Category Archives: Change

Remnants

Posted on November 21, 2018 by

I spent last week driving through the Highlands, moving between fishing villages and towns, themselves a legacy of the Clearances, where rural populations were displaced by acquisitive land owners, appropriating the commons. The shoreside settlements thrived on salmon and herring, … Continue reading →

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The New York Dereliction Walk: Failure, Innovation, and Social Movements for Change

Posted on November 7, 2018 by

Things change: the cities, towns, and rural landscapes that we live within do not form a passive backdrop to our actions, but rather cast a sharp shadow from them. Today i am sharing my full notes and research for ‘The … Continue reading →

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New York: Divided

Posted on October 31, 2018 by

Our view into a community is inherently divided: we see just one layer, one context. One city. The last few days, walking through New York, i find myself moving not just up and down, across the grid, but also through … Continue reading →

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New York: Looking Up

Posted on October 29, 2018 by

My head is caught up in perspectives: as i plan the Dereliction Walk, i’m walking around the city, choosing locations, sitting writing in cafes. Head down. Focussed. When we are focussed, it’s hard to look up. And not ‘looking up’ … Continue reading →

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‘Safety Making’ – 9 routes to failure

Posted on October 11, 2018 by

I used a phrase in the blog yesterday, and it’s been stuck in my mind ever since: “People are engaged in some kind of mass hysteria, and mass ‘safety making’”. ‘Safety Making’: I wrote the sentence on an impulse: i … Continue reading →

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Comfortably Uncomfortable

Posted on October 10, 2018 by

When we consider change, it’s easy to remain comfortably uncomfortable: thinking about discomfort, but remaining firmly grounded in the known. Change requires disturbance, but it’s a matter of degrees: too little, and nothing really changes, the system regains stability without … Continue reading →

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The Story That Flew

Posted on September 20, 2018 by

My taxi driver stared at the iPhone, stuck to the dashboard, brow wrinkled in concentration, for quite some time, before he carefully swore at it, turned to me, and asked for cash. He told me he had never been trained … Continue reading →

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