anne-witton-blog

Dave Deeks: Christian singer / songwriter

Fri, 11 May 2012 17:56:22 +0100

I've just built a website for Christian singer / songwriter David Deeks. I worked with David's wife Lynda at Traidcraft and when Dave decided that his website needed refreshing, they came to me. It's been a great project to work on, partly because Dave and Lynda are good friends and it's always fun spending time with them, but also because Dave's faith and amazing recovery from a debilitating illness are an inspiration.

In 1989 Dave was struck down by a rare, debilitating and extremely frightening condition called Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS). This left him almost completely paralysed with only a slim chance of recovery. You can read the remarkable story of what happened next on the site.

Dave's music is deeply rooted in his faith and you can listen to it online as well as purchase CDs, read reviews and look at behind the scenes photos in the gallery. Do have a look round the site and let me know what you think! www.davedeeks.com

New Project: Keep on Running

Sat, 05 May 2012 14:16:59 +0100

I've just finished a project to highlight how easy it is to waste water and to hopefully encourage people to think twice before they leave the tap running.

View the Keep on Running project here.

P2PU - free learning for all!

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:05:14 +0100

I decided that it was about time that I honed my HTML and CSS skills and I came across the excellent Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) to help me do just that. P2PU is a grassroots open education project that organises learning outside of institutional walls and gives learners recognition for their achievements. Using the internet and educational materials openly available online, P2PU enables high-quality free education.

I signed up for the Webmaking 101 challenge to learn basic HTML. My first task was to set up a blog to chart my progess and to comment on the blogs of the other people studying the course. If you'd like to see how I'm getting on, head over to http://bluemackerel.wordpress.com.

15 of my favourite infographics

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 09:47:05 +0100

Being a visual person, I find it much easier to take in information if it's presented in graphical form. Here are my current favourite infographics.

	Photographers’ Rights in the UK A concise summary of your rights as a photographer, with a printable PDF that you can carry round with you.
	Time Travel in Popular Film and TV A swirling mass of temporal travels and paradoxes!
	Hierarchy of digital distractions Find out what it is that’s stopping you getting your work done.
	Colours in culture A fascinating insight into what colours signify in cultures round the world.
	How much CO2 is created by… A good excuse not to do any ironing or hoovering ‘for the sake of the planet’…
	Streamlining your digital life Why carry around loads of gadgets when one expensive one will do?
	Gameboy timeline Did you know that Nintendo was founded to make playing cards?
	History of social media Anyone remember GeoCities?
	The world without Apple Interesting timeline of Apple products.
	The underground underground How much of the underground is actually underground?
	The world as a tube map Another twist on the tube map format, this time encompassing the whole world.
	8 commonly misused words Yes, compliment / complement and less / fewer are there.
	Periodic table of typefaces Beautiful!
	Picturing a lifetime of clean water access An interactive infographic demonstrating the impact clean water has on the lives of those in the developing world.
	White van man How many white vans would you need to move a billion cheesy Wotsits?

Photography Briefing

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 09:59:06 +0100

Many of you will know that I work for Voluntary Arts England, which aims to promote participation in the arts and crafts across the country. As an organisation, we publish free Briefings on a whole range of subjects designed to help people who run amateur arts groups. I have just written a Briefing on photography which I hope will be useful to many different people and groups, not just those involved in the amateur arts. It covers:

Taking good photos (equipment, preparation and composition)
Photo editing (web based tools and software downloads, editing tips)
Storage and organisation (software and online services to help you catalogue photos)
Types of image file and sizes (explanations of resolution and image size)
Permissions, copyright and Creative Commons
Further resources (lots of useful links)

Download the Photography Briefing (PDF)

You can see the complete range of Voluntary Arts Briefings on the website.

New Project: Snapping the Snaps

Sat, 05 May 2012 14:16:20 +0100

As Abby loves cooking and I love photography, I thought it would be good to do a project that combines the two. Abby had decided to make sesame snaps so this was the perfect opportunity for me to snap the process and create a visual recipe, dispensing with any of the boring details like quantities of ingredients and focusing instead on the aesthetic appeal of each stage.

View the 'Snapping the Snaps' project here

PhotographyBB

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:25:22 +0100

I read a lot of photography magazines, am signed up to lots of forums, visit lots of websites and follow a lot of Twitter feeds and have found that the quality of advice varies enormously. One real gem that I have found is PhotographyBB, a free PDF magazine catering for beginners and experienced photographers alike. There have been 49 editions so far full of helpful and interesting articles.

Every single issue can be downloaded for free here (You just have to pop your email address in which only takes a minute and means that you get alerted when the next edition is out).

You can also follow @PhotographyBB on Twitter.

Happy reading!

Proclaimit

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:25:44 +0100

Matt Moore, brains behind Proclaimit and all-round good egg, is revamping his website and marketing materials and asked me to take some pictures for him. We had a fun afternoon at the Angel of the North and NewcastleGateshead Quayside, and I was truly amazed by Matt's amazing theatrical laugh!

Proclaimit design user-friendly websites for churches and Christian ministries, and the Christian team are committed to helping churches grow.

Follow them on Twitter @weproclaimit and visit the website - www.proclaim-it.org.

Olfaction Fascination

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:26:18 +0100

I've been thinking a lot recently about smells and more specifically about the power of smell to recall long-forgotten people and places from the distant past. We've probably all had the experience when we've been going about our daily lives when suddenly a scent will stop us in our tracks and we feel that we are once again in our grandmother's kitchen or walking through the school doors for the very first time. Smell can transport you back to the moment in a way that no other sense can and churn up old emotions that have long been buried. It's the best time machine I know.

I find it refreshing that in this digital age of instant access to everything you can't easily capture, store, transmit or manufacture smell. It's organic and real and takes you by surprise. It encourages you to live in the moment, because if you miss it, it's gone. Even taste can be recreated from a recipe, but with smell there is no recipe book. It's ephemeral, like trying to remember a dream 10 mins after waking up.

I think the sense of smell is very neglected. It's very hard to find a book, other than a children's scratch-and-sniff book, about smell. A few years ago, I did read "The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell" by Rachel Herz. Whilst it was quite an irritating book in many ways, it was at least thought-provoking. One of the things I hadn't appreciated before is that losing your sense of smell can have a devastating effect on your life. Smell gives you such a powerful emotional connection to the world that its loss can lead to severe depression.

Imagine my delight when I discovered Scratch+Sniff whose mission is to 'raise our enjoyment of the very underappreciated sense of smell'. They run themed, fragrance-filled events (alas all in London as far as I can see).

I have recently been enjoying the Life in Scents podcast which is all about smell. (They also have a website and I particularly like the 'endangered smells' page). Their iTunes description reads:

Life in Scents is a podcast about smell. It’s an interview show where each time, our guest talks about the scents that have meant something to them through their life, whether everyday smells, fine fragrances or peculiar pecadillos. Bonfires, arm pits, swimming pools, Shalimar, the subway or a club at 3 am, if it’s got an odour, it’s got a story.

So in the spirit of the podcast, let me end by sharing some of my favourite smells from childhood:

Coal tar soap (Gran)
Diesel trains (Gran)
Typewriter ribbon
Banda machines (remember them? The teacher would return with a stack of purplish papers and all the kids would sniff them until they went dizzy.)
Dad's pipe
Mum's honeysuckle perfume stick
Sweaty, rubbery roller discos
The leather briefcase I had for school
Scratch and sniff books (My favourite one was about some bears going on a picnic and my favourite smell was an onion for some reason!)
Rain and cold
Stale smoke on buses
Warm London Underground air mixed with Crunchies
The smell of books
Smelly pencils
Damp canvas and grass

What are your favourite smells and what memories do they evoke?

Epic Awards: The Movie!

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:47:24 +0100

It's been another fantastic year for the Epic Awards and it's been a privilege hearing about so many inspiring arts and crafts projects from around the UK. Here's a video I made to showcase the winning groups, who were:

Peterborough Male Voice Choir who turned their fortunes around with their innovative 'New Directions' project.
Phizzfest, a community arts festival in Dublin.
Renfrewshire-based drumming group, The Buddy Beat who made a wonderful video documenting the impact music had on their recovery from mental illness.
Third Floor Gallery, a pioneering photography gallery in Cardiff.