Brian Eno's John Peel Lecture

Slightly different from my usual post topics but last week's Annual John Peel Lecture by Brian Eno is well worth a watch / listen to and has definite links to some of the things Sir Ken Robinson speaks about in terms of the importance of expressing individual imagination and creativity. Eno is someone I've been influenced by since I was a child, and probably contributed in no small part to me falling into teaching - but that's another story. Anyway,the subject for his talk was a call for a rethink of the meaning and value of culture (partly informed in reaction to the Government's obsession with the STEM subjects - which he expressed a very serious interest in - at the expense of the Arts & Humanities, which are currently being represented as being less useful in terms of jobs, GDP and general usefulness to society etc.) Eno touched on a number of interesting aspects - Education, examples of altruistic social engineering, the dramatic pace of social change, the development of Open Source movement and the politics of scarcity/abundance (referencing a number of author's that are worth following up - not least Paul Mason's latest book PostCapitalism - A guide to our Future...which I just happen to be currently reading, and is definitely worth reading if you're interested in the politics of austerity.