This week has seen a great response to our Gay Africa campaign in conjunction with The Red Rooms (http://www.theredroom.org.uk/hoxton.htm) and we’ve been covering a great subject with a fantastic range of contributors and words. If you haven’t seen any then please take a moment to sit back and enjoy:

http://www.wordia.com/wotd/2010/2/22

http://www.wordia.com/wotd/2010/2/24

http://www.wordia.com/wotd/2010/2/26

We are continuing to film more exciting words with excellent contributors for our Creative Arts week that begins on the 15th March. I was lucky enough this week to catch up the Kenneth Tharp, who is the Chief Executive of The Place that is a dance and performance arts centre. Kenneth’s performing career included working with London Contemporary Dance Theatre (1981-1994) and Arc Dance Company (1994-2005). He has worked extensively as a choreographer, teacher and director and as Lead Artist & Artistic Advisor for The Royal Ballet School’s Dance Partnership & Access Programme and Assistant to the Head of Contemporary Dance at Millennium Dance 2000. With composer Simon Redfern he co-founded Artyfartyarts, a multi disciplinary arts group, and he is on the Board of Trustees at the Royal Opera House. In 2003, he was awarded an OBE for services to dance, and he undertook a NESTA funded Fellow on the Clore Leadership Programme in 2005/6.

Kenneth was a pleasure to meet and gave a great definition of ‘Instinct’ which will be live on Wordia during our Creative Arts week, so be sure to check back to see Kenneth in action.

On Monday I got to catch up with a great friend of the Wordia team Dean Atta, who is a very talented poet and theatre producer. We are working with Dean on the Gay Africa campaign which aims to bring a collection of poets, authors and public speakers together to discuss and explore the issues within the Gay community.

The Gay Africa event is being held at The Free Word Centre (www.freewordonline.com) on Sunday 28th February and we invite you all to come along and listen to some great minds discussing this great campaign. Be sure to check out Wordia.com everyday next week to catch some of the speakers defining a new word for us everyday.

On Tuesday I we got the chance to mix it up a little bit as we caught up the Vauxhall UK Beatboxing 2009 champion MC Zani. Zani took us step by step though what is the word ‘beat’ means to him and gave us a quick lesson in how to beat box so make sure you check MC Zani out on the site at:

http://www.wordia.com/wotd/2010/2/18

Zani is a world-class beatboxer who has worked with the likes of Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift and Alicia Keys. However, Zani has not let this go to his head and still works in his local community with kids and young people on youth schemes encouraging kids beatbox and apply themselves to this or any other art form.

We are still working on out huge project with the team at Artis and we are now in the process of booking a venue and a date for the launch of this campaign so we will keep you posted with more details as soon as we get them.
We did get the chance to meet up with Baroness McIntosh this week for a coffee and a definition.  Baroness McIntosh (or Jenny as she insisted that we call her) is a British arts consultant, theatre executive and Labour politician and works very closely with the team at Artis.

Jenny explored with is the meaning of creation and how important it is to encourage children to create new ideas, concepts and art to keep themselves creatively satisfied.

Jenny also mentioned to us that she had recently been on the ‘You & Yours’ BBC radio 4 show discussing children’s TV and the amount of imports we have from America and Japan as apposed to UK made content. Jenny is a firm believer in the UK as well as the power of a child’s mind and believes that we as a nation should be taking greater initiatives to create better TV content for our children rather than importing other programs and shows to fill the gaps in the schedules.

Keep your eyes peeled on the site next week for all the Gay Africa words, as don’t forget to check back into the blog next week as I am due to meet with comedian Tania Edwards and dance artist and Chief Executive of The Place Kenneth Tharp.

Well, then you’ll love our new word quiz: VOCABILITY - a word challenge game with a difference!

Test just good your vocabulary is – and how many words you know compared to your friends – in our new, never-ending word quiz. Challenge your buddies and the rest of the world – and test your vocability!

Good luck.

http://www.wordia.com/Games/biggest-vocabulary/question

A very happy new year from the Wordia Team

We’re now super busy developing Wordia Schools: a dedicated Wordia schools environment that works within school online safety filter and is private for security purposes…

But as a small team, it’s not easy pushing forward on a few levels. For starters, two development environments near-doubles the team’s work-load – from both a technical and content production perspective. We’re making these changes as we can see the potential in a collaborative, ‘learning by doing’ audio-visual schools dictionary – and it looks like some of you do too!

Over the last few months we’ve created a Pilot group of passionate literacy and ‘ICT in the classroom’ educators – individuals and schools excited about the potential of what Wordia Schools could become – folk, keen to help steer our direction in education. It’s this shared belief and opportunity that adds to the excitement – and challenge (and keeps us going!).

If you hadn’t spotted it, we theme our Word of the Day videos by weekly topic, so this week we’ve taken a playful and light-hearted approach to the Christmas period, filming with some fantastic comedians and entertainers exploring Crimbo-language, from Danny Robins, to Tiernan Douieb, to  McNeil and Pamphilon.

The mighty McNeil and Pamphilon:

http://www.wordia.com/wotd/2009/12/14

We’re always on the look out for partners for our themed weeks (we develop and produce 52 themed weeks per year!), so if you have an suggestion or an idea for a week, then we’d love to hear from you! Please drop us a line at: production@wordia.com

Oh and if you missed it, one of our favourite recent themed weeks was in partnership with the British Library, when we explored the language of entrepreneurship with some of the Dragon’s from BBC’s Dragon’s Den!

Doug Richard:

http://www.wordia.com/wotd/2009/11/18

Enjoy!

Wordia team

We’re looking for very short flash fiction stories, no longer than 500 words, that incorporate the following seven words:

REFUSE

CASE

LIGHT

WOUND

FAST

ROW

NOTE

Each short story should centre on ONE of these words – e.g. if you choose ‘note’, the story might be about a note that is written by one of the characters.

But as an extra, intriguing twist, ALL SIX of the other words should be used in some form, somewhere in rest of the text – e.g. the story about the note must also include the words: refuse, case, light, wound, fast and row, in some form (i.e. refused or fasting are acceptable).

Your submission can be any genre or style – in fact, we’re looking for interesting uses of the words!

Successful pieces will be featured at East of the Web and Wordia. The Wordia team have asked seven leading authors to debate and explore the meaning of one of these words, published as Word of the Day over ‘Flash Fiction Week’!

Wordia is about shared perspectives of language, so why not explore and add your own take on what one of these words means? We looking forward to seeing the results (and perspectives!)

And this year, he’s dishing them out as well as taking them.

Poacher Turned Gamekeeper

For a comedian, the Edinburgh Fringe is like one of those relationships you have where, even though you know you’re going to get hurt, you somehow find yourselves always ending up back in bed together. Year after year, we head up there with dreams of winning awards and landing big money TV deals; some do, a lot don’t, but still the buzz of this strange and unique experience – like a holiday camp for stand ups – draws us all back.

This year, I’m poacher turned gamekeeper. Instead of performing, I’ll be watching shows for Radio 4’s Saturday Review. It makes me feel slightly uncomfortable telling other comedians that I will be there as (whisper it) ‘ a critic’. It’s tantamount to confessing I slept with their wife or defecated on their collection of Bill Hicks DVDs.

Comedians and critics may be co-dependent but we will never get on. A few years ago I took part in a Comedians vs Critics football match. All the critics knew who we were but we had no idea who they were. In the second half when people started making connections – “their centre forward is the bloke from the Evening Post who gave me two stars” – the tackles went in a lot harder.

It always feels a bit weird going up to the festival if I’m not doing a show. Edinburgh is to comics what Ibiza is to DJs; anyone who is anyone is there and if you’re not gigging, you feel like you’re missing out. That’s where the Ibiza analogy ends; the weather is always awful.

I think one of the most interesting things this year will be seeing how the Fringe rides out the recession. With more and more people opting for ’staycations’, it may be that a trip to Scotland’s hilly rain-soaked capital offers an interesting and affordable alternative to the annual break in Tuscany or Provence. Who needs sun and red wine when you can have street performance and deep-fried pizzas?

This could be the year that the Fringe reclaims its ‘DIY’ status. When I first performed  there as a student in 1997, in a tiny sweaty attic room so hot that men in the front row actually took off their shirts and sat there bare-chested, we were completely unheard of but people came and watched. We were probably quite awful, but for only a few quid a ticket, they weren’t afraid to take a risk.

In recent years though, with ticket prices hitting £15, audiences tend to be more wary about who they give their money to, relying on bigger name comics who they’ve seen on the telly and often missing out on some of the rougher diamonds and undiscovered gems who can’t afford to splash out on billboards and adverts on buses. Last summer however, the Free Fringe, organised by legendary Edinburgh Festival veteran Peter Buckley Hill, started to attract both punters and performers and 2009 sees the debut of the ‘Five Pound Fringe’ where every show at the venues involved will cost – you guessed it – a fiver.

There are some decent acts doing these cheap shows, perhaps because comedians themselves are starting to feel the pinch. Putting on a show at one of the big established venues can cost as much as a deposit on a small house once you’ve paid for publicity costs, venue hire, accommodation and of course beer money, and some Edinburgh stalwarts are now opting to do shorter runs at smaller venues and pass on the savings to their audience. This can only be a good thing. This summer, go and see one or two big names at fifteen quid a pop and then take in 6 other shows for the same cost. Of course I get in free anyway – I’m a reviewer; I just need to get over the self loathing first.

Game, set and match to the Wordia team who have working with the LTA (Lawn Tennis Association) to get ‘British Tennis Week’ up and running as our next campaign!

We have been filming down at the LTA’s very impressive, very modern training grounds over the last few weeks to meet and greet some of the existing and rising stars of UK tennis. We have also endured the blistering heat of the Wimbledon queue to get some very enthusiastic fans to give us their views on the words for ‘British Tennis Week’.

We have braved sunburn and dehydration, but it is all worth it in the name of Wordia, and next week’s campaign is set to be as scorching as the sun has been over the Wimbledon skies.

So starting Monday 29^th June we will have some great names from UK tennis up on the site giving us their unique views and ideas on some inspirational words, and how these words are applicable to them in their everyday life.

 We have some great talent lined up for this weeks Word of The Days, so don’t’ forget to log in on Sunday to check it out and to see the new layouts and additions to the website!

 Firstly, a big technical development; we’ve changed the way we produce and publish our word of the day videos. We’re now ‘theme-ing’ our Word of the Day videos, creating a week of related words by topic. This allows us to create themed content around public events (‘Christmas Week’ for example, with words relating to the festive period). 

We’re kicking things off with an exciting partnership with Refugee Week, starting June 14th – a week of words, raising awareness of refugees in conjunction with a fantastic media partner (stay tuned!). 

What better way to start this week long activity, than by filming at the Celebrating Sanctuary event on London’s Southbank (22K people!). If you want to come down and have some fun, support a great charity – and even meet the Wordia team and define a word of your own – then check out http://www.refugeeweek.org.uk for all the details. See you there.

On a different note, we’re still busy filming great Word of the Day content (you have subscribed, right…?); Wednesday was a real treat as we got the chance to catch up with world music legend Baaba Maal, http://www.baabamaal.tv. The Senegalese super star took us on a journey around his favourite London record store before hitting the stage to play out songs from his latest album, much to delight of the crowd.

Friday saw us whipping up a storm with the Irish indie boys, The Blizzards. We were treated to some good old-fashioned rock & roll as Niall from the band serenaded us with his melodic tones and explained his thoughts on ‘Reverie’ (coming soon!).

Saving the best ’til last we’ve just met and filmed comedy genius and living legend, Mr Andrew Sachs for Refugee Week (Andrew’s father moved to the UK from Occupied Nazi Germany). Andrew had some a truly unique perspective of the word ‘Home’. 

Don’t forget to check out Andrew, Baaba and much much more from Sunday 14^th June as part of our Refugee Week activity.

If you have any thoughts, comments or suggestion for us, please drop us a note to:

production@wordia.com. 

Looking forward to hearing from you.

The Wordia team