18 February 2012

This is way out of date and not really suitable in its present form and it only covers the period to 2002. I'm not sure why I put it up in the first place. But until I get round to putting together a new one, it'll have to do.

I have been working in the fields of the arts, media and communications for over thirty-five years and during that time I’ve covered a lot of ground and in a lot of places. I’ve also accumulated a lot of skills and expertise. I consider myself a talented individual, not afraid of the new and not afraid to take on new challenges. Indeed, I seem to thrive on them. Standing still is not an option.

But after 27 years abroad, I found myself back in the city of my birth, London in 2002 and where I spent the first 30 years of my life, contemplating my future and the direction I would like my life to take. Since coming back to London I have been involved in a number of projects including developing the brief and business plan for city-based broad band wireless network with the focus on marketing/distribution of digitally based cultural products and home and office based connectivity (still on-going) and spending a lot of time writing, both fiction (one novel completed and a second in the works as well as working on a script for a full length feature movie about exile) and current affairs essays for this site (which has taken over my life for the time being). I am also currently engaged in contributing a chapter for a book on the Bush family to be published later this year.

The 1960s to the 1970s
With a comprehensive art school education behind me, in the late 1960s and early 1970s I pioneered areas in the fine arts as a contributor in the first exhibition of kinetic art in the UK. Performance pieces that straddled the space between theatre and fine art, including commissions from the Arts Council and in a number of arts festivals across the UK working with other artists. As with many practicing artists, I combined this with lecturing at art and architecture schools, where again I was part of an on-going process of re-evaluating the role of the creative process in the social sphere, especially at what was then the Polytechnic of Central London (now the University of Westminster) from 1969-73 as a member of a team of artist/educators working in the realm of the social-cultural-perceptual sphere of the built environment.

During this period I worked on community-based design projects including the design and conversion of a double decker bus into a mobile pre-school (Islington Bus Co) in 1972 (which is still in service) and work with Keith Albarn and Partners on a variety of design projects. Later, I moved into more ‘traditional’ areas of public art, completing projects in a variety of media in different parts of the country and for different clients. Work completed included an in-situ concrete mural in Western-Super-Mare and a plastics and light wall for Bath University.

In 1975 I moved to New York City and once more found my diverse cultural background a solid foundation for working in another multi-cultural environment, East Harlem where for six years I directed the design and conversion of the first Hispanic museum in North America, El Museo del Barrio under the leadership of Jack Agüeros, its director. El Museo won awards for its ground-breaking exhibition spaces and the work they contained. This was a particularly rewarding project as it enabled me to synthesise a number of skills on both the practical and theoretical level, and where my hands-on experience and skills in actually building things made a direct impact on the creation of the museum as well as adding to my own abilities.

The 1970s to the 1980s
At the end of the 1970s, I ‘discovered’ the personal computer and found myself once more moving into unexplored terrain and considering the implications of the ‘computer revolution’ as it impacted on — eventually everything. I spent 17 years in New York City where aside from my work at El Museo, I embarked on a career in music (a major passion since I was a kid) for around seven years, writing and producing and completing a musical, "Automatic Love - A Cybernetic Romance", which embodied my interests in the arts, technology and society. One way or the other, this led me to see what I was doing as a creative artist and communicator in a new light and ultimately to my involvement in a wider range of related endeavours which included groundbreaking work in electronic publishing (SouthScan), radio production (WBAI FM), television (South Africa Now) and ultimately on to Africa. During this period I pioneered the use of electronic bulletin boards (New York On-Line BBS, the precursor of the Website) as distributors of news and information globally, which in turn led to my involvement with the African National Congress and later SWAPO in Namibia and work in Central America, again using computers as tools of communication and change. Prior to leaving New York, I again started lecturing at the State University of New York and the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in computer-based graphic design, which combined my experience in traditional media with my newly acquired skills in the world of the computer. But my work in electronic journalism and communications led me inexorably to Africa.

The 1980s to 2002
From 1988 until 2002 in Zambia, Namibia and then in Johannesburg, South Africa, I worked for the ANC in a variety of capacities (with some time spent in Central America), eventually setting up the Election Information Unit for the 1994 democratic elections. I then directed the development of the first digital multi-media centre in Africa in COSATU’s headquarters, the Centre for Democratic Communications. Following this I formed All Things Digital and pioneered Times Media Limited first Web product, the Financial Mail Interactive in 1995, a fully automated pre-press to Web page product. ATD focused on identifying and employing young talent from previously disadvantaged sections of the community. ATD developed a number of innovative, Web-based products, some award winners, including the most successful young, black focused Website, Y-World for Yfm Radio in 1999.

But writing, which has always been a passion and a talent I was fortunate to possess, led me back into the world of words, although I continued to work in the world of information technology but with the focus less on the technology than on the skills needed to harness it in the transformation of society. I lectured and developed courses at the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism at Wits University in the online environment as well workshops on the role of IT in the transformation of government for the School of Public Development Management. Amongst the last projects I completed in South Africa were three scripts for television, for a young, black-owned film production company, Fuzebox Productions on Freedom Day, Youth Day and the National Anthem, Nkosi Sikilel i’Africa for the SA government.