Kester Brewin

I’ve been away for a couple of days, so haven’t posted again on the aftermath of the night of looting that gripped various locations in London, and then spread to other cities in the UK. But in the mean time I’ve faced some criticism for my previous post for a) appearing to back away from [...]

  It’s perhaps too soon to work out what the hell really happened in London last night, or why. I stayed up til 2am following the news and the Twitter feeds, and I have to say it was one of the saddest nights I’ve ever spent in the capital. There has already been some debate [...]

As the US battles with itself over the debt crisis, and Europe struggles to get to grips with economically weaker nations threatening the Euro, I’ve been mulling over a conversation I had with Tom Sine and another significant leader who’ll I’ll call B at Wild Goose a month or so ago (I won’t name him, [...]

Interesting piece yesterday looking at why kids might play their crappy, tinny music through their stupid phones when on buses on trains. And why good, responsible adults might find their blood boiling when it happens. With mobile phones in many a teenager’s pocket, the rise of sodcasting – best described as playing music through a [...]

Other Other [1] |  Other Other [2] In the previous two posts I’ve been trying to tease out some of the issues being engaging ‘the other’ – especially the problem of there being ‘other others’ who we may not have considered when we act. One response to the exponentially expanding series of others is to [...]

I came across this poster advertising ‘Black History Month‘ at a local school. Black History Month now lasts… 5 days. I don’t think the school have it wrong actually. As a teacher I can see that Black History Month has become a distortion which can actually serve to perpetuate the white Euro-centric view of history. [...]

Really good time last night at St John’s College in Durham, where I was taking part in the ‘Senior Tutors’ Forum’ – a space for all members of the St John’s community, from academics to freshers to post grads and ordinands to come together in a relaxed setting and chew over some issues. Last night [...]

Another quite brilliant animation from the RSA – this time of a lecture by Sir Ken Robinson. It’s on changing educational paradigms, but the applications to changing theological ones are there for the taking. Beautifully done, and very very inspiring.

The announcement that there will be no cap on tuition fees for English universities made me very sad today. Granted, our country’s finances are in dire straits. But it seems hugely short-sighted to try to claw back that money by raising costs for students, and setting them off in life with huge amounts of debt. [...]

I’ve said it many times here before, but if you haven’t already tuned in to Radio 4′s ‘In Our Time‘ archive on your iTunes, then you’re seriously missing out. Listening to it I’m always reminded of the great quote in Good Will Hunting where Will quips to a Harvard student: you wasted $150,000 on an [...]