The Do Lectures: Alex Haws 'Invite Stranger to Dinner'

The Do lectures from last year are still being uploaded even as the next Do lectures are being planned for 2011.

Every year, Howies the Welsh clothing manufacturers (not how they would describe themselves) invite a people to West Wales to come and talk about what they Do.
"They can be small Do's or big Do's or just plain amazing extraordinary Do's. But when you listen to their stories, they just light a fire in your belly to go and Do your thing, your passion, the thing that sits in the back your head each day, just waiting, and waiting for you to follow your heart.
To go find your cause to fight for, your company to go start, your invention to invent, your book to write, your mountain to climb".

See Alex Haws in a regrettable suit describe the house he designed in Battersea for a gardener. The staircase is exquisitely beautiful , made using a computer programme that allowed him to draw the lines that drove the machine that cut the parts.

Music, fairy stories, folk practices and ghostly tales from Scotland

Bothy ballads, love songs, children's rhymes, laments and songs composed by village poets along with fairy stories, historical legends and tales of ghosts and kelpies. Birth, life and death customs and work practices , if these things interest you then check out

Tobar an Dualchais

More than 15,000 recordings from Scotland's past are available online on the oral archive, Tobar an Dualchais. The recordings, from all parts of the country,  some dating back more than eight decades, are drawn from the archives of the School of Scottish Studies, the BBC and the National Trust for Scotland's Canna Collection.

Dulwich Picture Gallery's anniversary celebrations

Dulwich Picture Gallery houses one of the world's most important collections of European old master paintings of the 1600s and 1700s.The collection is also one of the oldest in Great Britain, substantially put together in the years 1790 to 1795. The paintings are housed in the first purpose-built art gallery in England, designed by Sir John Soane in 1811.

 Today the Gallery  announced it was marking its 200th anniversary in 2011 by displaying specially loaned paintings for a month at a time by artists such as Velázquez, El Greco, Rembrandt, Constable and David Hockney. One of the most eye-catching is the self-portrait of Van Gogh –  for July – from the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. A 19-year-old Van Gogh walked from central London to Dulwich Art Gallery in 1873 and made a mess of the visitor's book by blotting ink all over it. Unfortunately all that is known of his experience, said Dejardin, is that he "had a nice day 

From Nov. 20-27, the week before this year's UN Climate Meetings, 350.org coordinated over a dozen major public art installations across the planet. A satellite company, DigitalGlobal documented the project from space. My favourite is this polar bear from Iceland. Look at the link for videos and photos including King Canute trying to keep the sea back in Brighton (designed by Thom Yorke and comprised of people dressed in blue plastic).

RSA announces Student Design Awards call for entries

The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has announced the Student Design Awards briefs for the 2010/2011 award scheme. The RSA Student Design Awards scheme challenges professional designers-in-training to apply their skills to difficult social issues.

Participation in the Student Design Awards is open to both current undergraduate and postgraduate students and to those who graduated in summer 2010. The deadline for submission of entry forms, fees and work is 17 February 2011.

The project briefs for the 2010/11 award scheme are divided into 9 categories. including

Conflict resolution

Make something disappear
Postage stamps
Action for age

The Power of Nature-funding opportunity for film makers

Call for Entries (closes 20 December) The National Trust, in collaboration with the NHS Sustainable Development Unit and supported by Arla, one of the largest dairy companies in Europe, is looking to help to fund and distribute a feature documentary film that examines our contemporary relationship with nature.
http://site.britdoc.org/pages/820/view/

Beauty in the city

There are 35 Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in England. But 90% of us live in towns and cities and most people rarely get out and visit them. So CABE ran a photo competition to find ‘Areas of Outstanding Urban Beauty’. This Flickr set contains all entries to the competition.