Monday 10 November 2008

howies DO Lectures


A few months ago I sat down and wrote a hand written letter to Alison from howies. You see, in order to be invited to the lectures I had to tell the wonderful people at howies why I wanted to attend the DO. I wrote what came to me and didn't try edit or analyse what I'd written. Far too often I think about stuff too much and all that does is whittle down the rawness of what I need to get across.

I hear you asking 'What ARE the DO Lectures?'. Well, it's a project/initiative started by howies (read about howies here) that involves inviting 75 individuals down to a lovely location in Wales (fforest), to listen to some amazing people talk about stuff they're DOing or have done. And in listening to these people it will hopefully inspire the 75 attendees to get out there and DO their own DO.

I could honestly go on for hours about the talks. It was absolutely inspiring, motivating and just down right fun. At times it felt like my head was going to explode as I've never had so much to think and challenge my brain about before, especially in the space of 5 days!

The best bit is that all the talks were filmed so that others (you) could share in the inspiration. Aside from the lectures there were also workshops on how to forage for edible food in a forest, starting a fire with only your hands and what nature has to offer and last but not least, how to create your own documentary.

So, DO yourself a favour when you've got some free time and watch a few of the lectures. You may not love them all, but it will make you think about things differently and in some cases, take your blinkers off. Ultimately it could get you DOing too.

Should you be interested, my favourites were (in no particular order): Andy Kirkpatrick, Alistair McIntosh, Andy Cummings and the creative duo of Matt Jones & Russell Davies.

One of the many positives was that I got to meet some really awesome people whom I'll definitely be staying in touch with. (Maybe not Tamsin, she scared me.)

Make yourself a brew, choose a lecture and enjoy, The DO Lectures.

Photos from the DO here.

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