Eiffel Over

Tag: clowning

  • Glastonbury Piano Bar gig aftermath

    Clown your way in, they said.

    There is a not-so-secret secret bar at Glastonbury, called the Piano Bar. When the main stages shut, the queue to this beautiful tucked away venue snakes down the hill. But I had heard tales of from fellow clowns that if you could impress the bounder on the crew entrance they might let you in.

    So for 15 minutes I solo improvd at an unimpressed human standing behind a piece of heras fencing, guarding the entrance.

    Then they said, you are fairly perseverant. After another 5 minutes, they asked, can you do that on stage? And I said yes. And they said you are in.

    Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

    Because I had only been planning on getting in to watch, not to perform.

    But that’s what the clown’s supposed to do, right? Assume they can do anything, and then revel in the failure.

    In the end it wasn’t failure. In fact I think it went quite well. But I’ll definitely chalk it up as toughest gig yet.

    By the time I was done, I went outside and it was already light.

  • Travelling by high-speed glacier

    Travelling by high-speed glacier

    On a recent trip to the Alps I took Robert MacFarlane‘s breathtaking ‘Mountains of the Mind‘. In it I found this delightful tale about Mark Twain taking his family up on to a glacier in the Alps – a fashionable thing to do in the mid-nineteenth century. In short:

    (more…)
  • Towards Regenerative Conceptual Design

    Towards Regenerative Conceptual Design

    I have had the great fortune of having spent three weeks in France, a good portion of it cycling. Touring is a great way to leave behind your pre-occupations and to think about the future – in my case, the themes for my training and writing in 2021-2022.

    This year, all cycle paths point towards regenerative design – design that is win-win-win for individuals, society and the planet. I hear echos here of the triple bottom line of sustainable design, but sustainability, with it’s promise to protect the environment for the benefit of future generations is no-longer enough. This is a keep-things-the-same model. But as the latest IPCC report confirms, keeping things the same will lead to the breakdown of the carefully balanced ecosystem on which we depend. What we actually need is design that builds back the abundance, diversity, complexity and resilience of the ecosystem that quite literally gives us life.

    (more…)
  • Analogue Skill 008: Be happy not knowing

    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 confidence that you have everything you need. 

    I see the ability to be happy not knowing as a keystone analogue skill that supports other analogue skills and behaviours. Not knowing the weather, what’s on at the cinema, what your friends are doing, the headlines, what’s on TV, the fastest way to get there. Once we can wean ourselves off this need for certainty, we can become less dependent on our devices and more confident in encountering the world as we find it. 

    (more…)
  • Six motivations for collecting Analogue Skills

    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 by how systems, machines and technology work, and how people use them. I am also fascinated by how technology changes the user and the user’s perception of the world. 

    2 – Tech awkward

    I’m also a bit awkward when it comes to tech. Sometimes I’m an early adopter – I got an iPhone before all my friends. Sometimes I’m an early rejector – I think I’m the only person I know who doesn’t have Google Maps on their mobile. Sometimes I’m a never adopter – for example, I don’t have an Amazon account. 

    The awkward bit is that I do have a smart phone (or phone, as they are now called), but I don’t assume I should use it for everything. Phone or no phone is a false dichotomy. I just don’t want my experience of life to mediated through a screen and potentially manipulated to meet corporate ends.

    (more…)

  • If I’m the fool then what does that make you?

    I heard this line in a BBC audio adaptation of King Lear for kids. “If I’m the fool, then what does that make you?” It struck a chord. For me this question captures the power of fooling around as a clown.

    Fooling is playful and at the same time powerfully subversive stuff. The clown owns their foolishness, but in doing so raises a mirror the audience. I may be foolish, but in what ways are you unwittingly foolish too?

    (The play also included the line ‘I hate living a thousand years ago’ – which I am also noting down here for future reference).

  • Universal Cycle Flyover

    Universal Cycle Flyover

    The daily traffic jam on my local high street has inspired me to think about a way to turn a traffic jam into an opportunity to a way to create safer cycling. This solution is win-win: car drivers get to stay in their cars while facilitating the creation of more traffic-free cycle routes in and out of our cities.

    The concept is for all cars to be fitted with a light-weight section of Universal Cycle Flyover, designed to fit most any vehicle. Cars approaching a traffic jam simply park close enough to the next car to to enable a continuous connection for the cycle deck.

    (The scheme shows a cyclist on a racing bicycle. Of course other types of bicycle would be encouraged, I just started the sketch too close to the top of the page to fit a more upright riding position.)

  • Fear holds back my imagination

    Fear holds back my imagination

    I had a revelation this morning as I walked down the hill to the newsagent: fear holds back my imagination. A fear of imagining the impossible; fear of saying, hey I want this wonderful thing and other people laughing. It was a meta-level realisation of the lid that fear was putting on my imagination.

    (more…)
  • Weekend engineering works – near Weston-Super-Mare

    Weekend engineering works – near Weston-Super-Mare

    Today engineers completed work on a major new irrigation channel to bring drinking water to a major new coastal development on Sand Bay, near Weston-Super-Mare. The 60-metre-long new canal brings water that rises from the coarse sand at the back of the beach across the inter-tidal zone to the new fortified town, which looks north-westwards across the Bristol Channel towards Cardiff.

    In a bold vision, the water supply has two functions: potable water supply for the imaginary people living in the turret in the middle of the island; and also to ensure the defensive moat is always full. Anglo-French design and build contractors Eiffelover and Co. have a long track record in delivering civil and environmental projects in coastal settings.

    (more…)
  • The power is in leaving a gap

    The power is in leaving a gap

    So many things that I am working on at the moment lead me to the conclusion that there is power in the gaps. But I feel like for my much of my professional development I have been taught to fill in the gaps.

    (more…)
  • Eggsclamation – notes from Clowns in Crisis

    Eggsclamation – notes from Clowns in Crisis

    Last night I attended the panel discussion of the excellent Clowns in Crisis conference, hosted by the Online Clown Academy, hosted by. Here are some things I took away from it.

    (more…)
  • The left-right game – experiments in navigation, embodiment and control

    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. A random journey along the roads, cyclepaths and alleyways of our neighbourhood ensued. It became a fun home-schooling lesson in probability. It revealed to me the habits that stop me from noticing so much of what surrounds me. And it was a fascinating experiment in not having a plan.

    (more…)
  • #15 Show-notes – Oliver Broadbent interview by Alexie Sommer – Creativity, climate and clowning

    #15 Show-notes – Oliver Broadbent interview by Alexie Sommer – Creativity, climate and clowning

    I spend most of my time designing creativity training for engineers. In this episode we flip the format. Alexie Sommer, Independent Design and Communication Director and collaborator on many of my projects interviews me about why I set up Eiffel Over and Constructivist Ltd, and what our plans are for designing creativity training for engineers in 2020. We get into:

    • Techniques for teaching creativity
    • Our programme of training support people tackling the climate emergency
    • And what engineers might learn from clowns.

    Listen on Apple Podcasts , Sticher or by download here

    (more…)