{"id":6,"date":"2012-04-27T16:53:43","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T16:53:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/?page_id=6"},"modified":"2025-09-20T20:10:02","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T20:10:02","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/?page_id=6","title":{"rendered":"About and Contact"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Birmingham has a long and varied history of supporting the development of creativity and socially-focused thinking. The Word&#8217;s the Thing is one small current piece of this much larger jigsaw of activity.<\/p>\n<p>Its main aim is to produce a range of texts and images, openly available to a wide audience, in order to stimulate broader thinking about language; ideas; and the developments of people and places. The contents of this site will change and emerge over time. There is hopefully a deliberate feeling of variety ,contingency and possibility.<\/p>\n<p>The materials on this site are able to be approached in a wide variety of ways. We hope that you enjoy it; discover something to think\/talk about, and that you will want to share it with others.<\/p>\n<p>This site acts as one important strand of a wider constellation of activities that are being carried forward as a fifteen-year creative activity that links the personal, the public and the social within a framework of dynamic interests.<\/p>\n<p>The work on this site is produced in good faith. Its ownership remains at all times jointly with <b>Geoff Bateson<\/b> and <strong>Forward Thinking Developments Limited<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Geoff is a writer, artist and researcher. He is sole director of Forward Thinking Developments Ltd<\/p>\n<p>Previously Geoff has (amongst other things):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Managed partnership arrangements to successfully deliver a \u00a330million set of skills developments<\/li>\n<li>Undertaken a range of reviews and evaluations relating to educational and skills-based developments<\/li>\n<li>Advised on wide-area developments of adult basic skills (as part of national policy implementation)<\/li>\n<li>Provided keynote, panel and workshop inputs to conferences in Canada, UK and Australia<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>and, earlier in his career, he:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Managed area-based adult learning and community development programmes<\/li>\n<li>Was a headteacher of a secondary school, a youth worker, a teacher and a science researcher<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Geoff has an honours degree in Chemistry; an Advanced Certificate in Education; and a PhD in Sociology. In the Queen&#8217;s Birthday Honours list for 2005 he was awarded an MBE for services to literacy and numeracy developments. In 2014 he was invited to be a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce.<\/p>\n<p>Geoff can be emailed directly (<a href=\"http:\/\/administrator@thewordsthething.org.uk\">administrator@thewordsthething.org.uk<\/a>).\u00a0Geoff also has a presence on Amazon&#8217;s site (as <a title=\"ebooks: A variety worth looking at\" href=\"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/?p=181\">Geoff Bateson<\/a>) and has a blog devoted to his approach to writing at (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.geoffbateson.wordpress.com\">www.geoffbateson.wordpress.com<\/a>). His artistic developments over time has been written as a learning journal at <a href=\"https:\/\/thatmanagain.wordpress.com\">https:\/\/thatmanagain.wordpress.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/34600_1448160038393_1528320_n1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-435\" src=\"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/34600_1448160038393_1528320_n1-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"34600_1448160038393_1528320_n[1]\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/34600_1448160038393_1528320_n1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/34600_1448160038393_1528320_n1.jpg 720w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Observations about the content or structure of this site are always welcome via email at <a href=\"http:\/\/administrator@thewordsthething.org.uk\">administrator@thewordsthething.org.uk. \u00a0<\/a>Any contacts will be protected under our Privacy Policy<\/p>\n<p>The majority of content is openly available for non-commercial uses, as long as there is an acknowledgement of its source. The contents of this site are produced within the Creative Commons Licence Attribution &#8211; NonCommercial &#8211; No Derivatives 4.0 International (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/ )<\/p>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Birmingham has a long and varied history of supporting the development of creativity and socially-focused thinking. The Word&#8217;s the Thing is one small current piece of this much larger jigsaw of activity. Its main aim is to produce a range of texts and images, openly available to a wide audience, in order to stimulate broader [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1016,"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions\/1016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}