Cycle Powered Cinema

So a project I was working on a while back was a bicycle powered station which could be used to play films, power smoothie makers or any other fun bit of tech you can think of.

Here is a video by WeeFeet of us building our fantastic invention in Tayside Recyclers:

Thanks to electric pedal and Dundee Solar Cities we created this fantastic gizmo which enables us to power appliances up to about 200w by hooking it up 1 to 4 bicycles and pedalling.

We had an event showcasing our new cycle cinema for the students but children started turning up and loved it so much that they wanted to keep cycling even when the film was finished, great success even with the horrid weather.

So far this wonderful invention has been used all over Dundee to showcase films and to get people to think about how much energy they actually consume in a fun way.

The next steps are to have a month of films all round Dundee with site specific films, who knows we might be having a film showing in your garden :)

Skill Share Dundee

Skill Share Dundee is a group helping to inspire and empower students and members of the residential community by sharing skills and crafts.

Skill Share Dundee's aims are to bring generations together and maintain skills and crafts that might be lost.

Over the past few years I have seen the loss of practical life skills within the student community, currently universities prepare students academically but miss out on practical life skills which students require in later life, skill share dundee hopes to provide these in fun and informative ways.

Skill Share Dundee has now been running for two years now and is going from strength to strength by learning lessons from last years classes.

The initial concept came to me while I was volunteering in tayside recycler's fixing bicycles, i've always loved building things and when people came up to me asking about how to repair bicycles, I thought maybe I could share my other skills too.

I put the idea to Jonathan Baxter and he shared that he too had a similar vision so off we set to create skill share dundee in the rather dimly lit cavern that was the bicycle area of tayside recyclers.

Allot of skill share dundee's principles are bases on the likes of Tinkering School: Think, Make, Tinker!

and also Men's Sheds - MensShed Australia AMSA.

Bicycle building/maintenance

Gardening

Wood work (Cold frame building)

Planting seedlings

leather work(15th century flacket bottle)

Wine making

Electronics(tag tool)

Wood work

Rocket Stove construction

So what have we learned from last semester:

-less technical classes are easier for people to engage with and hold their concentration

-we need to teach less and give one of the greatest gift to empower people to understand what skills and strengths they already have and let them share them.

-We hope to use a questionnaire like the one below to enable people to easier answer the question "what skills do you have?"

-The greatest gift is allowing others to give so rather than just teaching all the classes, we will try to open the space up for more participants to share.

---This Semesters classes on offer this semester are loosely based around vintage skills---

This is just a rough breakdown of possible classes that will be run.

-Vintage photography-taking photos using vintage cameras and also guide through development process- leave with a nice negative as a keepsake

-Vintage bicycle maintenance and also how to make one of a kind bike baskets

-Leather work- one of a kind leather objects-belts, bags and other objects

-Upholstery of furniture

-Welding projects

-building bicycle trailers

-wilderness walks

-wine making courses and tasting sessions

-Tinkering events- think Macgyver, you will learn how to solve problems and repair your own objects by good old tinkering and putting your knowledge into practice.

-Bring your broken items events- where you will learn how to repair everyday objects

--Plans for the future--

-to bring more young people and bring skill share to schools

-to integrate more elderly people into skill share

Catalyst Quest

At the end of July, I once again said goodbye to Embercombe to take 2 other fellow catalyst on a quest for ourselves to engage with living in the moment and become more in touch with our instincts.

So much happened in those few days that I can't share it all now but here is a little bite size chunk of our journey back into the wild.

We three warriors struck out into the unknown, it felt like a proper quest and we experienced many magical moments throughout: all three of us sang harmoniously under a bridge in an ancient Sequoia forest, the gurgling of the stream under our feet and the sound of our temple like songs echoing off the sides of the walls and other magical moments in the mist cliffs up in Dartmoor as we sat in our cave, the fire blazing and the rain falling outside our door.

More stories of our quest to come...including how we gathering this food on the road, glow bugs at night, hunting ducks and the Templars way.

Catalyst: A Garden To Grow People

So this July Ive been spending my time at a place called Embercombe which is a charity and social enterprise which invites people and organisations on a journey to discover their own potential as leaders.

"a garden to grow people" is the vision for Catalyst, Embercombe

www.catalystcourse.co.uk

Embercombe is 50 acres of lush countryside full of abundant wildlife and hosts conference facilities, yurt villages and a wonderful farm.

This wasn't my first time to Embercombe as I had been on the Catalyst course back in April, which was an amazing experience of personal development, creativity and connection with fellow catalysts.

Anyway back to this July, this time I wasn't on a course at Embercombe but instead was working on the farm. Allot of people I spoke to were surprised when I told them I had come down to work on the farm to "relax" but it was a great chance to escape from emails and other stresses. It was a great experience to work each day out in the fresh air with the chickens and potatoes or in the tropical polly tunnel re plumbing the water system for the juicy tomatoes.

There was something very satisfying about working and getting paid in lots of tasty meals and wonderful accommodation/facilities.

It was great having the July Catalyst around while I was working on the farm as it brought back allot of the wonderful feelings that I felt when I was on catalyst and they really were a smashing lot :D

After a teary departure of the catalysts at the end of the week, we started to prepare for the Catalyst council which brought together a diverse mix of people who do similar work to that of catalyst.

A more in depth description of the catalyst council can be seen on Johannes Moeller's blog post:

Catalyst Council – the needs of young adults today | johannes moeller