Category: Analogue SkillsPage 1 of 2

Women and men’s Tour de France

One of the anchor points for our trip this summer is to catch the start of the Tour de Femmes, which coincides with the end of the Tour…

Too many emails – the Eiffel Over guide

I am a connoisseur of email-reduction strategies, so I share this for friends and colleagues of mine who I know are struggling with this at the moment. The…

Storm’s coming: go to the cinema

In times gone by, people went to the cinema to stay warm. The movie theatre offers a place of shelter from the elements and also an escape from…

Updates from a regenerative system

Our nearby allotments are my local source of food and regenerative inspiration. Sharing my thoughts from this weekend’s visit when I was helping with apple pressing. While Bristol…

Analogue Skills for Design at the University of Bath

Today at the University of Bath I am running a workshop on Analogue Skills for Design. This workshop fuses material from my conceptual design teaching with my observations…

What happened when I tried to use an old iPod

Once upon a time the offer of 1000 songs in your pocket – the slogan for the iPod – was so enticing. But in 2014 Apple discontinued the…

Analogue Challenge 001: look for the time

On other people’s wrists, on clock towers, outside the jewellers, inside shops, at the station, on the scrolling news, from the position of the sun. Ask someone or…

Analogue Skill 009: Sketch what you see

Take out a piece of paper and draw a sketch of what you can see. You will notice more than you ever would by taking a photograph. Sketching…

Analogue Skill 008: Be happy not knowing

There’s a gap between certainty and doubt, and that is being happy not knowing. In this gap is space for discovery, serendipity, delight and the opportunity to grow…

Analogue Skill 007: Print out photos of your friends

Print out photos of your friends. Stick them on your wall. What are they doing? How can you support them? A regular reminder to give them a call….

Analogue Skill 006: Sing songs with other people

Songs to pass the time. Songs of celebration. Songs of nostalgia. Songs that mark the seasons. Songs of work. Travelling songs. Songs that tell a story. Songs of…

Analogue Skill 005: Finding North

Ways of finding north. The position of the sun. The angle of solar panels. The prevailing wind – either live or frozen in the bent and twisted shape…

Analogue Skill 004: Become a regular

Anywhere versus somewhere.  Contactable versus findable. Interchangeable versus valuable.  Stranger versus friend. This analogue skill first emerged for me from asking a simple question. If you have left…

What if the screen you are now using is your last?

One day I hope this article will be printed in a book. But until then I can be fairly sure that you will be reading it on a…

Six motivations for collecting Analogue Skills

Today I thought I’d share some of my motivations for the Analogue Skills project.  1 – An engineer’s fascination I am not anti-technology. I’m an engineer. I’m fascinated…

Analogue Skill 003: Watch the clouds – streaming now

Watch the clouds. Streaming now. Telling a story of past, present and future. Of up there and down here. If you also live on the lump of rock…

What is real-world search in a digital world?

What is real-world search, and why might it serve us in the digital world? The promise of a fully connected, digital paradigm is access to all the world’s…

Analogue Skill 002: Remember some phone numbers

Your loved ones. Your best friends. Your colleagues. Could you call them if you needed to?  — This skill is an enabler for leaving the house with your…

More lanes = more cars. More apps = more things to do?

Deleting apps and leaving your phone at home could be analogous to dismantling urban highways. I read earlier this week about the research that established a direct link…

Analogue Skill 001: Buy tickets at the station

Go to the station. Stand in the queue. Look at all the people and wonder where they are going. See leaflets in the rack for places you hadn’t…

Connection with nature through drawing

I drew this ash tree at Hazel Hill Wood last weekend. Though it rises opposite a bench where I like to have a morning coffee, I have never…

Farewell Beethoven

Off-topic, but I feel we rarely capture and talk about moments of grief. Between facilitation sessions today I listened to the final episode of Radio 3’s year-long Composer…

Creative inspiration from December

A new month, new good intentions. Just like when I started a new exercise book at school, when I would commit to being extra neat (and then forgetting…

Creating contours in the flat landscape of lockdown

In the midst of lockdown we have created a new household tradition that brings a highlight to the week. On Saturday nights we dress for dinner, enjoy our…

Proust, constructivism and listening to clients

This week I underlined this sentence from Proust’s Finding Time Again.  “Even at the moments when we are the most disinterested onlookers of nature, of society, of love,…

Asking someone instead of Googling

What if you couldn’t look stuff up online? This is a question I keep returning to. One answer is that other people might become a more important source…

New adventures with a television – part 1.

Television, television television. Say it a few times in a row and it sounds a bit futuristic, of science fiction even. The ability to capture moving images and…

Too many inputs

All this week I have been writing about organising inputs to the creative process, but at the end of the week I’m feeling overwhelmed from too many inputs….

Proust’s antidote to endless scrolling

The fault I find in our journalism is it forces us to engage with some fresh triviality every day whereas only three or four books give us anything…

The left-right game – experiments in navigation, embodiment and control

Yesterday my daughter and I left the house and flipped a coin. Heads for left, tails for right. Right it was, then left, then left again, et cetera….