Day 86: The Village

Gabellini Sheppard Chandelier*

When I moved into North Kensington in London in 1996 we had Sainsbury’s on Ladbroke Grove for food shopping, Portobello Road for the eclectic and the quirky.   For more traditional shopping I headed down to High Street Kensington where Whole Foods Market, in the wonderful old Art Deco Barker building, is one of my favourite shops for a gander. The Cheese Room is particularly envigorating.  Now Tesco metro is on our doorstep – in place of the North Pole Gastro Pub that alternatively fizzed and dwindled over the years before it was snapped up by the hungry conglomerate – and the giant Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush brings House Of Fraser, Debenhams and Mark & Spencers all within walking distance.

I am not a shopping mall girl. I find the cornucopia of goods on offer overwhelming and depressing in the extreme. There is something about being in a space chocca with gaping maws looking for my money under artificial lighting that makes me feel that I truly am just a hamster in the unending wheel of life.  How and ever I have discovered a soft spot for Westfield and not just because there is an Apple Store.  There is also the architecture.  Yes it is undercover, yes there is artifical lighting but the combination of the central atrium – that has hosted the Saturday’s and a good sized ice rink every Christmas – plus the unique geodeisic style roof cleaned by City Abseiling bestows it with more of an Eden Project ambiance.  Southern Terrace dining reminds me of Australia for some reason and this is a seriously big achievement. My outings to Westfield are typically mission focused driving me to take a head down in and out approach but today I take a moment to slow down and look up; the view is pretty stunning in The Village – the home of luxury brands – this futuristic chandelier designed lighting was created by New York based spatial architects and interior designers Gabellini Sheppard.

* Apparently photography is forbidden without a permit but I only discovered that after the fact.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 49: Graduating Magicians

The Malificent Billboard, Westfield Shepherd’s Bush

Rory Patton, author of SpringingTiger the Autism Awareness blog, has said ‘magic is a technology we don’t understand yet’.  While it may be true that there isnt tried and proven scientific axiom to explain magic this hasnt stopped Darren Eden of the Academy Of Greatness providing apprenticeship programmes for magicians since 2009, the year I first graduated.  May the 10th was ear marked in my diary as graduation day and as a past graduate I am privileged to be invited to attend the graduation finale in Surrey.

I always love magician gatherings; we operate from a common set of premises, we share a commitment to be conscious, responsible creators and we are eager to master the layering of love, truth and service together to cook up joyful, fun connections and gatherings.  Magic may not be something that I can explain but it is certainly something that I expect to experience now that I am a practising magician.

It was no surprise that my journey started by being swept up into the giant sized portal of The Malificent at Westfield, Shepherd’s Bush, not a little dark and unnerving, but fortunately safely charioted by National Rail to my destination at the grand and turreted Victorian edifice of the Grand Hall of Horsley Towers.  Supper followed by close to twenty individual and unique performances was just the precursor to a very powerful sojourn down the rabbit hole. Bed & breakfast at The Magic Hub (a private residence) was followed by a Sunday afternoon of conscious creation with master magicians but more about that in my next blog!

If you are interested in learning how to make your life more magical Darren Eden is running a free two day Your Call To Greatness event in London on 31st May & 1 June.  It is full of tips and experiential exercises that gives you a taster of the full Transformation Training of 8 weekends over 8 months without any obligation to purchase.  I wont be able to make this work but do give Darren and all the other graduate magicians my love!

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo iPHone app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Be warned I am on my soapbox!  I am not normally one for good causes, I see the world as a place where good and bad are just opposite ends of the same spectrum, where change is constant weaving its magic at the same time as trailing its mucky paws across our familar realities.  So although I am going to invite you to sign a petition what I am really asking is for you to honour what is and be part of the vision of what will be.  That is what I am choosing for Wormwood Scrubs. The scrubs is a scraggy knobble of brush, grassland and woods in west London, England. Most people think it is the prison! It is not particularly pretty, not very well known or well frequented. That is pretty cool, 5 mins from home and I am out in the country; meadow pipits and parakeets, sparrowhawks (see photo) and model airplanes, there are playing fields for the kids and thickets of tangled briars that are rich with blackberries at the end of the Summer. It is one of those places that you can always find space for yourself, even in the Summer. In the winter it is a veritable paradise of mud and squelchy oozing earth – just like the country! When the temperatures drop is crunchy with frost and the air is icicled with magic.Boris Johnson dear man and Lord Mayor of London our latter day Dick Whittington, is being charged with stealing a large assed bit out of the north west corner (see photo) for the trendy HS2 (High Speed Rail Link 2) now I am not against development, in fact I love the new, the transformation of vision and action e.g. Westfield Shephersd’s Bush, the new Imperial College Gradpad and I even like the idea of Park Royal becoming des-res but taking this side swipe out of this unique habitat will alter its character and viability as sustainable slice of nature in London.  I cant see the sparrowhawks, or the meadow pipits hanging around, the wildlife will be squeezed out and this wild, raggy, underbelly of London will be tamed parkland for humans.  Now you may not care about my Scrubs but is there somewhere that you value that is slowly being eroded and changed, cleaned up and modified, somewher that perhaps could so easily slip from what is to you now to something conjured up by a development company?  Is that what you want or do you want a say?  I would love Wormwood Scrubs to be recognised as a vital and unique environment, I would love to see rangers running educational events, night time sleep outs under the stars, sustainable buildings and a gentle integration with the new development, how cool a community coffee shop and craft centre, more like Camley Street where I celebrated a 70th birthday wrapped up under dripping trees or Kennington Park Cafe where I attended a night time Singing Bowls ceremony.  I have signed the petition not so much because I want to Save Our Scrubs but because I want to .  I dont want it to stay the same I want to breathe new life into it for itself so that together we are all more.

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/london-mayor-s-office-save-our-scrubsThe computer generated image of the new development and its impact is from the Lord Mayor’s consultation document.

http://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Old_Oak_Part_1_0.pdf