An AI Training Day and a new publication from Serpentine Galleries
The lovely Lauren McMenemy (26’s Website & Membership Officer) passed on a note from the team at CopyCon, who are hosting a training session about Using AI to Improve Your Copywriting. The session is for anyone curious about working with AI without losing their humanity and creativity and seems to dovetail beautifully with the projects Alastair Creamer has been starting with 26.
What is AI capable of? How can it enhance work and generate ideas, with obscuring the very human creative process that gives copywriting its impact and heart? (Just 4 spots remaining at time of writing!)
I also received this from Lynda Relph-Knight, about Serpentine Galleries, who are launching a new online and physical publication focusing on innovation in long-form writing (image above).
The launch will be in London on Thursday 27 February, but even if you can’t make it along, maybe something to keep an eye on?
– Max Parfitt
I have a new pamphlet coming, out 30 April, called A hobby of mine. It’s a riff on Joe Brainard’s “I remember,” so a type of memoir but, as the blurb has it, “Rishi Dastidar’s unrelenting catalogue of cultural observations becomes an absurd and profound portrait of modern life. With a playful spirit and incisive wit, he examines identity, memory, and the contradictions of everyday existence. He invites us to consider the idiosyncrasies that shape how we navigate a fragmented world, and the hidden dimensions of our routines: repetition becomes revelation – if we pay enough attention.”
Ahem. It’s available for pre-order now.
Boasting over!
– Rishi Dastidar
February brought BBC GQT to Bradford, and a crowd of 300 enthusiastic gardeners. What was heartening was to hear the questions – mainly from people supporting community allotments, refugee garden plots, organic local orchards and volunteers bringing abandoned/derelict spaces back by greening them with veg on the edge. My favourite of the night was to hear how inner-cityback ginnels (we have a lot in Bradford) are being given colourful makeovers to attract insects, birds and wildlife. It’s broadcast on 10 March.
Through February, BBC Radio Leeds has broadcast three episodes of Hidden Bradford tales I recorded with them in November. These are a part of BBC’s partnering with Bradford 2025 City of Culture, and BBC New Voice Humaira Bham. There are other episodes in the series.
Sharing the episodes, I’ve discovered a link to Bram Stoker’s great, great grandson in Gibraltar and had comments from Australia with connections to the stories. And there may be walks in the summer…
– Irene Lofthouse
After many trials and tribulations (readers are referred to BBC ‘You and Yours’ September 18th 2024 and The One Show (Watchdog) December 18th 2024, as well as the Writers Beware Blog), I have set a date for launching ‘Troutfishing on the Tees – Me and Tony Blair’, with the help of the Book Dragon, Stockton-on-Tees.
There will be events on the weekend of May 10/11 in and around Stockton-on-Tees, as follows:
Saturday May 10th morning: The Book Dragon, Stockton
Saturday May 10th afternoon: The Drake Bookshop, Stockton
Sunday May 11th evening: The Other Room Bistro Bar, Eaglescliffe
There will be at least one event in London later in May tbc.
The draft front cover is above. This is subject to alteration, but should give a further flavour of the book, following on from my interview with 26 last year.
Watch this space!
– Graham Dransfield
I’ve had a poem accepted for publication in “Orbis”! It was written originally for CV2’s annual contest to make a poem including ten prescribed words within the space of 48 hours. This is the first time a CV2 entry of mine has achieved publication (except by me in social media).
– Aidan Baker
I’ve been acting on my New Year’s resolution to experiment with form and approach by exploring how my writing changes when writing using a notebook rather than my laptop. Read the article.
– Anushka Shah