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Magna Carta to go on display in Lincoln in 2015

In Uncategorized on August 8, 2009 at 3:55 pm

Lincoln Castle is due to put in a bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund for a major renovation of the castle buildings. At present Lincolnshire Crown Court shares the building with a visitor attraction, but the two are not natural bedfellows. When high profile cases are being heard, visitors to the castle are greeted with added security patrolling the building and a throng of media presence – not the greatest visitor experience.

Once the court has been relocated to a new building in Lincoln, the plan is overhaul the visitor experience. The castle holds one of the only four remaining copies of Magna Carta, which was signed in 1215. So, the plan is to revamp the museum in time for 2015 and a spectacular 700th anniversary re-display.

As always, there’s an article about it on Museum [Insider].

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Getting to grips with multimedia

In Uncategorized on July 11, 2009 at 10:05 am

I’ve been working with the British Museum of late, writing their new multimedia guide to the permanent collection – it’s like a traditional museum audio-guide, but it has a screen as well so you can show images and have visitors click on little interactives and games. It’s been great fun, but a bit of a learning curve for me as I was previously used to writing pure audio. I find that the more gudies I take, the better my writing becomes. I’ve really enjoyed making little interactives – click on the screen to find out more about ……

Recently I’ve taken some good tours. The Imperial War Museum multimedia tour is great and has loads of content on there for families especially. And the tour for the Picasso exhibition at the National Gallery was brilliant – it really got me looking closely at the paintings and comaring them to works in other museums being shown to me on my screen. One of the golden rules of audio writing for museums is don’t write about what you can’t see, but with this you can!

I’m now working on a tour of the Parthenon galleries at the British Museum for visually impaired visitors, which is a real challenge, but great fun. I’m having to come up with as many different ways of saying – the object infront of you is made of pale grey marble. It all goes live in December, once it’s been translated into nine languages!

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Lost but not forgotten

In Dulwich OnView, Museums, new content, Uncategorized on June 12, 2009 at 10:40 am

There’s a new exhibition of paintings, etchings, drawings, maps and all sorts of 2D material chronicling the history of Southwark life and architecture at the Cuming Museum in south London. Popped along to see it last week and to write a piece of Dulwich OnView about it. Lost Southwark is definitely worth a look if you live in south London and are interested in local history.

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I’m a writer – it’s official

In Uncategorized on April 1, 2009 at 9:58 am

I’ve been investigating what it might be like to live the life of a writer for the last year, shifting to working part-time in my role at the British Museum and experimenting with the lifestyle of a wordsmith. It turns out I absolutely love writing and the life that goes with it.

So, now it’s time to move on from the BM and give this career a proper chance. As of today, I’m officially a writer. It’ll be strange, but I’m very much looking forward to responding to the question ‘What do you do?’ with ‘I’m a writer.’

I’ve left the employ of the BM, but I’m not leaving them completely. One of my next projects will be to write a tranche of new material for the museum’s audio tour, which is going to be great fun. I’m also continuing to write for Museum [Insider] and for Dulwich OnView (where I cut my teeth as a writer) and will be contributing to other blogs and online magazines too. And research into happiness continues as well.

It’s going to be a busy year. Let’s see what happens next …

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Ten steps to the good life

In happiness, Uncategorized, what i'm reading on March 25, 2009 at 6:46 pm

A piece in The Independent today pointed out that we live in a frenetic, throwaway society and that we don’t take enough time to do things slowly and really enjoy them. They suggest the good life – the elusive happiness we all crave, apparently – can be achieved through celebrating ten simple pleasures of life.

How many of these have you done recently? I wonder if this is the path to happiness:

Roasting a chicken - the smell, the slow cooking, the crispy skin. And the accopanying trimmings.

Going for a walk - recharge the batteries through exercise and appreciate your local area.

Caring for clothes - a sense of achievement through fixing something rather than buying new.

Cleaning the windows – let the Spring sunshine into your home.

Servicing the car - er, like the clothes, I suppose. Not sure it would make me that happy.

Baking a cake - the smell, the satisfaction, the icing. And a cup of tea with it.

Making sloe gin - expectation as it matures in the bottle infront of your eyes.

Reading a map - I don’t understand this one. Just use google.

Brewing a cup of coffee - another aroma one. They like smelly things don’t they?

Or just doing nothing - personally, I find this one terribly irritating.

I can see where they’re going with these ten steps, but I’m not sure they’re necessarily a recipe for happiness. And it’s not a great path to the good life if you’re a wheat intolerant, sober, vegetarian, caffeine-free cyclist who lives in a windowless space and hates baking – but there’s got to be something that makes you happy.

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Are conservatives really happier than liberals?

In happiness, Uncategorized, what i'm reading on March 7, 2009 at 7:52 am

Some interesting research about political motivation and happiness from Syracuse University. Prof Arthur Brookes claims in his book Gross National Happiness that conservatives report significantly higher levels of personal happiness than liberals.

Increased happiness in conservatives is not necessarily down to their individual politics, but is linked to contributing life factors. They are are statistically more likely to be married, go to church, and be optimistic about their future – things we know boost personal happiness. For liberals, the rates of happiness are somewhat lower. The author suggests that the liberal equity agenda, while completely honorable, takes a stronger personal toll and contributes to a life with more questions asked than answered. Liberals are more likely to have less smooth home lives, when compared to their conservative counterparts. There’s an interview with the author here.

It’s important to remember most studies like this reporting levels of happiness have collected data via personal response questionnaires. So, in fact it’s more a case of conservatives reporting that they are happier, rather than actually being happy in themselves. For me, this research perhaps means two things:

-1- Conservatives say they are happier than liberals. Is that because they truly are happier (they do appear to have very settled lives) or is it because they feel they ought to say they are happier and living the American dream?

-2- The research shows that liberals report lower happiness levels because they have a more challenging lives. They are less likely to have as much family stability and they have that oh-so cumbersome liberal agenda to which they feel they ought to contribute. It might just be me, but I think living a life with an open liberal agenda that doesn’t mean being tied down to a family, a dog and a church sounds rather fun.

Aristotle asks us whether we would rather be a pig satisfied or a man dissatisfied? To be honest, as much as I crave the perceived stability and wealth of the right, I think I’d rather be a dissatisfied liberal than a satisfied conservative. But that’s just me.

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We’re live

In happiness, new content, Uncategorized on February 28, 2009 at 11:09 am

I’ve been adding content to this site for a while now, but today I’ve told everyone about it. Here goes nothing.

There are plenty of links on here to pieces I’ve been writing recently.

And I’ll be updating the happiness project pages regularly as this research project develops.

Have a look around and let me know what you think.

Mapped

In Uncategorized on December 29, 2008 at 11:53 am

Another step on the road to online enlightenment. We have today been experimenting with ‘domain mapping’ – whatever that might be.  From now on, I’m the sole registered owner of steveslack.co.uk.

Exciting stuff.

Adding some more content

In Uncategorized on December 20, 2008 at 4:39 pm

So, I started adding some content to this blog today. It’s far from ready, so I’m desperately hoping nobody finds it yet, but if you’ve come across this website already and fancy taking a look around, please do so.

Cheers.

Hold it. It’s not ready yet.

In Uncategorized on December 18, 2008 at 6:18 pm

Steve Slack is a writer and researcher based in London, UK.

He’s in the process of buidling a website, but it might take him a while. Try January, maybe?

In the meantime, if you want to get in touch with him leave a comment here.

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