How to try and sum up 14 pretty incredible days in a single blog post...
I've met over 50 rather special individuals who have benefited directly from our innocent Foundation
Drunk about 20 cups of hot milk, straight from the yard
Been given one jack fruit
Had 2 delicious coconuts from the tree
Been lucky enough to sit in on 3 of the monthly meetings run at local village level by disabled people for disabled people, where the big decisions get made.
And almost been launched through the roof of 1 Indian bus (note to self: never, ever sit on the back row).
Trying to give a picture of all the people that I've met is a lot more difficult. I've been totally blown away by the sheer determination to drive change that I have witnessed this past fortnight- but one of the most striking examples I've seen is a man I met called Poundurai.
ADD met Poundurai at a Federation meeting for disabled people that they attended about 5 years ago. He wasn't in a leadership role at the time, but they noticed his potential and began working with him more closely over the years to support the work that he was doing.
5 years on, and he now represents over 2300 disabled people in a block of over 40 villages in his area. He's the elected President of the Disability Development Trust, a co-ordinator of the governement disability programme, and Leader of the National Federation for the Blind, fighting tirelessly to make sure that disabled people get a fair deal. He and his team have helped more disabled people get bank loans than any other group in the area, they've taught parents of severely disabled children how to teach their children to wash and dress, and they've ensured that when things aren't right, they're addressed.
When I was there, we spoke to a lady whose postman had been skimming 500 rupees for himself off the government benefits that he was supposed to be delivering her in full each month. Apparently this is rather common.
From the look on Poundurai's face, I suspect the postman might think twice about it next time.
We have a new book coming out soon. It will be introduced properly on this blog and elsewhere shortly, but before it gets to the shops, we just wanted to share a modern day parable.
If you're ever writing a book, and the deadline is looming, and your publisher is rightly asking you when it all might be ready, and the printers are getting impatient, and the boss is getting nervous, and you're wondering if you really have enough time to get everything done, don't fret. Just look at this photo and you will realise that whatever hurdles you must hurdle, whatever mountains you must climb, you can succeed. It will happen if you summon the positive mental strength. Pull the sledge.
On a very rainy Saturday four weeks ago, we held a little workshop here at Fruit Towers to launch our mini movies competition. Ben Wheatley- film director, very funny chap, and the maker of our superhero ad- spent the day with us, talking about his own experience, sharing top tips, and helping our film makers' make their own little mini movies on the day.
This is our little video about the day- thanks to Mark and Dan for all the time they put into making this for us:
To find out how you could get your work on TV, and win £5000, take a peak here here.
Nick Cave, Phillip Pullman, Margaret Atwood, and Graham Norton.
Under the shadow of Nelson's Column.
Reading.
This, dear readers, is no fiction, but could instead become your Friday night if you are very lucky, because we have some rather special tickets to give away.
10,000 people will gather in Trafalgar square this Friday (the 4th) to be treated to a wide range of performances and readings from some of the most celebrated artists of stage, screen and theatre. And because here at Fruit Towers we like nothing more than to squirrel away with a good book, we decided we'd like to get involved and support this event.
Friday night kick starts 'World Book Night', a nationwide initiative to celebrate and encourage reading- as part of this, 1 million books will be given out the day after by 20,000 passionate readers who have volunteered to get involved. One of these is our lovely Katie here at innocent, pictured here with her favourite read.
So if you know your Forster from your Fabric and your Tolstoy from your Turnmills, and would love nothing more than to spend your Friday evening raving about reading, we might just be able to make it happen for you. We have 20 sets of tickets to give away- to be in with the chance to get your hands on a set, just take a peak here.
For many, this will go down as the day when it rained a lot, or as the weekend where they had a particularly tasty croissant for breakfast.
But for me, Sat 19th Feb will be marked as my favourite day at work. Ever.
A few weeks ago, we blogged a post inviting people to come along to a special film makers' workshop here at Fruit Towers. 60 soaked, but surprisingly chirpy, budding film makers came through the doors of the Towers on Sat for a very special workshop with Ben Wheatley - film director, funny man, and chap who made our advert.
With beanbags and biscuits, and a Wizard of Oz style presentation from up on the balcony, Ben shared some of his top tips for film making, ranging from how to use storyboards effectively to the importance of time management in directing.
We'll let you into a secret...the number 1 rule of film directing?
Never, ever sit down.
In the afternoon, our budding film makers were set loose to create their own 30 second mini movie superhero movie, armed with Ben's tips and a no expenses spared* film makers' kit.
*this may not be strictly true
They looked up for the challenge, so we threw in additional angle of artistic opportunity/anguish and gave them each a genre or theme for their mini movie, ranging from slasher horror to circus chic.
They spent a bit of time brainstorming...
...and then the magic started to really happen as the gaffa tape came out, the fishwire was attached, and a selection of Fruit Towers' finest random props were put to excellent use.
The result? 9 truely excellent films watched with lashings of popcorn that had us in stitches.
Check out some of the results, and find out how you can get involved in our mini movies competition here.
Thanks so much to those of you who came down for the day. We'll be smiling about it for a while to come.
We found a new website yesterday, called learn something new everyday. It's nice and colourful, and does exactly what it says on the tin. Here's a few of our favourite learnings from the archives...
Last week myself and Ceri (doing our very best catalogue poses below) drove a grassy van down the entire length of the M4 to West Wales for a long weekend at the Do lectures.
We rambled, ate hearty food, drank tea, chatted to strangers who became friends, chatted to Ade, went bird watching and slept under the stars in kata's (Swedish tipis). And learnt loads. Like loads and loads. In the spirit of 'sharing is caring' we've now started to spread some of the lessons we picked up throughout fruit towers. Here's the left overs from a session we did yesterday.
If you want to decipher the mystic one liners we'll give a curated guide to the best of this year's lectures once all the videos are up online. Done?
We have a competition to tell you about. We want kids to design our packaging, and the best designs will end up being used in real life – in the shops and everything. Quite exciting. As you might know, we quite like putting different stuff on the back of the kids smoothie packs, to keep the young ones entertained (and sometimes even educated). But we figure that as a bunch of old people, we should let the kids have a go themselves.
There are four age categories (under 8's, 9-11, 12-14, 15-16), with the very best design from each age group appearing on our packs in spring/summer 2008. And five runners up from each category will receive a year’s supply of smoothies and a visit to their school by our DGV to hand out smoothies. We’re not necessarily looking for amazing works of art – what we’re after is creativity, smart ideas and something that’s relevant to what we do. The judging will be done by children's author/illustrator Lauren Child, creator of Charlie and Lola and Clarice Bean. And that’s that. It’s a pretty exciting thing to have a go at – visit www.innocentkids.co.uk/win to find out more.
We know that people sometimes stop by our blog for some business inspiration and an insight into our entrepreneurial world. Well that and trying to win a stack of great CDs by finishing a random sentence.
Anway we thought we'd share some stuff with you that will save you a good few quid on going to expensive conferences. First up is our Rich (above) giving a bit of background on innocent. You may notice that he's got himself a bit out of sync in the video. This happens every now and again especially in Monday morning staff meetings, a good slap on the back normally sorts it out though.
Then the nice people at Thoughtful have been very, well thoughtful and posted up some webcasts from an thought provoking recent conference on business and sustainabilty. It includes some interesting thoughts from our friend Russell (a connoisseur of interesting things) talking about Wattson's and stuff.
Last but not least is another great set of webcasts from Little Big Voice organised by our friends at howies in the summer. Russell turns up again here (he's good at talking) along with our very own Dan.
It's been over ten long years since Wicksy first sat down at a piano and tinkled out 'Every Loser Wins' (they had amazing acoustics in the Queen Vic back then). Well this week we learnt the true poignancy of Wicksy's words the hard way.
Do you remember our attempt to break the world record for the longest bunting in the world at our village fete in Regent's Park? Well, we failed. We didn't quite make it. The current record is still held by Wendy Hughes, helped by 6,000 Buckinghamshire school children.
It's taken us a while to measure up all the different bits of bunting but the final total came to 0.455 miles, 771.72 metres short of the record unfortunately.
But as Wicksy sang, every loser does indeed win and we have also won in many ways...
You sent us so much beautifully handmade bunting that we felt truly in awe of your creativity and dedication.
We got to hang out with the Girl Guides for a weekend as they helped us to organise our attempt.
It got us all together for a lunch time of bunting making at Fruit Towers and cheered the office up with the tangles we put up afterwards (I bet the Central Office of Information has never looked like this on a random Wednesday in July).
We're sorry that we failed, but you can't win them all. We feel humble in our failure but would like to thank every single one of you who helped or donated bunting to the attempt.
Just watch this space next year, we're determined to get in that book now.
(Oh and if you fancy getting yourself one of those ghetto blasters that were all the rage in Albert Square in 1986 then have a look here).
