Where to begin? People seem to have three different kinds of stories about why they’re here: Return to a previous or authentic awareness; Epiphanic awakening; or a kind of stuttering, growing sense that something has to change. The story I usually tell is a mix of the first and the third. I’ve not had any epiphanies or breakdowns worth telling about, but I do have them every day. Litte epiphanies due to disturbing or affirmatory insights on reading news or seeing signs of oddness or beauty. Mini-breakdowns every night when I despair about the future for my child and her children and everyone else’s. Also, where I am now is a return to how I was raised. I grew up in what was described as ‘the greenest family in Norfolk’ (Norfolk, England, that is), and this was a combination of sustainable rural frugality and early awareness of environmental degradation (e.g. Silent Spring). But the arts in general and art history in particular were what I loved and knew about, so that’s what I did, combined with education. My first proper job was a good one, at the Tate as Education Officer and later I became Head of Learning at the British Library. The Library was extraordinary but I was a manager and the other management were increasingly from financial corporate backgrounds and we could have been speaking Martian to each other. So, I left to set up my own company in 2006, Flow, with Mark Stevenson (author of An Optimist’s Tour of the Future and founder of the League of Pragmatic Optimists). The idea was that this would be a platform for us to develop our own vision, on a foundation of good ethical business. I specialise in consulting arts and heritage organisations, especially on learning and digital strategies. I’ve done some work too in the sector on environmental sustainability and ecological literacy but my bread and butter comes from helping open up collections and content for public engagement with digital tools. In recent months, I’ve been feeling a stronger need to be an activist, a writer and an artist, all those three things together. I still have to eat, so I hope the consultancy work will still be strong, but my creative enquiry into the Learning Planet is becoming more important. I’m involved in a lot of networks, almost too many to mention, including Wikiquals (doing PhD level research and a book in a collaborative group of scholars), Dark Mountain, Re:think, the Happy Museum, a local group called Bold Vision (which includes Transition work, a cafe, cultural programme and running a people’s library), and more. I think I’m in too many networks so I’m slightly wary of getting very into Edgeryders too, but I’m intrigued to know how this might enhance all of that and make communication easier and help action arise from it.
Around this, there is doing photography (about ecology, learning, place and childhood) and being a home-schooler of my 11 year old daughter Megan. The more I can integrate these two things into my professional life, the better. Pretty much everything I think about what matters gets out onto Twitter @bridgetmck and onto my blog thelearningplanet.wordpress.com I love to receive critical commentary on my articles.
My research into the Learning Planet is about how communities can learn faster, learn together and learn with an ecological turn. I want to put this thinking into theory (or rather non-theoretical storytelling) in a book, and also into practice through a co-learning platform (aimed at informal and home-based learners). So, you can see I’m interested in Edgeryders, both as a case study for this book and an exemplification of such a learning platform.
