Panchromatica

Light entertainment

I posted recently on my other blog about painting and photography. This post from Michael Blowhard looks at a wider range of popular arts but is still pretty much germane to what I had in mind. I remember having read it at the time of preparing my own post but couldn't remember who and where.

I also missed this.

Joogle

In the same vein as my earlier posts on what is apparently called 'google bombing' - but a lot less pleasant - is that if you type Jew into Google the first site that comes up is a pretty nasty anti-semitic site. Nothing like this happens for any of the other major world religions.

So for the record - this is a Jew

Tapping in to the NHS

The NHS is the largest organisation in the Western world, employing 1.2m people in every part of the country. It has the potential to have a major impact on regeneration, not just through health improvement but by its purchasing and employment power. As a example the NHS in Cornwall has a huge annual food budget for its 24 hospitals. In the past much of this food has been obtained from outside the county but the Cornwall Food Production Unit is developing a process of local procurement which will source much of its food from a network of local suppliers in a bid to boost the local economy.

You can read more in 'Sightings', the Sustainability Southwest newsletter (Winter 2003/2004 edition.)

This link is to a case study on the DEFRA website.

Even handed insults

Just to prove I'm even handed see who comes up if you google on smarmy git. Not quite a biography but it shows you aren't alone doesn't it?

Just doing my bit!

Apparently googling on the words miserable failure brings up this site

Continue reading "Just doing my bit!"

Insults and Curses

Norman Geras has fun googling on Yiddish insults. Lots to choose from but I especially liked this one

A groys gesheft zol er hobn mit shroyre: vus er hot, zol men bay im nit fregn, un vos men fregt zol er nisht hobn. He should have a large store, and whatever people ask for he shouldn't have, and what he does have shouldn't be requested.

and these quoted from the Age (Australia)

A nebekh is a nobody, a complete nonentity. As one saying puts it, when a nebekh leaves the room, you feel that someone has come in.

A nudnik is a complete bore, a pest, a source of intense irritation... To be a phudnik, is even worse. A phudnik is a nudnik with a PhD.

I think I've met some of those...

Fly the flag?

A post on Crooked Timber by my namesake Chris Bertram on flag flying in the USA and what it means leads to a rambling funny and astute set of comments - well worth reading.

The idiocies of transport planning

This article in the online Arts Journal.com hits the nail right smack inthe centre - and its is even more true for Europe.

Of course nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing will ever happen to congestion until transportation planning is linked more closely with land-use planning. This is ancient planning dogma, strenuously resisted by land-use libertarians, but the years have not been kind to the notion that anything-goes growth creates economic value. It can for awhile, but we should be looking at why so many 30-year-old communities are stagnating. The evidence is only more abundant that value-free growth is at best an extremely costly way (in terms of public services like schools, and in terms of the environment, and, yes, road congestion) to make urban America. This doesn’t mean everything must be planned to death; I think there are means to less simplistically expand cities without sacrificing their potential future value. Dealing honestly with the implications of road policy is one of them.

[via City Comforts]

Drew Mackie on partnerships

Looking for something else I found (as you do!) this. I hate to admit it, because of course I get some of my income from those very same consultations but it seems horribly accurate.

Partnerships have become the fashionable way to do things. Even small authorities may be involved in around thirty partnerships covering matters from the transport to health. It becomes more and more difficult to track the delivery record of such a system and allocate responsibility for success or failure. Many partnerships have become talking shops, the mere fact of having formed the partnership being taken as a sign of action.

A parallel development is community involvement. Again all bids will require to demonstrate how this is to be done. We have moved from a situation a decade ago where the involvement of the community was rare to one where it is obligatory. Two problems have emerged:

* Communities are under increasing pressure to become involved. This can put a strain on the time of community activists and the community itself. "I participated last week!" is becoming a frequent refrain as communities are consulted on matters of health, transport, housing, education, planning, economic development, etc. The quality of such consultation is necessarily variable and many bodies are consulting because they have to, not because they believe in it.

* Consultation itself does not guarantee delivery. A proper community involvement programme will involve the delivery agencies so that false expectations are not raised and delivery becomes part of the process. Communities are increasingly complaining that their involvement has not resulted in better delivery. "Why should I bother when nothing happens?"

Even so the people subject to all this can still put us all in our place:

Working with a housing community some years ago, I had just finished running a workshop on the problems and opportunities of the estate. An old lady spoke up: "The big problem here's the pipeline!" The attending consultants were non-plussed - they didn't know about this. Gas? Water? What pipeline? She went on: "Every time a man from the Council comes down here, he says its all in the pipeline. That's the biggest problem!"

Taxi Voucher Toolkit

The Countryside Agency has published guidance which:

"looks at the benefits a taxi voucher scheme can deliver to all those involved, the voucher users, taxi drivers, organisers and funders. It provides information and pointers that will help local groups set up a simple and effective scheme in response to their specific transport needs. The advice in the toolkit is largely based on the experience of the members and organisers of the Tandridge Taxi Voucher Scheme, which was one of the first to be set up in the UK, and which now has over 500 members. The toolkit also includes examples of two smaller voucher schemes that have been established in rural communities".

EnviroSpin Watch

I think Philip Stott has made a mistake with this post - it is surely a few days early.

Time Tales

Time tales

is a collection of found photographs. found at fleamarkets, thriftshops, some are scooped up from streets and alleyways, fallen from an overstuffed bag or torn pocket. others turn up in a cabinet’s hidden compartment, found while wandering the rooms of an abandoned house. now the photos exist by themselves, lost in time. time tales does not want to reveal their mysteries. time tales asks to be the new home for lost photos, a resting place, for the nameless and the lost.

a picture needs memories to be an image

via Ronni Bennet

Art movies

I commented on this post at Brian's Culture Blog. My initial slightly flippant thoughts were triggered by the words 'art movie' which always make me mad, but on reflection, I think there is something in them. So here they are again...

I'm never sure about this but what is an art movie? Cynically I suppose it is something made outside Hollywood which doesn't make oodles of money. As far as I'm concerned - and I know it sounds horribly platitudinous (sp?) - there are only three types of movie.

1. Flash Hollywood - lots of money for sfx and/or names eg Speed, Star Wars
2. Crap Hollywood - as above but with added pretension eg Matrix 3
3. Films - essentially the rest - eg Jean de Florette, A Bout de Souffle, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

I suppose to please Brian I should have added a fourth category - any film with Jenny Agutter (which I'm happy to recognise too) but I realise he also likes Jennifer Jason Leigh and Nicole Kidman too.

Why do I have this feeling we are of a similar age...?

Transport Blog

By one of those rambling series of links it is so easy to fall into on the Web, I ended up at the Transport Blog.

So far so what, you say. Well its full of a mixture of the usual free market stuff about how everything is wonderful with privatised public transport systems (I exaggerate slightly) and sensible news about transport - so far as I can see mainly in the UK. However, in the links bar at the side I see a list of what are described as 'Transport Friendly Blogs'. Am I missing something here or am I just falling into pedant mode? Is there actually anyone who isn't transport friendly? I assume everyone travels somewhere at at some time!

I thought I had problems

Read this ...

Creating a market for your business

I am thinking about organising an 'art fair' later this year, bringing together a group of artists and photographers. The idea is to get enough work together to make the trip worthwhile. An exhibition by an unknown artist (ie me!) is not likely to bring people in except by accident. A selling fair, with a range of work, seems more likely to be succesful.

Artists are like any other small business, they have to sell into a market. However because that market is driven so heavily by reputation, the importance of name is much greater than it would be for say a plumber or an accountant. The upside is that people who buy art are perhaps more affluent than the norm, so attracting them to your town may generate a bit more income than from other visitors.

On that basis I'm going to try and get funding for this as part of a project aimed at regenerating small market towns - the US equivalent would be the Main Street USA campaign.

I'll keep you posted on how it turns out. Anyone reading this in striking distance of Wiltshire who might be interested please get in touch.

Crime and the perception of crime

Crime and peoples fear of crime are common threads in any community consultation. This interesting research, highlighted on City Comforts suggests that there is a link to housing layout, but that it may not be what the Secured by Design initiative would suggest.

Sunsets

I've linked to this on Panchromatica Too, but it is so beautiful I'm telling you twice!

Where do the real people live?

It isn't often that you get the chance to see pictures of domestic scale architecture - the places where real people live - in places like Japan (or for that matter even the USA). This image on Fotonet is a rare example. Apart from the lack of space for parking cars, it looks in scale to be somewhere that many people in the UK would find perfectly acceptable. It is certainly a long way from the garish neon of downtown Tokyo which is our more usual visual image of Japanese cities.

Documenting tomorrow's history revisited

A new series of posts on Fotolog, takes up the theme I first raised here. As I find more I will post details.

The Bleeker Street NY series is still being developed by Ronni Bennet here.

A few years ago I read, I think in Amateur Photographer, about a project by a small group of photograpjhers who set out to document two pages of the London A-Z street guide. If anyone recalls this or has done anything similar please let me know. I'm still looking to compile a list, which I shall post here and on Panchromatica Too.

Le Corbusier has a lot to answer for

This brilliant dissection of why modern architecture is in danger of becoming a pretentious self indulgent profession (my words not theirs!) is well worth reading. (via City Comforts)

The Voluntary City - more links

More at Internet Commentator: Voluntary City

The Voluntary City

I've just bought (prompted by this) a copy of this book which, according to the blurb:

"reveals how the process of providing local public goods through the dynamism of freely competitive, market based entrepeneurship is unmatched in renewing communities and strengthening the bonds of civil society"

Well... perhaps! Overall the book isn't quite what I expected - more of a historical/political/philosophical review than a practical manual. Admittedly I've only scanned through it very rapidly so far, but looking especially at part 3 - The voluntary city and community - it seems that its prescriptions are based too much on the American experience - US zoning laws are for example much more prescriptive than anything in the UK or Ireland and probably the rest of Europe too. Despite all the libertarian shouting to the contrary I have always had the impression that the US is pretty bureaucratic and rigid (when it isn't subject to financial manipulations - if you don't believe me on that a google on "Pork US politics" for example brings up this).

The covenants enforced by Neighbourhood associations look pretty terrifying too and not what I had expected in the supposedly libertarian USA. I always thought the building committees in sitcoms like Frasier were comic invention!

Even so it looks a stimulating book and I'm looking forward to reading it more systematically.

Note: my original link for this book pointed in error to the book about Samuel Mockbee in my Making Places list - well worth reading but not what I had in mind. The link has been corrected.

Councillors and Blogging

I suppose it had to happen sooner or later, but according to the website of the Improvement and Development Agency, some Councillors are using blogs to tell their constituents what they are doing. [Warning - you will need to register first - this is free.]

Numerous councillors are using blogs to publish daily reports of their activities onto the web and engage in discussions. You might be surprised at how few people know what councillors do on a daily business, and how interested they become in your work when you are not canvassing on their doorstep, but interacting in the residents' own chosen time.

The one blog linked is here. Unfortunately it is as boring and lame as you might expect. It is also dreadfully presented, which I guess is a consequence of Conservative Central office automatically uploading their standard material without too much consideration for what it looks like.

I don't think any of the UK based political blogs need worry about competition.

The Guardian published an article on political blogs back in February which you can find here.

Try googling on "UK ~councillors ~blogs" to get more links. [Without the "" marks]

In case you didn't know it the ~ character before a word finds all related words as in ~house which brings up houses, housing, housed etc

Panchromatica Too

I have begun to develop a parallel blog, devoted more or less exclusively to my own work in photography and digital imaging. The latest post is devoted to my inspiration and particularly to those working on the Fotolog site, to which I frequently refer. Rather than repeat it here - and to make you have a look at my images - the link is here