ColaLife wins Grand Challenges Canada (GCC) Stars in Global Health award

ColaLife is delighted to announce that we’ve been selected as recipients of a Grand Challenges Canada (GCC) Stars in Global Health award. So, who is our Star in Global Health? And where does Canada come in? Well, regular readers will know Rohit Ramchandani, our Public Health Advisor. Rohit first contacted us in 2008, saying he’d […]

Top 10 achievements in 2011

2009’s top 10 | 2010’s top 10 1. Co-design of the ColaLife Trial We first visited Zambia in October 2010 to gauge interest in a trial there of the ColaLife idea. We got an overwhelmingly positive response and so started working with key local partners on a plan. We visited again in January and May to meet […]

So what happened at the Honda hack days back in November?

A good question, that isn’t easy to answer as there was so much going on. Basically, most of Honda’s Cultural Engineers (I am one) gathered for the first time face-to-face, together with a bunch of application developers to see what would happen. Three videos have just been released on The Guardian website which capture the […]

Dreams can come true

Today, as we were packing to catch tonight’s flight back to Lusaka, the above invitation arrived by email. The British High Commissioner, Mr Tom Carter, is hosting a reception to mark the launch of the funding agreement for the ColaLife trial in Zambia on Monday (5/12/11). So, the secret is out: we can now confirm […]

Honda continue to help us reach new audiences

On Sunday (yesterday, 16/10/11) ColaLife featured in The Sunday Observer Magazine under the headline An idea with fizz (it’s on page 38 apparently). I was the third of the Cultural Engineers to be featured. Seven more to go. Six of these are in place and there are five candidates for the tenth slot. You can vote […]

Honda | The Power of Dreams

Regular readers will know of my involvement in Honda’s Dream Factory where Honda have brought together nine ‘Cultural Engineers’ who are doing interesting things. Honda is supporting us in our work in various ways. So far, ColaLife has been part of a week-long exhibition in Brick Lane, held last summer (2010)  and this August (2011) ColaLife was […]

But for today I am a child

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, […]

Top 10 achievements for 2010

>> Last year’s top 10 1. Field trip to Zambia We travelled to Zambia in October and met with 45 people and 15 organisations. We had a great reception and a workshop of key stakeholders produced the basis of the plan for a pilot of the ColaLife concept in 2011. >> more on the plan […]

Soft Power and the Honda CR-Z

I didn’t understand the concept of ‘Soft Power’ until a couple of weeks ago, when I was invited to the Cambridge Union to speak about ‘Hard vs Soft Power’. Until then, I certainly didn’t think ColaLife had any of either. But apparently we have soft power, and this car is a very obvious manifestation of […]

The first day of the rest of my life

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 […]