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Making innovation work for good. T:@inspirechilli

Thursday 25 July 2013

Thoughts from Thessaloniki

We walk across the road in a crowd, silent to each other. Two people who will never meet. So close, a pulse sensed for a second.  The glance of a nervous curious eye.  Then, nothing. Footsteps away, thinking we are only ourselves.

A million people in Thessaloniki point to the sky for a message that never comes to anyone.  Just like everywhere else. The city's apartment horizon still has TV ariels, spindly shapes of skeleton trees twisted in disbelief.
Sun pierces the evening, daggered through my armour of cotton and factor 50 cream.  I squint to hold my sight on the sea ahead.  Breeze hits me with memories of cut grass, bales of Welsh hay, splinters in the thumb. The day John sliced his finger off at the joint and hid in a tree.  I smile to the man looking at me, who wants to offer things I don’t need.  I feel his pain in the tattered edge of a stained shirt, his cigarette always at the butt, everything thinning. I think of him at his birth.  The moment.  How much he might have been loved in that first innocent breath, for this lost being.
I am watched by sale signs, mannequins, reflections of wealth.  In the middle of an economic meltdown, chocolate sculptures are kept perfectly chilled under glass behind shopfronts. People purchase objects with bits of paper, plastic cards, things of value drawn from pockets and purses like water from a well.  The sound of possession fills the evening like every city in the world, never reaching its bottom, perpetually falling.
We head into the twilight zone of Dendroporamos. 'A second Africa,' it has been called. Broken buildings, suspicious glances, a simmering sense of fear.  At the project for young people, we are welcomed inside with a Priest’s affection.  His radiant smile is a lighthouse. There are generous hugs, open hearts, so much crammed in so little space, chaotic, everything beautifully real.  Volunteers keep arriving with bags of food, spotlights for the garden. Inside the house, a group of young people click through pictures on Facebook, fascinated by its imagery. I am kissed like a returning son, for doing nothing but being here. The kids offer me a seat on the bench to share their meal. They tell stories, translated from Roma into Greek into English, until we all laugh at the same mystery.
Then we return, driving past the ugly graffetti that says 'gypsy’, back to the bars and neons that imprison and free our souls in equal measures. This place, that displaces us from who we are.
I sleep under the heartbeat of aircon and dream of stars twinkling from the window.  In a city whose history has connected so many religions under the same sky for thousands of years, the one thing that remains is our faith for tomorrow. How strong it feels when we touch eachother.

Monday 15 July 2013

TaTa - taking advantaged thinking action


Last week saw the launch of The Allotment of the Mind at the Foyer Federation's excellent 2013 Practice Event in Birmingham. Much more on this to follow.

But for now, I just wanted to post up a link to my little attempt to bring a bit of DaDa into the youth, housing and charity sector with the live launch of TaTa - 'taking advantaged thinking action' to 'thinkout' against homelessness and other disadvantaged thinking stereotypes by growing our creative ideas and harvesting revolutionary spirit.

For those who like the song at the end of the video, and fancy singing the whole thing, this is my full rewrite of the Beatles below. I'll be releasing this as an Xmas single at my special ThinkOut event in December.  Although I might need to find a singer and band first... Anyone interested?!

Tata

There’s no talent that can’t be opened up
Nothing you can face that can’t be topped
Nothing you can do that isn’t advantaged thinking too

It’s easy

Nothing you can seed that can’t be sown
Nothing you can dream that can’t be owned
Nothing you can choose that isn’t advantaged action soon

It’s easy

All you need is TaTa.
All you need is TaTa.
All you need is TaTa, TaTa

 TaTa is all you need.

All you need is TaTa.
All you need is TaTa.
All you need is TaTa, TaTa.
TaTa is all you need.

Nothing you can build that isn’t you
Nothing you can explore that isn’t true

No one’ll say advantaged thinking action’s not today
 It's easy.

 All you need is TaTa.
 All you need is TaTa.
 All you need is TaTa, TaTa
 TaTa is all you need.


All you need is TaTa.
All you need is TaTa.

All you need is TaTa, TaTa.
TaTa is all you need.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MojYZ32ThmI