Onwards and upwards

My work continues to be focussed on the Good Faith Partnership and its biggest project, the Warm Welcome Campaign. This month we’ll publish a report on the impact the campaign has had since it was launched in 2022. It’s endorsed by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and we’re all hugely proud of what the campaign is achieving (although I can only take scant credit, as I’ve been on board for just three months. I like to think I’m making a difference in their digital communications, though.)

Last month I saw Michael Sheen in a production of Nye about the life of Nye Bevan at The National Theatre. I loved the staging, with curtains becoming the benches of the Houses of Parliament and libraries as well as hospital curtains. Michael Sheen was excellent, very believable as Nye and I learned plenty about Nye Bevan’s life. I agree with the Guardian’s review that the character of Jennie Lee, his wife, wasn’t hugely developed, but then it wasn’t a play about Jennie, it was about Nye.

I read an obituary of Shirley Conran in the Guardian on 11 May which brought back fond memories of me and all my friends reading Lace when we were at school in 1983 or so. It seems Conran was a true feminist and her obit is worth a read.

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In other news

This Apple ad caused a stir.

Then my LinkedIn contact @Matt Waller wrote about an ad he’d created for LG 15 years ago that showed objects being crushed and replaced by the LG phone which could do all of those things, better. Matt wrote: “My personal hypothesis is that we've all become addicted to our screens and detest the idea of real-life items, artist tools, instruments and toys being compressed onto a screen. We're not so much angry with Apple, but perhaps with ourselves.”

This was fun, brought to my attention by a newsletter from the Audience Agency.

There were several pieces that grabbed my attention earlier this week (some days I want to read several stories from the Guardian’s daily business briefing email, other days none).

This opinion piece about book festival activists making absurd demands over Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship makes salient points about who will fund arts events in future while accepting there has to be some quality control and vetting.

This is interesting about UK broadcasters trading advertising airtime for shares in the advertisers’ companies.

And these articles caught my eye, from a bank boss saying it’s not vital to spend five days in an office, to Boots ordering support staff back into the office five days a week and the benefits of working from home. I’ve said it before, but I will never again go into an office five days a week.

And there was this on artificial intelligence, and the balance of risk and opportunities in the technology.

That’s it for June. Let’s hope we get some warmer weather in the mean time and I’ll post again in July.