Feeling rather proud today...

Last September we set up Open to 'bring the right people together to change the world'.

Earlier this year we met with the lovely people at the Domino Recording Company. Shortly afterwards, we met with them again and brought our friends from Oxfam along with us.

On August 17th, The Arctic Monkeys will release their new single 'Crying Lightning' exclusively through independent record stores and one national retailer. I think you can guess who...

It's a fantastic idea and a fantastic story. It brings together art, charity, the state of our high streets, recession, you name it. It's going to be big.

Was this our brainchild?
No. It actually came from Domino while we were throwing ideas around in our first meeting.

Did we do all the work?
No. We walked away as soon as the deal was in place.

Did we bring the right people together to change the world?
We like to think so.

Read all about it. Soon.

On August 3rd or thereabouts, there will be a big story in the national media about charity and music. We will say 'we set that up' and you probably won't believe us.

You heard it here first.

Nuclear Scare

I am in one of my favourite places on earth – Kirksanton in Cumbria. I’ve been coming here to stay with friends for ten years now and my children (see above) now love it even more than me.

When the Lake District National Park was created, this little pocket of land was excluded because it was home to an ironworks that would have been prohibited under national park rules. The ironworks closed in the 60s but nobody moved the boundaries – which is a bit of a pain because RWE has now bought a farm here and wants to build a nuclear power station on it.

Ironically, this will entail removing the wind farm that I can see from my window and, tragically for my friends who run a place here offering farm holidays for disabled people, replacing it with a great big reactor.

The whole community is pulling together in opposition and, as far as I can see, the whole plan to build a nuclear power station on cheap greenfield land (as opposed to next to Sellafield which is half an hour up the road) seems extremely dodgy. It makes you wish Paul Foot was still alive – or that George Monbiot would get stuck in.

In the meantime, this was one of Kirksanton’s contributions to the local scarecrow festival.

Don't mention the recession...

There has been much debate recently about whether or not charities should mention the recession in appeals. Despite much 'evidence' to the contrary, we instinctively thought that they should. So we did. In fact, we wrote an emergency appeal all about it.

As a result, one of our clients is now £190,000 (or 316%) over target.

No, it wasn't a split test. But it was a cracking letter and the money flooded in. I guess it's all in the delivery.

James

A Bird Made of Gold

Children say the stupidest things, don't they? And as if you needed it, here's some more proof.

We asked some of the kids at an Action for Children family centre how they would say thank you to someone who had done something special to help them. And what did they say? They said that they would send them a bird made of gold.

Now as we all know, the proper way to thank a donor is with a poorly-written glorified receipt from someone with 'administrator' in their job title. But do kids care about the proper way? Do they hell! In fact, to compound their silliness this lot only went and made a picture of this so-called gold bird.

Unfortunately, Action for Children are sticklers for authenticity so we now have to send a photo of this monstrosity (modeled here by my daughter for reasons of confidentiality) to their donors. I shudder to think how they will react.

I share this only in the hope that others will learn from our mistake and keep thanking where it belongs – in the hands of professionals.

James

What a Pair of F***ing Nutters

This is David (who I met on my Masters degree course at Bristol) with his wife Angharad and their son Charlie. Although they look as if they're on their way to a fancy dress party they are in fact moving to Afghanistan. Hence the title.

This is how David, a former news cameraman who also served two tours in Afghanistan with the army, explains what, at first glance, seems a rather odd lifestyle choice.

"We're going to live in north east Afghanistan for the next five or so years to promote and develop the return of tourism to the area. The Wakhan corridor has some of the best climbing in the world, it's remained completely trouble free and the local people really want to see tourists return.

"In July four Afghans will attempt to climb the country's highest mountain – which will be an historic first. If we can help provide the right media coverage of this achievement it will be a unifying event for the entire nation just as the success of the Afghan cricket team has really brought people together. This might seem like just too small a gesture to make a difference but the BBC's correspondent in Kabul told me that this is the only good news he will cover in Afghanistan this year. And that makes it important.

"Afghans are renowned as much for their hospitality as for their ability to repel foreign armies. It's about time the world paid more attention to the 99.95% of Afghans who aren't in the Taliban."

Angharad, who is a paediatric nurse, will also be helping to run a healthcare and development projects for local women.

So not quite such a pair of nutters after all. I for one can't wait to see what happens and I suspect that David's blog will make our intermittent drivel seem even less enthralling.

You can find out more at their website. And if you want to bung their project (which is a registered Community Interest Company) a fiver a month until it becomes self-sustaining then their bank details are:

Account Name: Mountain Unity International
Account Number: 76056341
Sort Code: 60 17 24

What a pair of f***ing heroes.

James

That feels better...

This one doesn't really need much explanation. The idea came from the wonderful Shormeh Omaboe at Centrepoint, Open wrote and designed it in a couple of hours and our friends at Total Media did a brilliant job of sticking it where it hurt the most – in Sunday's Telegraph.