Categories
Life(style)

Remarkable Priest Heads For Durham

Press Release from Durham Diocese

Michael-LapsleyDurham Cathedral is offering a rare opportunity to hear and meet a priest who survived a letter bomb attack and subsequently launched a project for healing and reconciliation.

Fr Michael Lapsley’s story began in 1990 when the anti-apartheid activist from South Africa opened a letter bomb. He survived, but lost both hands and one eye.

In the years that followed, he has developed the Healing of Memories project, which has helped countless victims of apartheid to recover from their past ordeals.

His work has been honoured in many ways around the world and he has now written a book about his life as both freedom fighter and healer.

Fr Lapsley will be preaching in Durham Cathedral at 11.15am on Sunday 7th July.

He will also be speaking at a lunchtime event in the Cathedral’s Prior’s Hall. Admission is free and seats are available on a first come, first served basis. Drinks are provided but please bring your own lunch. Admission is free and seats are available on a first come, first served basis. The event will begin at 1.15pm.

Fr Michael, who lives in South Africa, will talk about his journey and his work as a healer. Copies of his book, Redeeming the Past: My Journey from Freedom Fighter to Healer, will be on sale.

Canon Stephen Cherry, who is arranging and hosting the event, said:

I have met Fr Michael a few times now and am always inspired not only by his story but also by his passion and his actual presence.

He lives with the wounds of violence and hatred every minute of every day and yet gives tirelessly of himself for the healing of others and for the good of all. This is a great opportunity to meet a person of real courage, vision and hope.

A 15 minute video ‘The Fr Michael Lapsley Story’ can be seen on You Tube:

Categories
Digital Event

Tweets in Storify from #SMValues

Categories
Digital Event

Digital Literacies Baselining for ODHE (with @JISC)

For the last 24 hours I’ve been in a hotel in the Lake District, working with the Organisational Development in Higher Education Group. We (The University of Winchester/ODHE) have been awarded £10,000 to contribute to a large ‘Developing Digital Literacies‘ programme, for which baselining was required to be complete by 31st January – and I was then able to present our findings to the group at their national meeting, as we think about where we go from here:

Good feedback from the group who were very engaged!

Categories
Academic Event Life(style)

Ionic, isn’t it? @timeshighered

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/731014

What a brilliant idea …:

Academics from physicists to experts on Scandinavian culture are crafting stand-up comedy routines based on their work. But this is no joke. Matthew Reisz finds that a crowd’s laughter is not the only payoff

Here’s an idea of the content:

The nominal theme, tying in with a major exhibition, Power of Making, is “craft”, though the audience could not possibly have guessed it. Performers explore Tory drinking rituals and the “extreme decollete fashions” of the 17th century; pubic hair loss during the menopause; the importance of anti-Catholic fart humour in the early development of printing; the difficulties of translating Danish jokes into English; and the history of racist comedy (the speaker warns the audience in advance that “because this is a national institution, I’m not allowed to tell you the punchlines”).

A PhD student offers a glimpse of his lonely life: “Today is Tuesday, the day after University Challenge, when I get a chance to spend some quality time with Jeremy Paxman.” There is also a song about dinosaurs in Westminster and a polka-dotted cabaret duo, not to mention the occasional groan-worthy one-liner (“Anyone seen Ralph Fiennes in The Tempest? It’s going down a storm”).

And here’s the rationale:

As head of public engagement at UCL, Cross created his academic comedy nights in response to a specific challenge: to find a way of engaging with people in “the great demographic gap” between the ages of 20 and 40. “Universities have been very good at schools outreach and at getting academics on to Radio 4,” he explains, “but we haven’t been so good at reaching the market in between.” Many museums and cultural institutions face a similar problem.

So how could they get “an audience to turn up and listen to members of the university sharing their research, teaching and knowledge in a meaningful, interactive way, face to face and not through a facilitator”? Cross and his team talked to people who ran theatre, music and comedy nights. “We wanted something with content that would attract an audience beyond those already working and studying in universities. The thing we came up with was stand-up comedy – because of the rise of intelligent comedy, because researchers can learn to perform to a good standard relatively quickly, and because you can make anything funny.”

Read the full story and check out ‘Bright Club‘ on Facebook

Categories
History

Recent Find : Keep Calm

Keep Calm and Carry On: You Money is Safe Under the Mattress, via Something for the Weekend.