Rounds, Call Changes and Methods

"I grew up in a small town where everyone went to church and children sang in the choir. And if you sang in the choir you had to wear red robes, a cap and a frilly lace collar. I didn't mind the singing but I didn't wear dresses and hated being on show - so, at the age of 8 or 9, I took up bellringing to escape."

By Kelly Smith. Read more

http://v.gd/apwdringing 

Setting Free Public Space by Fun

Running with the PAC!

By Paul Coulton

PAC-LAN was a version of the classic video game PACMAN in which human players ran around a real world game maze formed by the buildings of Lancaster University.

The game was played using mobile phones equipped with RFID technology which is the same as is now used for the Oyster cards on the London Underground as a replacement for paper tickets. 

Games have long been acknowledged as being the heart of how we learn about our place in the world. As HG Wells put it in 1911 “The men of tomorrow will gain strength from the nursery floor”. Many of us believe the learning power of games and their unparalleled ability to engage can be extended way beyond nursery floor and that the citizens of the future may well gain knowledge from an increasing gamefulness of our streets.

Read more 

http://v.gd/apwdpac 

How the Amstrad PCW 8512 changed the course of English Literature

Poetry Publishing and Technology in 1985

By Peter Sansom

Desk-top publishing was quite primitive at first, or my version of it, so that I remember very clearly putting letraset onto an Ian McMillan/Martyn Wiley cover on a desk in Huddersfield Polytechnic library, and feeling a definite move up in the technological world when I acquired a set square and cutting board.

And not really desk-top publishing at all but typed on a wordprocessor. The first little Macs were just coming in, but for me then it was the Amstrad PCW 8512. Amstrads were cheap and everywhere and, though limited, just a bit more professional and certainly quicker than a typewriter. 

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[Editor's note: It takes more than just a word processor to change the course of English Literature of course, and in fact it was done by a working class lad from Mansfield with a polytechnic education, a Keats' Selected Poems and an Amstrad PCW 8512. I'm hoping to persuade Peter to write a piece for Issue 2 about how he created a history changing literary scene in a small former mill town. His piece will be full of essential transferable insights for anyone wanting to build a scene to support any kind of innovation.]

http://v.gd/apwdamstrad