Hyper, pessimistic activism

James Kennell's blog on politics, culture, tourism studies and urban regeneration

Future Visions February 25, 2010

Filed under: Social Justice, public art, publications, regeneration — James Kennell @ 9:36 am
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The very talented Rachel Holland, eco-stylist and founder of La Luminata, the sustainable design and trends online magazine, has published a book called ‘Future Visions’.  This contains  “A view of the future from some of today’s top blogger’s, trendwatchers, artists, designers, philosophers, experts and free-thinkers in the eco world”.

20 individuals have contributed their observations on the state of eco design, fashion and society and Rachel has put these together as a set of views on the future in a beautifully designed book.

You can view a preview of the book online here, where you can also order copies.  If you click on the image of the front cover below, you can go straight through to a lovely digital version of the book.

My contribution to the book is on page 17 and is heavily indebted to Mike Davis’ latest writing about the ‘ecological genius of cities’ in the New Left Review and recent actions by the Climate Camp group in the UK.

 

Ethnographic methods in events research January 17, 2010

A colleague and I have had a paper accepted for the ‘Global Events Congress IV: Events and Festivals Research: The State of the Art’ event, to be held in Leeds from 14-16 July 2010. 

Our paper looks at how the application of methods from ethnography can contribute to events management research.  Bekah carried out participant observation, photographic and auto-photographic research during the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee in the US.  You can read our abstract here

 

Book review: Olympic Cities January 14, 2010

My review of Poynter & MacRury’s edited collection ‘Olympic Cities: 2012 and the Remaking of London’  has just been published in this month’s edition of New Start Magazine, a publication for the regeneration sector.

“Like all pre-games publications, this text suffers from the problem of grappling with an event that is yet to happen, in a policy environment subject to radical change.  However, by bringing together a diversity of perspectives on the relationship between hosting the games and urban development in one volume, it forms an excellent resource for anyone trying to understand how and why we got to where we are today in East London and the regeneration potential of a successful Games in 2012.”