We work across all business sectors – creative, digital, retail, manufacturing, you name it – our advisors are there to help.

The service is not free – but its absence of public funding means that you don’t waste your valuable business time filling in pointless forms and ticking boxes for the sheer hell of it!  It also means that you won’t be working with advisors who’s interests are more on hitting their funding targets than on supporting your business interests.

Your time is the most precious asset you have – and our work with you recognises that.

Just drop me an email at nick@aspire-trust.org if you require further information.

Banging on about HS2: how can we help them prevent a PR disaster?

The HS2 team held a PR event in Liverpool recently where assembled movers, shakers and hangers on were invited to hear the latest news on the HS2 developments. About 50 of us gathered expectantly to hear what it’s really all about Alfie, and to get it straight from the horses mouth.

To say it was a non event would be kind to non events. There were a couple of short introductory speeches – the first of which apologised for the name of the project – HS2 – and made it clear that there would be nothing particularly HS about HS2 as it was much more about moving freight off the roads, on to the rails and down the current West Coast line. The need for the new line was as much about providing capacity for passengers to travel at speeds greater than 15mph – the average speed they would be travelling if they were stuck behind a mile long freight train carrying glass from St Helens to the city of London.

The second contributor marvelled at the current 15 apprentices who are currently were working on the designs of the line. He pointed out, this project could last their life time and it would be more than likely that they would be grandparents by the time the line was operational.

That fact sobered many of us in the room as it became clear that we were being asked to endorse a project which would outlive us, and perhaps even our children. The project will be alive and kicking when many of us in the room will be consigned to our graves, ashes urns or deep at the bottom of the sea – or even under the rails at Rainford for the enthusiasts amongst us.

The final contribution to the non-event was a glossy promotional video which showed a lighting fast cartoon train whizzing through an empty countryside in all its shiny happy people mode. The absence of people in the video emphasised one of the core problems to the HS2 marketing campaign. It doesn’t have any people in it who will be alive when the line supposedly opens. It’s emphasising its audiences mortality with a ya boo sucks approach – this project is more important than you here and now, and more important too than your children and grandchildren in the there and then.

What’s it all about Alfie is freight, freight and yet more freight trundling through the countryside at the dead of night, rattling by the graveyards of the movers, shakers and hangers on who are currently being asked to cough up in TB type spasmodic fits for its ever spiralling costs.

One way to prevent a PR disaster would be for the team to be honest about the purpose of HS2 and acknowledge that not many of us are going to be around to see the first train leave the new Manchester station which will be built just outside Skelmersdale some time in 2033.

Banging on about HS2 – a really meaty subject to bang on about

High Speed 2 – HS2 as it’s popularly known as in the UK (albeit not with a huge degree of popularity) – is proposed by the the UK government as being one of the most significant infrastructure projects to be produced in the UK since… Well, I don’t know, since ever.

As such, it is a perfect subject to bang on about given it will touch every raw nerve ending in English civic life: trains and the railways, urban regeneration, the North:South divide, town vs country, the nature of our national identity and every other political agenda item imaginable.

One of the exquisite features of this debate is that it will run and run well beyond the life time of any one political party’s tenuous hold on power – more than likely for the next 30 years. I may well be dead by the time we see its official opening. All the more reason to devote part of this blog to a subject which will transcend party politics, local and national allegiances and personal preferences for sitting in an aisle seat, a window seat, a quiet zone, facing the direction of travel or where you’ve come from.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, unborn children of the next generation, I give you my next blog subject: Banging on about HS2. Future posts are likely to be late, diverted via Crewe or cancelled. And certainly not likely to be completed before 2043. Your news and views are very welcome! The journey (dread cliche) starts here…

Why is Coca Cola thanking us for ‘sharing’ our summer with them?

Sharing – that ancient tradition of passing something onto someone which may be of mutual interest – has taken on a new dimension recently with the advent of social networks and the desire of many commercial operations to generate compelling content which can will be transferred painlessly from customer to customer in a mimetic act of contagion.

Marketeers – and we’re all marketeers now apparently, even if its a simple matter of telling others about our pet dogs foibles – are sighing a huge sigh of relief now that bloated advertising budgets have been replaced by viral videos, popular posts and contagious copy. It costs them a fraction of what it used to and the happy conduits of their marketing message are now the rest of us and we’ve taken on this mantle of the surrogate marketeer through our adoption of the concept of sharing.

In the old days, per-social networks, sharing as a young boy used to mean pretty much one thing. I have something – a dead hedgehog –  I think you’d be interested in. I’d like you to experience it in order to strengthen the bond between us. Usually this act was reciprocated. You had something – a frog in a bucket – which you thought I might like to see. We swapped hedgehog and frog, back and forth in acts of unconditional sharing. There was no other agenda and pretty soon we moved onto other objects of our desire and affection- axolotls were big in those days.

Post social networks however, sharing has come to mean something else. Not only do I have a dead hedgehog which you are interested in, but I also have an old copy of The Beano I’m trying to get shot of.  I give this to you in an act of sharing, even though you’ve read it a thousand times and have moved onto 21st Century Schizoid Man. Likewise, your frog in a bucket eventually loses its interest to me and I’d rather you share your mountain bike with me, even though I haven’t passed my cycling proficiency test yet and you have no desire whatsoever to ssee me wreck your shiny new acquisition.  In social network protocols, I will continue to bombard you with requests to share my Beano in return for you sharing your mountain bike with me for a week.

Coca Cola, in their recent campaign which thanks us for sharing our summer with them know this meaning of sharing only too well.  I had no intention of sharing my summer with them and would have much rather banned their empire for a month than have negotiated their sales camps set up in the local supermarket. And whilst they were after my hard earned cash in the spirit of sharing, I would have much rather dumped a shed load of dead frogs in buckets on their door step in return for knocked down bottles of black fizzy nastiness which rots your guts, social networks and moral fibre.  Coca Cola – I didn’t share my summer with you and I will not be sharing anything with you any time soon. Not even my Beano.

An Open Letter to Jose Mourinho: listen for once to the words of Heraclitus.

Dear Jose,

Much has been made of your return to Chelsea, much of it by yourself but you could do well to take notice of the words of the Greek left back, Heraclitus, and patron saint of football who said “δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης”.

This roughly translates as “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

Jose, he was the first to coin the phrase the beautiful game in Fragments (2001) translated by Brooks Haxton: “Time is a game played beautifully by children” and of course it’s been a huge shame over the last 13 years that you and the rest of your premiership, FIFA and oligarch buddies have distorted that sentiment into the bloated gargantuan that the game now has become.

But as Heraclitus also pointed out, ‘Nothing endures but change‘ so perhaps us fans and commentators are as guilty of trying to step into the same river as you are.

The beautiful game might have been a beautiful oasis back in the 70s when Stuart Hall (of all people) coined the phrase about Manchester City – but since then it’s turned into a river bed, bled dry by the commercial monsters  who’ve polluted the springs from which it flowed.

Not that I wish you ill, Jose, but mid table mediocrity for your team this season would be a fitting destiny for someone who’s trying to step twice into the same river.