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59 Productions and the creative Large Hadron Collider

Mark Grommer at TED

My goodness.

When I started this blog in 2005, it was an experiment. The software was new technology and there were many people eager to get their hands on it — to see what they could do with it and how it might change society. In my early posts I tried out different styles of writing and different topics to write about. I made friends and received praise for my output. It was in the back-and-forth of blogging that I learnt to write clearly and persuasively, which has led to a weird, varied and rewarding career.

The impetus to experiment with new technology came out of the milieu in which I was working at the time, in the office of 59 Productions in Edinburgh. Collaboration was highly valued: the idea that creative people would, together, be more than the sum of their talents. Digital technology was becoming cheaper, and we adopted guerrilla approach to film-making and theatre. Where the tech did not yet exist, we chained together disparate components and made-for-other-purposes software to produce the desired effect.

Scotland was the perfect incubator: host to internationally famous festivals, and yet small enough that the most influential and creative people in Scottish film and theatre were usually only a phone call or a five minute walk away.

We made some marvellous things.

Continue reading “59 Productions and the creative Large Hadron Collider”
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The Writer in the World

In March, I was honoured and delighted to be asked to give the keynote speech at the University of Roehampton’s Creative Writing Soiree, an annual evening of fiction, memoir and poetry readings done by the English and Creative Writing students. The suggested title of my talk was ‘The Writer in the World’ which gave me the chance to speak about creativity, literature and the work of English PEN in broader and grander terms than the speeches I am usually asked to give.
I confess to being quite pleased with the end result. Not, I must stress, in the delivery, which comes across as extemporised rather than pre-planned. But rather, the broad idea of what it means to be a ‘writer in the world’ and the pragmatic suggestions for how one might go about living as such a writer.
The speech included a potted history of English PEN, some thoughts on the moral obligations of free speech, my earliest memories of learning to read, and the grind and grit required to be ‘creative’. Its a good statement of what I believe. Continue reading “The Writer in the World”

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59 Productions to produce City of Glass for the stage

This week 59 Productions (the radical design and production company than I had a hand in setting up) announced their latest project.  Its an adaptation of Paul Auster’s City of Glass by Duncan Macmillian, the acclaimed writer of People Places Things.  The show is directed by my friend Leo Warner and is a co-production with Home and the Lyric Hammersmith.
City of Glass (part of Auster’s New York Triology) is an intriguing post-modern detective story that plays with ideas of reality, identity and imagination.  I think its a perfect fit for the kind of art that Warner and the remarkable 59 Productions team create.  In a recent interview with the Financial Times, he outlines their approach. Continue reading “59 Productions to produce City of Glass for the stage”