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But for today I am a child

15 August 2011 By Leave a Comment

Antony And The Johnsons backed by The Heritage Orchestra, Wilderness Festival, 14 August 2011
Antony And The Johnsons backed by the Heritage Orchestra at the Wilderness Festival (14/8/11)
Sometimes things just work out. We’ve been spending the last few weeks trying to pack up our home of 20 years and doing all the DIY jobs that had been put off, as the first step towards our move to Zambia, and last week things were getting a bit fraught. Then, through my involvement in Honda’s Dream Factory, the possibility of speaking at the Wilderness Festival this weekend emerged. In the end this didn’t happen due the time constraints but Jane and I were given guest passes to do a bit of reconnaissance for possible future involvement. This made us put down our paint brushes and turn our back on the packing.

It was totally rejuvenating - there was no mobile data signal so we had to switch off.

ColaLife mention in Hello! MagazineThere are 10 ‘Cultural Engineers’ involved in the Dream Factory and two were actively involved in the Festival. The latest recruit, Mark Stevenson, gave a presentation in the festival’s Forum around his new book: An Optimist’s Tour of the Future and Chris Wheeler‘s  Heritage Orchestra backed the headline act on Sunday (14/8/11), Antony and the Johnsons, which is where this blog post title comes from.

My involvement with Honda is also starting to benefit ColaLife. ColaLife got a mention in Hello! Magazine this week (15 August, UK Edition, page 75) in the introductory article of a series about Honda’s Dream Factory. Next week, ColaLife gets a whole page.

Now. Where did I put my paint brush?

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The first day of the rest of my life

5 June 2010 By 1 Comment

Simon Berry | The Dream Factory
Photo by Sam Christmas for the Honda-sponsored Dream Factory project
Apologies in advance but this post has ended up being mostly about me. Normal service will resume as soon as possible!

Last Autumn I committed to leave my job to dedicate myself full-time to ColaLife. Well yesterday was my last day of my contract at Defra and people were very generous with their assessments  - including this post on the Defra blog. I know I will keep contact with all the friends I’ve made at Defra. For a start, the whole of the Strategy Team have committed to volunteer their collective brain power to ColaLife for a day in the Autumn as part of Defra’s volunteering policy.

Today could be a very anxious as well as an exciting time given that my salary stops. However, on 25 May, UnLtd came to the rescue with an award of £15,000 towards living expenses. This has kept the anxiety levels down and the excitement levels high. It also means I finally have an answer to my mother’s question which goes something like:

Yes, yes, I understand dear. But how are you going to buy food?

I should just mention that my partner in life and ColaLife, Jane, has been pretty much full-time on ColaLife for a while – writing funding bids, doing the preparation for our first intern’s imminent arrival, liaising with our rapidly growing number of young supporters and so on. The UnLtd Award was given to us jointly. As someone said to me the other day:

It’s easy to be brave when you know someone is covering your back.

Another complete surprise was an email I got from Jude Habib yesterday lunch time which said:

Hi Simon.

I’m so sorry but I forgot to ask your permission….but I wrote about you for a blog I’ve just written.

http://community.thirdsector.co.uk/blogs/judehabib/archive/2010/06/03/people-who-inspire-me-simon-berry-of-colalife.aspx

Hope you don’t mind!

Jude

Jude Habib
Director – sounddelivery
T: 020 7993 6340 | M: 07803 721 481
www.sounddelivery.org.uk sounddelivery for all your digital media training, production and communications needs

Jude had written this blog post on the UK’s Third Sector Magazine’s website. Thanks Jude. With support like this we can’t fail can we? Well that’s the attitude with which I’m going into the next part of the rest of my life.

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Win tickets to the Dream Factory exhibition preview

9 May 2010 By Leave a Comment

Dream Factory Exhibition
Image courtesy of The Dream Factory. Honda.

On 21 May The Dream Factory Exhibition opens at The Dray Walk Gallery, Brick Lane, London ‘as a tribute to the Cultural Engineers and their inspirational work’.

Cultural Engineers Mugshots

Top row: Nihal Arthanayake; Simon Berry; Cath Le Couteur; Oliver Hemsley & Katy Dawe; Agents of Change; Pip McKnight & Ian Francis; Kevin Harman;
Bottom row: Dicken Marshall; Bridget Nicholls; Tom Podkolinski; Ben Ramsden; Richard Reynolds; Fabien Riggall; Tina Ziegler

The giant AidPod will be in the exhibition.

On the evening of 20 May, there will an invitation-only preview of the exhibition and the launch of a limited edition book featuring the ‘Cultural engineers’ that have been identified as part of the ‘Dream factory’ project. The ‘Cultural engineers’ above will be at the launch. You can enter a draw for an invitation to the preview here – scroll down to see the draw form. It would be great to see some ColaLife supporters there.

All this activity is around the launch of a new hydrid car – the Honda CR-Z. I’m pretty sure this will feature somewhere in the exhibition too!

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Meet the Cultural Engineers

12 April 2010 By 3 Comments

Simon Berry - Dream Factory
Image based on an original photograph by Bertie Borésdon

This is a bit of an honour. Honda are launching a new car (it is a hybrid!). The stuff of dreams. To accompany the launch they have recruited a bunch of cultural engineers (aka dreamers and innovators) and are planning to publish a limited edition book describing their work. I will be featured along with the ColaLife project. Anyway, the build up started today with the launch of the ‘Dream Factory’ website.

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