An Adventure in Space and Time

Time travel continues to be the theme this week. The day after Kennedy was shot (see last post), a new science fiction series started on BBC called Doctor Who. I remember watching the first episode twice. They repeated it the following week because (I mistakenly thought at the time) it had been so successful. It turns out that the repeat was due to Kennedy's death dominating the news. I leant this from An Adventure in Space and Time, a TV drama that told the story of how the series started. It was part of Doctor Who's 50th anniversary celebrations. I didn't watch the special anniversary episode. Although I was a huge fan of Doctor Who and still possess some daleks (hiding somewhere in the same chest as the Kennedy file), I'm not one of those people who follows the new generation (or regeneration) of Doctors. For me, the series belongs in the past and should stay there.

This week I had my own adventure in space and time. A friend I used to work with in the 1970s, and who I haven't seen since then, came to Barcelona for a few days. By coincidence, I'd revisited the place where we used to work this summer when I attended a breakfast meeting at the Pullman Hotel on Euston Road. The building used to be St Pancras library and included the Shaw Theatre. We both worked in the theatre's box office which is now the hotel reception (see photo). It was a happy reunion so I guess not everything from the past should stay there.

The hotel reception on the left where the Shaw Theatre box office used to be.

Where were you when ...?

Before taking a break from its-teachers, one of my weekly tasks was coming up with a topical teaching activity for the coming week. No doubt at this moment in time, I'd be putting the finishing touches to a classroom activity on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy which took place 50 years ago on November 22, 1963.

I asked Rob Metcalf, a long-time collaborator on the magazine, where he was when he'd heard the news of the assassination. 'Probably in a cot', he replied, proving that not everyone who was alive at the time vividly remembers where they were when they heard the news. I was 7 at the time and I have a strong memory of returning home from a concert with my brother and finding our parents sitting, listening to the radio news.

Thinking about the anniversary reminded me of a Jackdaw Publication I bought (or was bought for me) five years later. It was a dark blue folder that contained copies of material related to the assassination. After digging around in a trunk, I found it this morning. On the cover it says 'recommended for adults and older children only'. I'm not sure if 12 can be considered 'older children' but I do remember spending hours going through the contents of the folder that included:

• The final Page of the Warren Commission Exhibit 387: Summary of autopsy report
• Warren Commission Exhibit 385: Medical illustration of President Kennedy’s neck wounds
• A full size reproduction of the alleged assassination weapon
• Dealey Plaza plan and model

I seem to have lost the model but everything else seems to be there. The folder and its contents must have had a big impact on me a) because I still have the original folder and b) because the iT's English activity books were originally published as loose pages inside a folder. Did the idea come from Jackdaw?

Assuming that these folders must have gone out of print decades ago, I had a look online and was surprised to discover that Jackdaw still exists and still sells its Kennedy pack which it says is 'sure to inspire lively classroom debate and help students form their own hypotheses and opinions'. If you click on the link to the next page, you'll find another of their publications - Black Death: The Plague. 'When they (your students) see the “Plague Banner” and “Dance of Death” posters, you will have their full attention.' I'm sure they're right.

I have to confess that I've never written a classroom activity on The Plague or the Kennedy Assassination although it did feature in our Conspiracy Theories activity. If you have an original idea for a classroom activity to mark the Kennedy anniversary, let me know!

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The Jackdaw folder and contents

Teaching is an art form

'Teaching is an art form.' These were the words of Sir Ken Robinson, the educationalist, speaking on last week's Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio. Between playing the eight songs he'd chosen to take to a desert island, he talked about his life, including his childhood in Liverpool and his education which would fundamentally shape the rest of his life. 'If a teacher hadn't seen something in me that I hadn't seen in myself, my life might have gone in a very different direction.'

Now he's a successful author, speaker, and international advisor on education. His talks on creativity are famous around the world. In fact, his 2006 TED talk How schools kill creativity is the most viewed video in TED’s history. After listening to him on Desert Island Discs I watched the video again. At one point he talks about the reaction of people he'd meet at dinner parties when he told them that he worked in education.

Things don't seem to have changed much. In the same week, I went to see La vie d'Adèle (Blue is the Warmest Colour). I know people are talking about this film  for other reasons, but I was really surprised by the attitude of Emma's art-loving friends towards Adèle when they discover she's a teacher. Don't they know that 'teaching is an art form'?

In case you're interested, Sir Ken's favourite record was the Traveling Wilburys' End of the Line. You can listen to the Desert Island Discs programme here:
http://bbc.in/1cxIufB

And if you're not one of the 25 million people who have viewed his 2006 TED talk, here's your chance.

Lou Reed played here

There was a nice piece by Suzanne Vega in today's Times about Lou Reed and how he'd changed her life. She mentions the Berlin album and how she'd been listening to it on the Sunday afternoon in August 1984 when she wrote the song Luka.

I've been thinking a lot about the Berlin album over the past few days. It came out in 1973 when I was an eighteen-year-old would-be rock star living in a flat in Belsize Park. The album had a huge impact on me and is probably the reason I wrote so many depressing songs over the next few years. (Listen to On the Other Side of Town and you'll see what I mean.)

1973 was an amazing year. Look at the albums that came out that year and ended up in my record collection: Foreigner (Cat Stevens), Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player  (Elton John), Pin Ups and Aladdin Sane (David Bowie), Band on the Run (Paul McCartney & Wings), There Goes Rhymin' Simon (Paul Simon), and Berlin, of course.

But it was an amazing year for other reasons. I wrote the music for my first show, The National Youth Theatre production of The Children's Crusade. Written by Paul Thompson and directed by Ron Daniels (and featuring one Dan Day-Lewis in the cast) it was a life-changing experience. Soon after I met Stephen Lipson who had such an influence on my music. He turned up on my doorstep after answering an ad in Melody Maker for someone to help me perform some songs I'd written for Jonathan Marshall's A Wet Winter Night's Dream which was the Christmas show at the Bush Theatre that year. We also performed it at Brixton Prison but that's another story...

A few months ago I attended my uncle's funeral in London and by chance stayed at a hotel in Belsize Park. I couldn't resist walking down Lambolle Place past the flat where so much happened in such a short space of time in 1973. 'It was very nice'.

The flat in Lambolle Place.

48H Open House Barcelona

48H Open House Barcelona is a weekend event when you can get to see inside some of the city's most interesting buildings like Casa Planells which is just round the corner. I've walked past this building countless times and always wondered what it was like inside. Created by the Catalan architect Josep Maria Jujol, it's amazing what he managed to do in such a small space. For many years, the apartment we visited was a brothel. Now it's an architects' studio.

The other highlight of the day was the Teatre Principal at the bottom of the Ramblas which has many Lorca connections and features in the Lorca musical. The building is about to be re-opened as a multi-purpose venue (= nightclub). But the real discovery was the enormous Basque pelota court built on top of the theatre. Take a look ...

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Above the Teatre Principal

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Casa Planells