Chris Third

The Co-production Collective has published helpful new payment guidance. I like how it simplifies eligibility to anyone not there for their job—moving away from potentially patronising terms like 'community' or 'service user'.
www.coproductioncollective.co.uk/news/our-co-...

As the main tourist transport hub for rail travel in Scotland it’s a disgrace and that’s after a refurbishment that went on for years, but the hero is Tom who was the literal linchpin of the whole transport network for a few hours

But it’s the only thing working I the station, Tom is a savant of the timetables, he’s rattling off routes to shouted requests, people are forming groups, passing information around, building systems off his font of knowledge people fly from the crowd to board trains in all corners of the station

Tom it turns out is easy to find, he’s the guy standing in the middle of the platform with about 200 people in a circle around him shouting questions at him. It looks incredibly chaotic and about as un British as a UK train station could get, there’s no queue, no system, just a mob

I’m not sure why but I have to go and ask a guy called Tom, he’s wearing a hat and standing next to the bagel booth (apparently a well know landmark). I do not know where the bagel booth is but on my way I do discover the ‘new’ ticket booth was basically 20m from the old one round a corner…

Anyway I finally figure out they can maybe help me with options for my cancelled train and likely meltdown of the rail network due to a party balloon on the overhead lines. The LNER information booth can’t help, I’m not sure why but they added a new side quest to the adventure

Finally tucked round the corner is an room with a sign saying LNER office, is this just for LNER trains or does it cover the other constantly changing cavalcade of operators, and if I’m a tourist does LNER mean anything to me, would adding information to the sign be too much?

Finally arriving on platform 4 there is no sign of a ticket office, that’s because I didn’t read the sign properly, the office is ‘near’ platform 4 In this case ‘near’ means in the same building have a wander…

Following the signage for platform 4 for some reason involves going right out to the edge of the station over a concourse only to descend back to roughly where you started, carefully ignoring all the signage for the ticket office because it lies, it lies

Edinburgh’s Waverley train station was bedlam today. The ticket office which has for decades been in the middle of the station has moved, is there a helpful sign pointing in the right direction for the new office? There is not… there is a sign that says ticket office is now on platform 4.

Civic pride at co-created Migration Museum toolkit

I'm reading through the Migration Museums excellent casestudy/framework on co-creation of an engagement strategy. There's a real care for the process and respect for contributors, it's great to see continuous reflective and reflexive evaluation embedded in the practice
www.gold.ac.uk/news/migrati...

Research report: what works to increase equality of access to culture for lower socio-economic groups Research prepared for DCMS in 2023 exploring access to culture for lower socio-economic groups.

The DCMS published a report on improving disadvantaged communities engagement with cultural orgs. It puts forward a strong case for co-creation (in a collaborative service design model) to offer more relevant, responsive offering and foster ownership in projects.

www.gov.uk/government/p...

The @ucl.ac.uk has a great podcast series 'Only Collections in The Building' a pragmatic view of dealing with the challenges of addressing and reforming institutional legacies through curatorial practice
blogs.ucl.ac.uk/egypt-hornim...

The co-curators spoke eloquently on their navigation of the roles, responsibilities and personal cost of work that evidenced a reflective practice which seemed to anchor their approach to the process. Inspiring stuff and I hope the NT can learn and integrate that knowledge into the organisation

Really enjoyed the Social History Curators Group conference on Curating Communities this week, highlight for me was the panel on co-curated projects at the National Trust Kedleston Hall. An honest exploration of the challenges and potential for harm that come hand in hand with the opportunities

One of the worse effects of ‘The Orange Deal Maker’ having so much sway on politics is everything get framed as a bargaining chip. It would be nice if policy is led by, y’know the public good for a change. www.msn.com/en-us/money/...

I’m (almost) officially graduated and my dissertation is definitely finished and submitted, so why am I still compulsively hoarding texts on cultural heritage co-production 😂 . Is there some sort of support group for going cold-turkey from academia?
#museums #co-production

Effectively we’re subsidising them to re-post/contextualise our information behind a paywall.

Personally I want to see how the LLM path resolves and don’t want to hinder progress, but I feel a CC style model of if you use our work 4 free you need to publicly share the benefits 4 free feels fair?

In principle the org. wants to disseminate the information and we can’t ignore new platforms. But under current copyright laws our content can’t be used by a third party for their profit, and regardless of the contextual remix this is effectively what the LLM’s are doing.

CC Responds to the United States Copyright Office Notice of Inquiry on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence - Creative Commons In August, the United States Copyright Office issued a Notice of Inquiry seeking public responses to 34 questions (and several sub-questions) about the intersection of copyright law and artificial int...

It feels like legal enforcement is lagging behind the reality at the moment, @creativecommons.bsky.social has an overview of current enforcement creativecommons.org/2023/11/07/c... from a US standpoint. In a world where corps weren’t engaged in a knowledge land grab this would be less problematic

AI Scraping Bots Are Breaking Open Libraries, Archives, and Museums "This is a moment where that community feels collectively under threat and isn't sure what the process is for solving the problem.”

One of the organisations I work for recently had a spate of these DDoS style incidents and beyond the disruption it caused a bump in costs over the month.
The org. provides content for the common good and training closed commercial models doesn’t seem right? www.404media.co/ai-scraping-...

SHCG Conference 2025: Curating Communities Join us at the SHCG Conference 2025 to learn about curating community through case studies, presentations and plenty of time for questions!

it's the SHCG Conference 2025: Curating Communities next week, looking forward to the keynote on community collaboration with colonial collections & the presentation on the fantastic Lascars Heritage project ( www.glasgowlife.org.uk/museums/lasc... ) supported by Glasgow Life
#museums #co-production

It’s #DuvetKnowItsChristmas day! Where families come together under one roof for a few festive nights. Revisited childhood duvet covers, improvised beds in cupboards, sharing rooms with in-laws strange hobbies and sinister dolls. My favourite online Christmas meme comes to BlueSky 🎄

On yesterdays morning run, with dawn only hinting on the horizon I saw a bright point of light moving across the sky, too high for a plane I checked and it was likely the IIS!
So a shout out from a frosty hillside in Scotland to Suni and Butch who will be enjoying the view up there for a bit longer

Photo of a dawn sky graduating orange to deep blue framed by the ridge of distant hills and Scot’s pines

Big skies on the morning run

Hey everyone thank you so much for all the support on our Winter Appeal and Festive Dog show it really means such a lot 🫶❤️🫶❤️

We have basically smashed the appeal target seven weeks early! Thank you so much ❤️🎅

Cover of the book Failed state by Sam Friedman white text over a stylised version of the door of number 10 Downing Street, the 10 on the door has come askew

My current audio book for runs, Failed State by Sam Friedman is fascinating, it goes behind the problems to identify not just the roots of them but the original motivations, a good companion to Isabel Hardman’s Why We Get the Wrong Politicians (which I read last year and has a similar approach)

View of the sun rising over a moorland , a duckboard crosses the landscape framed by isolated Scots Pines

The clocks changing for the winter can be a mixed blessing in Scotland but I am enjoying the sunrises on my morning runs
#running

A crowd of farmers with signs protest a yellow tractor in the backdrop

In their bid to rekindle relations and move closer to Europe Labour have instigated a proper Continental style Farmers protest, complete with tractors
Can we instigate Le grand (3 day) weekend and take all of August off next?