The Art of Meaning Making
Before I could help others find clarity, I had to understand how clarity happens. Not as a technique, but as a process — the way an idea moves from elusive to articulable, from private to shared, from half-formed to something you can actually act on.
This thread is about the mechanics of meaning: how stories work, how languages are learned, how editing is fundamentally an act of listening, how translation opens rather than closes. It includes my most practical writing and my most experimental. They're connected by the same underlying question: what actually happens when something becomes meaningful?
Featured
What is a story
I have long been fascinated by stories, both as audience, and as a producer. I was a voracious reader as a child, but also watched considerable amounts of movies and TV. This has continued to this day. I’ve dabbled in storytelling, as a novelist, short-story writer, film-maker, and as part of public presentations. I’ve also used stories as a tool of self-discovery. In 2012-2013, I co-hosted 'What's the moral of this', a monthly storytelling event for non-native speakers of English exploring implicit ethical judgements revealed through personal narratives. In 2021, I conducted a parallel practice with my virtue buddy Patrick Laudon. Over the course of a year, we wrote 10 short stories each, following standard plots, in an exploration of genre. (More recently, I encountered the same sources of genre in the remarkable AI-book Literary Theory for Robots.) I have put together a little booklet summarising what is a story. It’s presented here in beta version - with a proper laid out version TBC.
Looking for Common Ground
Published as part of Writing + Concept. Click here for the text.
Storytelling and narrative
Biomimicry
Written with Future Value advisor Michaela Emch, this series offers original lenses on power and innovation, informed by the wisdom of nature.
MOURNING RITUALS – GRIEVING THE 2020 THAT WASN’T
There is no change without grief. New structures, no matter how good, involve the passing of existing ones. All conscious innovators must inquire how we can accept loss and find new meaning from it, individually and as a group? Not to mention, any venture somehow engaging with the metacrisis unfolds against a background of much destruction.
‘Grieving Rituals for the 2020 that wasn’t’ gathered a diverse group to explore this question creatively. I worked with Helen Palmer to develop and trial new rituals to acknowledge and overcome loss, and develop a deeper understanding of our grief for the year that was and was not. By the end, not only did the group experience better connection to themselves and their feelings for 2020 but also developed greater appreciation for rituals. Reflections on this experiment were captured in a podcast series.
DEFAULT SETTINGS – EXPLORING POLYPHONIC STORYTELLING
Digital environments offer great opportunities for community building beyond usual boundaries, if only because they are natively global. But how can you bring together audiences with diverse languages and cultural expectations for fruitful experiences? Default settings was an experimental creative project exploring questions of reflectivity, discourse, polyphony and audience agency. We invited a digital audience and a small cast of diverse associate storytellers to reflect on the various intersecting story-worlds that they inhabit, and stretch their capacity to create a fresh common world by interweaving different stories, stemming from different traditions.
Fictions
Although non-fiction is my primary mode of writing, I occasionally turned to fiction, for pleasure or as a way to make sense of my experience. I share some of those texts here.
Blog series
What is learning?
My early professional life unfolded in universities, teaching languages and linguistics. Pedagogy is core to my practice. This series shares reflections on learning and language learning.
Creative projects
From translation hackathons to festivals, film, blog series and exhibitions, I’ve coordinated, produced and participated in a broad range of creative projects. This series shares memories and key learnings.