The holidays are over... It's time to return to work.
The big event in the diary is the Making Britain seminar and exhibition at the British Library, September 13 and 14. SALIDAA, of which I'm Chair, is one of the partners in this amazing project that has taken three years to reach fruition with the building of a unique database charting events and reproducing the narratives mapping the movements of the Asian diaspora in Britain from 1850-1950. Believe it or not, there was an active exchange of domicile and cultures - it wasn't all one way. You only have to think back to the Brits glorious welcome for Mahatma Gandhi who studied law at UCL and came back to demand, passively, indpendence for India. Nehru was a Harrow boy who went to Cambridge and visualised Indian and European 'selves'. The Making Britain database goes live the week of the conference: look for links in the press.
The other big event that's taking all my energies is a personal one - the gutting and rebuilding of our new home in Kensal Rise. My daughters have decided it's edgy enough to meet their social needs and I've decided it's warm, friendly and safe, despite recent bleatings by dispossessed Somalis whose complaints led to them being re-homed in Kensington...
Friday, 27 August 2010
Saturday, 14 August 2010
Glorious Returns
Silly season: that time of year when people and stories are short on the ground and journalists start pecking at each other in a desperate bit to fill pages and airtime. For freelances, it's down-time; the opportunity to reconsider and reconfigure goals.
On Thursday, lunch in town with Gloria Abramoff who has started a production company with the celebrated documentary maker and generally brilliant broadcaster, Tim Samuels. Tonic Productions has already been re-commissioned to make a second series of Men's Hour on Five Live, and is sitting on a pile of contracts after less than a year of trading. Gloria is an old friend - I met her when she was a producer on Radio London and I was a regular stand-in presenter. She went on to far greater glory running whole departments within the Beeb and entered the private sector a couple of years ago, since when she's been a major force in pushing new ideas on her own behalf and that of others. That's where the lunch came in...
It was an invigorating two hours. We came away dizzy with advice and possibilities - it's odd, isn't it, that no matter how well one knows - or thinks one knows - an industry, the gaze of a third party can reveal ideas and advances (and potholes) that one has missed? Last week's meeting helped us re-evaluate and reshape the idea in line with what is demanded by the commissioners. It has morphed into something far more fun and interesting and sellable. This week's meeting has helped us structure the idea, and to think in terms of our own skills and needs. Where is the point where the two sides start working together for optimum effect? Yikes!
On Thursday, lunch in town with Gloria Abramoff who has started a production company with the celebrated documentary maker and generally brilliant broadcaster, Tim Samuels. Tonic Productions has already been re-commissioned to make a second series of Men's Hour on Five Live, and is sitting on a pile of contracts after less than a year of trading. Gloria is an old friend - I met her when she was a producer on Radio London and I was a regular stand-in presenter. She went on to far greater glory running whole departments within the Beeb and entered the private sector a couple of years ago, since when she's been a major force in pushing new ideas on her own behalf and that of others. That's where the lunch came in...
It was an invigorating two hours. We came away dizzy with advice and possibilities - it's odd, isn't it, that no matter how well one knows - or thinks one knows - an industry, the gaze of a third party can reveal ideas and advances (and potholes) that one has missed? Last week's meeting helped us re-evaluate and reshape the idea in line with what is demanded by the commissioners. It has morphed into something far more fun and interesting and sellable. This week's meeting has helped us structure the idea, and to think in terms of our own skills and needs. Where is the point where the two sides start working together for optimum effect? Yikes!
Saturday, 7 August 2010
Handbag Creativity
The home office has been more of a cotching space than a hive of intellectual rigour this week. My youngest, full of carefree joy on reaching 16, created a diary of energetic entertainments including three hours rehearsing Lady Gaga's Paparazzi to a classical guitar accompaniment. She and her friend, Katie then headed to the South Bank and earned £12 busking. I am considering a career change...
The biggest challenge has been project-managing the new house - decisions around Build Over Notices, steels v wooden joists, a bracing correspondence with the Church Army over the party wall, several conversations with Brent's planning and building inspectorate about the bureaucratic process, and a decision during full rewiring that there should be TV points in every room and a wi-fi station under the stairs. It's taken hours out of every day.
But... That hasn't prevented development of the TV idea, which is starting to sing. My partner in this crime points out that it took five years for the Who Wants to be a Millionaire format took five years to perfect. Indeed, it started life as Cash Mountain . The truth is, ideas are easy: it's making them work - and finding the evidence to show how and why they'll work - that's difficult. That and the 'talent' as presenters are now known. So much of how a show develops rests on the person who's given studio control and the personalities chosen to sit alongside. Think about the recent One Show kerfuffle...
We sit there obsessing, seeking refuge in regular girly segues, comparing handbags or discussing irritating pets (hers). Thomas Edison's view that "Genius is one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration" often comes to mind with 'creativity' substituted for genius. The BBC has just posted up its requirements in the new commissioning round and we can see a number of slots where our show might fit. Fingers crossed.
The biggest challenge has been project-managing the new house - decisions around Build Over Notices, steels v wooden joists, a bracing correspondence with the Church Army over the party wall, several conversations with Brent's planning and building inspectorate about the bureaucratic process, and a decision during full rewiring that there should be TV points in every room and a wi-fi station under the stairs. It's taken hours out of every day.
But... That hasn't prevented development of the TV idea, which is starting to sing. My partner in this crime points out that it took five years for the Who Wants to be a Millionaire format took five years to perfect. Indeed, it started life as Cash Mountain . The truth is, ideas are easy: it's making them work - and finding the evidence to show how and why they'll work - that's difficult. That and the 'talent' as presenters are now known. So much of how a show develops rests on the person who's given studio control and the personalities chosen to sit alongside. Think about the recent One Show kerfuffle...
We sit there obsessing, seeking refuge in regular girly segues, comparing handbags or discussing irritating pets (hers). Thomas Edison's view that "Genius is one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration" often comes to mind with 'creativity' substituted for genius. The BBC has just posted up its requirements in the new commissioning round and we can see a number of slots where our show might fit. Fingers crossed.
Sunday, 1 August 2010
Game For a Laugh
Friday morning, Toynbee Hall: seven boxes of priceless work by artists, writers and photographers from the UK's South Asian diaspora, demanding a safe house in Uxbridge. With the help of playwright, Judith Johnson, who oversees the SALIDAA office, I loaded up the car and took the latest material from our collection to their new home at the Special Collections room at Brunel. The room is big and airy, unlike the poky little space that previously hosted the archive. At the moment, there are just four collections there, one of which is ours, beautifully displayed against a side wall:) The improved conditions still fail to meet the standards set by the National Archives, but each step takes us closer to the ideal.
The drive to Uxbridge gave me time to ruminate on the TV idea, which during the course of a lunch earlier in the week had morphed into a game show. How does that happen? How does a conversation started many weeks ago about making a programme for women over 45 who are returning to, or retraining for, work, morph into a family game show with the suggestion that Jonathan Ross might like to present? This is an interesting thread and one I may have alluded to before. The creative process is so non-linear that even when one is a part of it, it doesn't make sense!
The drive to Uxbridge gave me time to ruminate on the TV idea, which during the course of a lunch earlier in the week had morphed into a game show. How does that happen? How does a conversation started many weeks ago about making a programme for women over 45 who are returning to, or retraining for, work, morph into a family game show with the suggestion that Jonathan Ross might like to present? This is an interesting thread and one I may have alluded to before. The creative process is so non-linear that even when one is a part of it, it doesn't make sense!
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