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Alt/Shift

I’ve just returned home from the launch of Pilot Theatre‘s Shift Happens, the UK’s version of TED (arts, tech, and learning). This year’s version is called ‘Alt/Shift’. The conference will be taking part on the 5th and 6th of July this year and as last year they have some really exciting speakers lined up, and, also, my good self. I was asked to speak at this years shift following the Bums on Seats post I wrote after the last one, and hope to do the rest of the (incredible) line up justice. Shift Happens does brilliant work in highlighting some of the most innovative stuff that’s going on in the UK’s tech/arts/learning scene, the kind of collaborations and mash ups we should be shouting about, and showing people that it isn’t hard to get to.

I’ll have some more sustained thoughts up soon about my two talks at Nottingham Trent and Leeds Met, as following the nearing deadline for AWAKE, my diary is finally beginning to settle down. I had thought February would be entirely free, but I’ve just been invited to take part in the National Youth Theatre’s ‘Techno Stories‘ project, which aims to address climate change awareness through tech/theatre crossover, it sounds like a brilliant, exciting project, and everything I believe in, too – it just means a few more weekends ’til I get some time off, and checking that I can afford all the London based to-ing and fro-ing.

Finally, let me leave you with the best taste of what Alt/Shift is all about with some audioboos I did with the people running, supporting, and speaking at it.

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Wild Monkey Minds

“We are all at the mercy of our wild monkey minds. Incessantly swinging from branch to branch.”

It’s looking like this January it going to be an extremely busy one, some really exciting happenings; a redraft of the commission for Box Of Tricks, the chance to get some 3000 words or so down towards my study, I’m looking at producing a five minute soundwalk performance for Loughborough and Leicester, and I’m also visiting Leeds Met on the 19th and Nottingham Trent on the 13th to talk about narrative and audience interactivity in a digital age. I’d also like to get Eismas redrafted for an Ice and Fire competition deadline due around the end of the month, and take a wander down to London for the V&A Digital Design Sensations exhibition.

An exciting schedule that should produce some (hopefully equally) interesting content for the blog, and all my other feeds. As well as lots of new people, places and ideas for my head!

I’m currently working on http://hannahscontent.co.uk (idea came via @rasga on Twitter) as a space to collate and archive my digital footprint. So that might be an interesting place to keep an eye on, and may allow me to eventually clean up hannahnicklin.com a bit… Hopefully I’ll find the best and prettiest way of bringing everything in there, let’s see.

And finally, with all of the wonderful and exciting things filling my wild monkey mind at the moment, I just wanted to share with you something that is making my creative and academic writing immeasurably more pleasurable and doable: OmmWriter. A simple, quiet space for you to write on your computer, it’s like opening a door to an alternate world, your own private Narnia (without all the pained Christian overtones and scary snow queens). Watch the video, and give it a go. Simple and effective. Now all I need is to find a way to develop a playwriting template that mashes with it…