Taking Out The Trash

Not just for shopping

A couple of years back I wrote a piece for Venue magazine about exploring around Cribbs Causeway.

There are sculptures and flattened villages, ancient rivers and bunkers and a stately home like something  out of Dr Who circa Tom Baker all close by.

Avon Wildlife Trust has now produced a podcast to accompany the Number 40 bus route from the centre of Bristol, to Cribbs and back again.

 As it says:

Embark on an adventure around the city or merely liven up your trip to the shops. You will hear about where to look for otters, where to find unusual plants such as the itchy 'beggarticks', why the pigeons are good for Bristol and when to spot the arrival of chiff chaffs on Brandon Hill.

 And in one section they read out excerpts from my original Venue piece. The pictures on this page are from my walk.

Nice to know it lives on in another format.

Great idea from Avon Wildlife Trust and nicely executed.  

On guard

Update: Kerry McCarthy has blogged in support of the Prevent programme in Bristol. Also I've found the article on Prevent in Bristol which I wrote for my MA earlier this year. It needed a sub and designer but I think there are some interesting elements. Download

Below are PDFs from two features I recently did for the Big Issue in the North about counter-terrorism efforts. One of Project Griffin and the other on the Prevent programme. It is being reported that Prevent could be on its way out though, as one of the people I interviewed suggested, that may just mean out of local authority hands and into police hands.

As for Griffin; my thanks to Leicestershire Police for inviting me along to their training day. I now have a lapel badge and certificate. My FoI requests on Griffin in other forces turned up some vaguely interesting material - it's clear that the broad structure is dictated from the centre but individual counter terrorism officers are devising the exact training sessions as local needs dictate. The question about whether Griffin-trained civilians are being heavy-handed towards innocent photographers remains but the session I was at didn't give that impression.

One thought sparked from the briefing I attended was about the extremely professional film we were shown about a shopping centre bombing. It was produced for ACPO by Pukka Films using mock BBC news footage. I wonder what the guidelines are for the BBC on how much they allow their news 'brand' to be used for fictional purposes? You assume that CNN or Sky are happy everytime a film uses a 'fake news' clip because its product placement. Is it the same for the BBC? Something for another FOI request perhaps.

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I'm with the brand

Article by me for The Big Issue in the North on the marketing of modern festivals

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