iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The last event of @southbankcentre.bsky.social 's brilliant Creative Intelligence festival, supported by @ukri.org and AHRC. A triumphant affirmation of the persisting relevance of this great centre and the role of #arts and #humanities #research in tackling vital contemporary issues in new ways

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I knew far too little about U Thant, UN Secretary General 1961 to 1971 before I read his grandson Thant Myint-U's illuminating account. This poignant quote is from the speech the Secretary gave at the 25th anniversary of the United Nations in autumn 1970 (Words in alt text)

As we watch the sun go down, evening after evening, through the smog across the poisoned waters of our native earth, we must ask ourselves seriously whether we really wish some future universal historian on another planet to say about us: "With all their genius and with all their skill, they ran out of foresight and air and food and water and ideas," or, "They went on playing politics until their world collapsed around them."

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

A superb evening at Charing Cross Theatre for a double header - Brecht / Weill and Cocteau / Poulenc. Katherine McIndoe sublime in both and Elspeth Wilkes especially brilliant in the latter. A very short run but worth catching if you can

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

After this great news please do follow @roseplayhouse.bsky.social and www.roseplayhouse.org.uk for news of events and further progress on this remarkable site, saved for us dramatically (!) in 1989 but still needing our care - and become a Friend with me and many others!

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

This has to be the moment that we come together for all of science, not just some of it, and that means we will all see change and we will all feel its sharp edge. But we need to look, now, past what we may no longer be able to do, to the future we need to build.

Houses enmeshed in a tree; image from the Barbican show In Other Worlds, by Liam Young

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

and I have reflected with gratitude on the comments of a former St Andrews colleague of mine, Jim Naismith www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-react... And I would note that every Research Council has and will continue to support STFC in various ways, including - as we have - surrendering budget

Finally, I hope there is time to reflect on some of rhetoric that accompanied the consultation. Some comments seemed to attribute malign intent to the current STFC leadership which was entirely unfair. Given where STFC & UKRI found themselves, painful decisions were all that was left. It is easy to demand what must be saved without proposing the means to do so.

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Parts of the budget come under particular pressure, including international subscriptions. I hold the international portfolio in UKRI and I believe in our global reach. it's why the Square Kilometre Array (HQ @jodrellbank.bsky.social) is exciting (and additionally it supports equitable funding)

Photograph of telescopes in the desert with title: The World's Largest Radio Telescope

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

@ukri.org has developed a mission to advance knowledge, improve lives and drive growth - and that's what secured a decent settlement in a tough funding round, when many departmental budgets went down www.ukri.org/publications...

Graph of UKRI's split between curiosity driven research, strategic priorities, innovation and enabling and strengthening UK R&D

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

An encouraging message from Tim Roca, MP for Macclesfield, on continued and alternative funding for @jodrellbank.bsky.social @ukri.org

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

fully support the significance of the site architecturally and in the history of the architecture of sceince in the twentieth century, and indeed @c20society.bsky.social 's advocacy. @jodrellbank.bsky.social won't close though and they have a strong management plan

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I completely agree on the importance of the site and its evocative power - and the outreach. but it is worth saying that however difficult the cuts, @jodrellbank.bsky.social isn't closing and its outreach and public engagement will continue.

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

absolutely right - brilliant thread. and therefore good news that @jodrellbank.bsky.social won't shut !

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

And scientists should care about facts. There's a legitimate debate about distribution of funds across the landscape of research and innovation for all of science, including arts and humanities. But the fact is - @jodrellbank.bsky.social isn't closing and I look forward to its future success

The Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK
© Anthony Holloway

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

@ukri.org have posted on the continuation of @jodrellbank.bsky.social 's site, science and outreach, and this post from @manchester.ac.uk is also helpful www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/news/display...

Message Reads: Thanks for your messages of support today - it; been moving to see how much Jodrell means to so many of you. while these cuts are significant, Jodrell Bank remains a major scientific, cultural and economic centre nationally and for the lcal area. We will be working with colleagues from The University of Manchester and other partners to secure the future of the Lovell telescope and e-Merlin.

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Yes - it's just shot through with superb turns of phrase. I am glad @southbankcentre.bsky.social are celebrating the Festival but we cd have done so much more...

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

"And we need all of those things right now to remind us that we can be good-spirited, that we don’t have to make corruption, we don’t have to make greed, we don’t have to make power.” Tracy Emin, soon at @tate.bsky.social

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

"Art is to me, now, probably one of the last good things we’ve got left as human beings. There’s something about making something from ourselves which is beautiful and otherworldly as well. .... Tracy Emin

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Once someone threw a stone in the water; those ever-widening circles, even now, are us. Cees Nooteboom, Monk's Eye, tr David Colmer

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Once someone threw a stone in the water; those ever-widening circles, even now, are us. Cees Nooteboom, Monk's Eye, tr David Colmer

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. Tom Stoppard 1937-2025

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

"In London #November isn't a month, it's a state of mind." Antal Szerb, Journey by Moonlight

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

Profoundly beautiful account of the history of snow studies, the fragility of snow and the impact of the anthropocene by Sverker Sörlin. Also an appeal for a different way of doing #science

Book cover, Sverker Sörlin, Snö, a detail of snow covering trees and landscape from a painting by Gustav Fjaestad

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

and something else was with me in the dark spirits were in the land, but no one's ghost for, had they been there, out behind the yards, I would have seen them in their gloves and scarves dusted with moonshine and frost for the Great Beyond John Burnside for #Halloween

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

Experiments in nature; Penone Thoughts in the Roots (Serpentine Gallery); Jarman The Black Paintings (Amanda Wilkinson) "Around you the landscape lies transfigured. Here is the Amen beyond the prayer." Jarman

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

Sad to see John Walter’s imaginative artwork coming down from the Thames Tideway site in Bermondsey. Hoping there is a new artwork to come…

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

Kiss me, end of summer, on the mouth Tell me you won't go too far away Come back with love upon your shoulders And your weight won't have been in vain Sandro Penna, tr Alexander Booth @wordkunst.bsky.social @seagullbooks.bsky.social

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

"Poetry may make nothing happen, but a novel destroyed Hiroshima and without Hiroshima there is no me and these words erase themselves and me with them." Richard Flanagan, Question 7.

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

H G Wells, dotd 1946 "Without Rebecca West’s kiss H.G. Wells would not have run off to Switzerland to write a book in which everything burns, and without H.G. Wells’s book Leo Szilard would never have conceived of a nuclear chain reaction...

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

If you find your way to the Royal Academy's provocative Kiefer / van Gogh show, look out for Lesley Chamberlain's superb A Shoe Story: van Gogh, the Philosophers and the West "The capacity of #art to protect and protest, to stand on real ground"

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

The Edward Burra show @tate.bsky.social has gathered attention for his striking depictions of France and Spain, but in light of current conversations below this 1963 depiction of violence against a straw man resonates. Burra was himself in many ways an outsider through his sexuality and invalidity.

Edward Burra The Straw Man, men violent punch and kick a straw man beneath a railway bridge. A woman and child walk away in the background.

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

Over the sunstruck, drystone wall we were ambushed by the sway and scent of a July meadow Moya Cannon, Monet in Árann, from Bunting's Honey, a beautiful collection from @carcanet.bsky.social with a few thoughts from me anatomiesofpower.wordpress.com/2025/07/05/c...

cover of Moya Cannon's Bunting's Honey, with an image, The Pink Bush by Joseph Quilty

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

Current reading. History rhymes, sometimes too well.

Cover of Beverley Gage, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

"This transference of awe-inspiring unknowability from God to the ancient lands of the United States had helped to justify America's national parks. These secular Edens cleansed the human mind & spirit with their billion-year old landscapes." Caroline Winterer @princetonupress.bsky.social

Caroline Winterer How the New World Became Old

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

Summer Be of this brightness dyed Whose unrecking fever Flings gold before it goes Into voids finally That have no measure. W S Merwin

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

@designcouncil.bsky.social and other #UKRI funded projects prominent at the Design Biennale, as well as the wonderful entry from Poland

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

"pillar foundations and parts of columns scattered on the paving stones evoked a game that had ended, whose pawns in disarray hid an inescapable order; they seemed abandoned there by winners or losers who would never return." Yourcenar, A Coin in Nine Hands, on Rome in 1933

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

3) as I keep saying we have to look at this whole issue together from the bottom up (which the UKRI new deal for PGRs hopefully will do). Regrettably AHRC just can't fix all the bits of AH that are broken right now with this budget. We are just trying our best with the band aids we have.

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

"the #garden, like the #library and the #hospital, is what makes all of our lives possible. We need gardens and the life they support established everywhere if we are to survive, and they must extend beyond the private realm, to form part of a cherished common wealth." Olivia Laing

The Lover and Dame Oyseuse outside a walled garden, from a British Library manuscript of the Roman de la Rose, c.1490-1500

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

"There's no point looking for Eden on a map. It's a dream that is carried in the heart: a fertile garden, time and space enough for all of us." Olivia Laing

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

"Call it a garden state: a cross-species ecology of astounding beauty and completeness, never static, always in motion, progressive and prolific. I want to live there, and the world won't survive much longer if we don't." Olivia Laing, The Garden Against Time

Olivia Laing, The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise, book cover

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

"Oh how I hate this unseeing." Derek Jarman (on a thoughtless programme on Yves Klein)

Still from Derek Jarman’s Blue. Photo: Liam Daniel © 1993 Basilisk Communications Ltd.

The sound of bells ring as the screen fills with blue. As they echo and fade, Derek Jarman’s voice begins, “O blue come forth, O blue arise, O blue ascend, O blue come in.”
Blue (1993) was Jarman’s final film before he passed away from AIDS just a year after its creation.

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 20/04/2025

Can there be any day but this, Though many sunnes to shine endeavour? We count three hundred, but we misse: There is but one, and that one ever. George Herbert, Easter

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

“We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist. Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life.” Mario Vargas Llosa 1936-2025

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 13/04/2025

Palm Sunday On the outskirts of Jerusalem the donkey waited. Not especially brave, or filled with understanding, he stood and waited. Mary Oliver

Giotto Scrovegni Chapel, depiction of Christ riding into Jerusalem

Detail of Giotto painting, boy pulling off a palm leaf

The Poet Thinks about the Donkey
On the outskirts of Jerusalem
the donkey waited.
Not especially brave, or filled with understanding,
he stood and waited.
How horses, turned out into the meadows,
leap with delight!
How doves, released from their cages,
clatter away, splashed with sunlight!
But the donkey, tied to a tree as usual, waited.
Then he let himself be led away.
Then he let the stranger mount.
Never had he seen such crowds!
And I wonder if he at all imagined what was to happen.
Still, he was what he had always been: small, dark, obedient.
I hope, finally, he felt brave.
I hope, finally, he loved the man who rode so lightly upon him,
as he lifted one dusty hoof and stepped, as he had to, forward.
Mary Oliver

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Christopher Smith @christophersmith.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

Coincides appropriately with the 80th anniversary of @designcouncil.bsky.social ; #design is where so many of the critical answers will be found to 'how material progress can give time and space for humans to pursue new forms of creativity and quests for moral fulfilment.'

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