Good Writing

I'm no expert on academic writing.  I'm even less of an expert on medical stuff, but in the last month I've been spending the time I'm not playing with my kids, to help develop on-line writing resources for students at University of Birmingham Med school to encourage academic writing.

My experience of academic writing began with Sigmund Freud.  While I was working at Brooklands Hospital, I'd spend my lunch break reading paper after paper - it's good stuff, and as he covers issues as diverse as  creativity, medicinal use of cocaine and, of course, family relationships.  It's good mainly because it's readable.  You don't need to be a doctor to understand it - Freud is amusing, playful, conversational and maybe a little mischievous.  He knew how to write a story, isn't afraid to be opinionated, or indeed 'subjective', and most importantly knows how to construct a good argument around his findings.  This does not fit into Gillet, Aveyard et al, Levin, and many University guidelines on what 'academic writing' should be, but the influence of Freud, the audience he has reached cannot be denied, and must be, in large part, to his writing -  he lectured extensively, and also wrote letters documenting at least part of dialogues with Jung and others, but his published material reached a much wider audience.  

Over one hundred years ago publishing was very different, and the options to promote your scientific findings far more limited.  Academic journals, the monograph, and monographic series were an important means of reaching an audience, and a valuable means to find out about quite specialist subjects.  They represented a 'who's who' of important people within a discipline.  

In the last ten years we have witnessed an explosion of writers using the internet to publish, while at the same time more traditional peer review academic journals, on-line  and paper, have declined.  More and more people are writing, just not for the same academic journals and monographs that previously were so important.  Doug Belshaw, Stanley Chodorow and Gideon Burton are three of the many 'education technologists' and others who go further, suggesting 'we are gathered here around the comatose body' of this form of academic writing.

Wikis, including wikipedia, blogs, discussion forums of all kinds, are all promoting writing from a wider number of people, some of which is every bit as 'good' as any academic journal.  You don't have to wait months to see if you will be published.  You won't be beholden to experts within your field, who may have considerable vested interests in either delaying or promoting your essay.  You will get valuable feedback from people who read your stuff.  As a research tool you will be contributing to a far more significant shared knowledge than any journal, and as your reputation (hopefully) grows, so will your readership.

You don't have to be an expert to write.  The more you write, the more feedback from your readers, the better your writing.  Peer review academic journals may not always be the best for this, but if that's what you want, writing in other media will make it more likely you'll get the invitations to write for peer review journals anyhow!

Useful links:

• Academic writing

• On (not) working in academia

• The Forever Decline: Academia’s Monograph Crisis

• The Specialized Scholarly Monograph in Crisis: Or How Can I Get Tenure If You Won't Publish My Book?

• Peer review is vanity publishing

• Sigmund Freud

Other academic writing aids:

• ABC Study Guide. Advice about writing an essay. 
• Aveyard, H., Sharp, P. and Woolliams (2011) A Beginner’s Guide to Critical Thinking and Writing in Health and Social Care. Open University Press
• Dunleavy, P (1986) Studying for a Degree in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, Macmillan
• Levin P. (2009) Write Great Essays 2nd Ed.  Open University Press
• The Florence Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery.Introduction to Academic Writing. 

And (in case you were wondering) my own limited contribution to published writing

Torch relay lights my fire

Today I'm watching the last of the torch relay live an event I've been following ever since it's dramatic arrival at Lands End, through to Birmingham and on, finally now, to London.

I've been involved, on behalf of Hall Green Arts, in supporting two major events in parks in our constituency, and attended a handful of the tens of thousands of Torch relay planning meetings across the UK to coordinate certainly the largest single event I've ever been a part of.


Logistically it is truly incredible - to organise a rolling road block across the 8000 miles it journeyed over 2 months.  Then there's the promotion, marketing, coordinating other events around it, bad weather, the sponsors, safety and security issues...


There have been celebrities, there have been dramatic stunts, all around the raw simplicity and symbolsm of a torch relay.  But that's not what I find most exciting,

As Bruce Forsyth, one of the last torch bearers, put it:


      You can't beat a big crowd getting excited

It's the way it has brought so many people together, to celebrate the olympics.  Whatever that means to each of us, it's likely to be the closest many of us get to it.

Useful links

• Torch highlights
• Photos taken by our 'young paparazzi' team at Calthorpe Park
• Sunrise at Sparkhill
• Sunrise at Sparkhill 2
• Sunrise at Sparkhill 3
• Olympic Torch celebrations at Farm road Park

No Child hurt this time

As I met with local parents, local councillor Martin Straker-Welds and Garry Dalton from BCC responsible for road improvements, this Wednesday at 3:40, a coach reversed up the school drive, onto the pavement, parking neatly blocking the pedestrian access to the school.

There was no way he could have seen behind him, it forced children leaving the school into the road, and demonstrated perfectly why the entrance is so dangerous.  But then this is nothing new (see previous post).  It was a depressing, but familiar sight for all of us - we all fell silent for a moment, watching the coach, while small children played with the temporary road blocks, moving them around to make scootering across the school entrance easier.

Jago's hand, a month after, stitches nearly gone.

I was there because my child has been hit by a bus (the No.11) and survived.  He fell into the road and only had a glancing blow.  He was saved by his bike helmet, but still has the scars across his hand.

I want to see more general improvements in our area to make things safer for children, to prevent tragedies like Hope's death recently.

But this meeting was about a very particular situation, and certainly highlighted for me, what I thought was an important question:

Who is responsible?  What would happen if a child had been hit by this coach, or a car had hit a child forced into the road?  Would it be the parent who had let go of the child's hand?  Would it be the driver who had hit the child?  How's about the council who had not adequately prevented cars reversing up the service road?  Or maybe the school who had not adequately made the entrance to the school safe?  At Wheelers Lane there is also Balfour Beaty who effectively own the strip of no-man's land outside the school - shouldn't htey have done something?  There is also a couple of school neighbours who in consultations seem to see access to the frontage of their houses as more important than safety of the children.

Maybe I had got it wrong.  We should really be looking at who is willing to take responsibility to make things better.  Who is going to keep shining a light on the obvious dangers, and make the changes we need?

Useful Links:

Local campaign for safer roads in Kings Heath started

Kings Heath Neighbourhood forum and Transition Initiative

Wheelers Lane Safe route to school campaign

Field Exhibition at Evergreen

I brought along a few friends to Evergreen.  Residents enjoyed seeing 'Field for the Olympics' puppets made  by other groups - Freya enjoyed showing residents her puppet.

Olympic football

Our second puppet we couldn't decide on a name.  Rachel (Williams), Birmingham City and England striker was suggested - the puppet also has a striking resemblance to a younger Rio Ferdinand.  Might he make a come back in the Olympic Team, along with David Beckham? Name suggestions in comments please.  Here's some images, and that wonderful header by Rachel Williams to beat Chelsea.

Rio Ferdinand

Puppet made by residents

Either way, fun was had by all

Equality in Football at the Olympics?

David Beckham is grabbing the headlines once again with rumours Stuart Pearce will choose him to captain our Olympic team - much of the media attention is as always drawn to the men's game.  But hold on, who's this standing next to Stuart Pearce at press conferences?  A few papers have started to notice our women's team, and one woman in particular - perhaps one 

of the most successful women in football (and equally as accomplished as Stuart Pearce).

She has won 66 caps for England and won the women's FA cup three times – but as a coach, she has reached the top of her game, one that is not best known for its enlightened approach to women.

She has been in charge of the English team since 1998, and in 2003 became the first woman anywhere to get the Uefa pro licence, the highest coaching qualification available. Powell, 44, has taken her team into the European Championship three times, and this summer will be the second time she has led them to the World Cup. 

The British Women's team will be serious contenders at the Olympics - one I'm sure many from my home, Birmingham, will be watching closely.  The England squad already has 6 Birmingham City Players, and with recent success at the FA cup, likey to figure in the Olympics too.

Equality on the football pitch may yet be a while off.  Birmingham City won The FA Women’s Cup for the first-ever time after beating Chelsea in The Final after a penalty shoot-out, receiving a total of £5,000 from the FA cup prize fund, compared to £1,800,000 for the men's FA cup winners last year.

Field for the Olympics

This is the first workshop in making puppets for 'Field for the Olympics'.  In the build up to the Olympics Hall Green Arts will be visiting a range of settings (schools, parks, community centres) in Birmingham to make puppets depicting real or imaginary Olympic sports.  All the puppets will be brought together to form a fantastic collaborative community art work in the garden of Kings Heath Community Centre in time for the start of Olympics.  Christine, the Olympic swimmer: