Chris Webb wins back ared walla seat held by Tories since 2019; Labour take control of Hartlepool, Thurrock and Rushmoor

• Local elections 2024: full council results for England
• Labour claims huge byelection win to claim back ared walla seat Blackpool South

The results of the London mayoral contest and London assembly elections are due on Saturday. Labouras Sadiq Khan is seeking a third term and polls have put him comfortably ahead of Tory Susan Hall, despite jitters in Khanas campaign team.

Following the closure of the polls tonight, Khan said his campaign and Labour activists asent out a message of fairness, of equality and of hopea.

Chris Webbas byelection victory with more than 7,500-vote majority hailed as amost important resulta of night by Labour leader

• Local and mayoral election results a live updates

Labour has regained the seat of Blackpool South in Thursdayas parliamentary byelection, in a fresh blow to Rishi Sunakas leadership. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, called it a aseismic wina.

The local and firm favourite Chris Webb won with 10,825 votes, followed by David Jones, the Conservative candidate, with a distant 3,218 votes, who finished narrowly ahead of the Reform candidate, Mark Butcher, on 3,101 votes.

Results from more than 100 English councils, as well as for several mayors, are announced as early results show the Conservatives losing control of some key councils. Find out what happened in your area

• Local and mayoral elections a live updates

Former PM made the requirement to bring photo ID a stipulation of the Elections Act in 2022

• Local and mayoral elections a live updates

Boris Johnson was turned away from his local polling station when trying to cast his vote in Thursdayas elections after forgetting to bring the required photo identity.

The former prime minister was initially told by polling station staff he would not be allowed to vote in the police and crime commissioner election in South Oxfordshire without proving his identity.

Results across 107 councils and in 10 mayoral votes will start coming in from the early hours of Friday

• Local and mayoral elections a live updates
• Local elections 2024: full council results for England

Voters across England have the opportunity to give their verdict on Rishi Sunakas government on Thursday in the last set of local elections before the general election.

Many of the seats up for grabs were last contested in May 2021, when the Conservatives under Boris Johnson were enjoying a Covid avaccine bouncea. Fast-forward three years and the Tories are trailing 20 points behind Labour in national polls.

Civil servant Josie Stewart spoke to media after government presented adishonest accounta, tribunal told

A Foreign Office civil servant felt amorally compelleda to speak to the media about the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan after the government presented a adishonest accounta of what happened, an employment tribunal has heard.

Josie Stewart was sacked by the Foreign Office (FCDO) after blowing the whistle on the failures of the withdrawal from Kabul and disclosing emails indicating Boris Johnsonas involvement in an aoutrageousa decision to prioritise the evacuation of staff from the animal charity Nowzad, despite his denials.

Exclusive: decision to grant licences condemned by critics as a stunt that shows Tories are aplaying politics with climatea

Fossil fuel companies will be allowed to explore for oil and gas under offshore wind-power sites for the first time, the government will announce on Friday, in a move that campaigners said is further proof that ministers are abandoning the climate agenda.

The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), which regulates North Sea oil and gas production, will confirm that it is granting licences to about 30 companies to look for hydrocarbons on sites earmarked for future offshore windfarms.

The foreign secretary called the conflict athe challenge of our generationa after making second trip to Kyiv to meet Zelenskiy

The UK has promised APS3bn a year afor as long as it is necessarya to help Ukraine, David Cameron said on Thursday as he made his second visit to Kyiv since becoming UK foreign secretary.

He also said he had no objection if weapons supplied by the UK were used to strike inside Russia.

The launch of the uncrewed Changae-6 is part of Chinaas effort to put a human on the lunar surface by 2030

China will attempt another mission to the far side of the moon on Friday, the first of three planned over coming years as part of its goal to land a human on the lunar surface by 2030.

The launch of the uncrewed Changae-6 is expected sometime between 8.30am GMT and 11am GMT and the mission a if successful a would go far to bolster Chinaas ambitions to put a man on the moon by 2030.

In the past year, in virtually every region, journalists and independent media outlets faced increasing repression

Political attacks on press freedom, including the detention of journalists, suppression of independent media outlets and widespread dissemination of misinformation, have significantly intensified in the past year, according to the annual World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

The index ranks 180 countries on the ability of journalists to work and report freely and independently.

Post featured compromising image of the broadcaster Narinder Kaur, who said she was left aincredibly upseta

Police are investigating a social media post by Laurence Fox in relation to an aupskirting offencea.

The tweet, posted on Tuesday, featured a compromising image of Narinder Kaur, a broadcaster on Good Morning Britain and GB News. The post remained on Foxas account until it was deleted on Thursday.

Joshua Dean, 45, former quality auditor at Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems, alleged agross misconduct by quality managementa

Joshua Dean, a Boeing whistleblower who warned of manufacturing defects in the planemakeras 737 Max, has died after a short illness, the second Boeing whistleblower to die this year.

Dean, 45, a former quality auditor at Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems, filed a complaint with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) alleging aserious and gross misconduct by senior quality management of the 737 production linea at Spirit.

In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Experts fear children questioning their gender may turn to hidden economy to obtain hormones illegally

Cross-sex hormones designed to masculinise or feminise a personas body are available to buy online for less than APS11 a month, with experts warning that growing numbers of under-18s may turn to the medicines hidden economy.

Last month the landmark Cass review of childrenas gender treatment in England concluded there was a lack of reliable evidence supporting the use of cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers by young people questioning their gender identity.

Appeal tribunal orders firm to share details on hundreds of thousands of tonnes of outflows into North Sea

A water company that tried to keep secret details of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of raw sewage discharges into the sea has been ordered by an appeal tribunal to release the data in the public interest.

Northumbrian Water has repeatedly refused to release details about the scale of raw sewage discharges into the North Sea from an outflow at its pumping station in Whitburn, after a campaigner asked under freedom of information and environmental information regulations.

Police arrest more than 200 students at UCLA as law enforcement clears camp at Dartmouth, arresting more than 90 students

More than 2,000 people have now been arrested during pro-Palestinian protests across dozens of US college campuses in recent weeks.

Police arrested more than 300 pro-Palestinian demonstrators on college campuses on Wednesday night into Thursday morning, pushing the total past 2,000, according to an Associated Press tally.

Threats from the state have led many journalists across the world to flee their home countries to report from elsewhere. But for many the intimidation did not stop when they left

Illustrations by Joe McKendry

Fardad Farahzad, journalist, Iran International

Ex-central banker Lady Shafik, the universityas president, now faces calls to resign due to her handling of campus unrest

Steering Columbia University through the choppy waters of anti-Israel student protests was never going to be easy for Minouche Shafik, a member of the UK House of Lords who took over as president of the university in New York after a period of relative calm running the London School of Economics.

During her tenure as LSE director between 2017 and last year, academics largely refused to join the industrial action that dominated campuses across much of the UK.

Four in 10 politicians report low or very low mental wellbeing, and some are being driven out. What can be done to ease the burden?

It was a political bombshell, one that prompted shock and set off debate across much of Spain. But for the film director Pedro AlmodA3var, news that the prime minister, Pedro SA!nchez, was considering resigning last week did not come as a surprise.

aThereas no human being who can resist what the most resistant of our presidents has been suffering in recent years,a AlmodA3var wrote in an open letter, published days before SA!nchez announced he would stay on, depicting SA!nchez as a politician who had potentially reached his breaking point.

Songwriting courses are exploding in popularity, with everyone from Mark Ronson to Alicia Keys as teachers. On a retreat in north Wales, our folk music critic tries to write her first song

Imagine youave spent the past 20 years writing about songs but never had the chops to write one. This is my penance: sitting in a room in north Wales, with a tiny keyboard and notebook spidery with attempted lyrics, the only rhythm in my ears my rave-energy heartbeat, the only melody in my mind the lilting panic of my inner critic going: aArgh!a

Itas the final day of a four-day songwriting course at Literature Walesas 16th-century HQ, Ty Newydd Writing Centre, led by Brian Briggs of folk band Stornoway and Welsh poet and songwriter Paul Henry. Tonight, I have to perform an original song with two relative strangers, in front of people I didnat know four days earlier. This particular terror is the climax of a bigger endeavour on my part: to explore the growing popularity of songwriting courses, and to find out if they work.

(Warner Records)
The British superstar has said her new album is influenced by Britpop, rave culture and Primal Scream, but you could go mad trying to find the evidence

Earlier this year, Dua Lipa gave a lengthy magazine interview, the first salvo on the promotional trail for her third album. It wasnat very interesting a sheas smart enough to keep her private life and her opinions on anything contentious to herself in a world of over-sharing and constantly simmering online outrage a but there was one surprising detail. She said the album was aa psychedelic pop-infused tribute to UK rave culturea, influenced by Primal Scream, Massive Attack and the adonat give a fuck-nessa of Oasis and Blur.

That all sounds intriguing. It would clearly be a dramatic departure from the disco-house sound of 2020as Future Nostalgia, while feeling curiously of the moment: all those artists reached their peak three decades ago, and 90s revivalism appears to be having a moment. A hankering after the eraas pre-9/11 optimism and pre-smartphone straightforwardness has meant Britpop references suddenly seem to be everywhere, as a recent feature in this newspaper noted. Perhaps, by delving into some corners of the 90s where mainstream 2024 pop seldom goes, Dua Lipa has made an album as inadvertently zeitgeisty as its predecessor which rocketed her into popas superleague by providing a soundtrack to lockdown-era kitchen discos.

From a cottage built into sand dunes with its own astargazing rooma to an eco cabin-style home in a walkeras paradise

As humans enter what has been termed the athird space agea, itas private companies a not governments a leading the charge

If the 20th-century space race was about political power, this centuryas will be about money. But for those who dream of sending humans back to the moon and possibly Mars, itas an exciting time to be alive whether itas presidents or billionaires paying the fare.

Space flight is having a renaissance moment, bringing a fresh energy not seen since the days of the Apollo programme and, for the first time, with private companies rather than governments leading the charge.

Sundayas Sounds from the Other City festival is a joyful celebration of Greater Manchesteras leftfield culture

On the first Sunday of May every year, Chapel Street, where central Manchester and Salford meet, comes alive with DIY art, music and spectacle at the Sounds from the Other City festival. It is a vibrant public celebration of the acommunity spirit and collaborative workinga which co-director Emma Thompson says sustains much alternative culture in the region.

aCollaboration is core to what we do, to Greater Manchester as a city,a Thompson says. aPeople come together, and it crosses genres and art forms. Sounds from the Other City wouldnat be turning 20 next year if it wasnat for that. The fees we offer arenat huge but people really get behind it, do it for the love of it.a

Although it is often hilarious, Clarksonas ever-compelling show is back with shocking and harrowing insights into the truth about British farming. Tissues at the ready!

Oh, to be in charge at Prime Video. Imagine spending $465m on a Lord of the Rings remake that hardly anyone appeared to actually enjoy, when it turns out that sticking a few cameras on a tractor while a famous curmudgeon tries to explain the impossibilities of farming in Britain today will give you the biggest show on the platform. That is, in the UK, at least. Weall have none of your explosive charismatic movie star Mr and Mrs Smith remakes, thank you very much. Weall take bickering with the local council about enforcement orders, novel methods of blackberry harvesting and the travails of breeding pigs at Diddly Squat farm instead.

Actually, hold that last thought, because I may still regret my emotional investment in the third season of Clarksonas Farm. The whole series begins with a warning, in fact. aEverything that could go wrong has gone wrong,a says Clarkson, gravely. Itas the council, itas the weather, itas the climate, itas the war in Ukraine. It doesnat rain for weeks. Then it doesnat stop raining. Things break, crops fail and animals have to go, in more ways than one. In among all that bucolic loveliness, this is a relentless and unforgiving grind.

As the climate crisis forces people to abandon their land in Rajasthan, a new industry has sprung up in the desert state, with thousands of gaily decorated vans setting off to sell ice-cream across the country

The parched villages of Gangapur in the desert state of Rajasthan have a new season in their calendar. Between November and February, car workshops along the townas dusty mile-long market open before sunrise, cylindrical stainless-steel food containers are put on display, and traders stock up on chocolate and strawberry syrups.

Come March, the villagers start preparing to migrate. In the workshops, thousands of vehicles are converted into vans for selling a variety of ice-cream, from plain condensed milk flavoured with cardamom to chocolate, vanilla and pistachio, while local farmers turned dessert makers have their old mini-trucks serviced in readiness for the drive to distant towns and cities, where they will sell the sweet treat for the next nine months.

All the things you expect from a classic drama are here: heroism, suspense, stirring music. But against a backdrop of true horror, this well-intentioned show becomes utterly grotesque

There is that word, that name, sitting there in the title, coming up before each ad break: Auschwitz. There had better be a good reason to invoke it. The Tattooist of Auschwitz is a drama that raises the question of whether fiction can ever be an appropriate response to the Holocaust; on this evidence, perhaps not.

In 1942, a young Slovakian Jew named Lali (Jonah Hauer-King) is deported to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland. He is soon given the task of tattooing serial numbers on to the arms of new arrivals a one of them is Gita (Anna PrA3chniak), with whom Lali falls instantly in love. Thanks to the privileges Lalias job brings, and the protection given to the couple by the unstable SS officer Stefan Baretzki (Jonas Nay), Lali and Gita are able to pursue their romance and survive. Decades later, in Australia, the widowed Lali (Harvey Keitel) invites rookie writer Heather Morris (Melanie Lynskey) to hear his story, of the Holocaust and of his life afterwards with Gita.

Our system is full of loopholes and vulnerable to millionairesa and plutocratsa demands. Voters simply need clean, fair politics

Thereas a sensible rule in British politics: it should not be funded by foreign donors. Democracy is meaningless if a country isnat run at the behest of its people. But the rule is riddled with loopholes. Those who have done the most to keep them open are those who most loudly assert their patriotism. Noisy apatriotsa are always the first to sell us out to offshore capital.

Here are some of the tricks they use. One is the aunincorporated associationa. This refers to groups that donat have to open business bank accounts, file financial statements, register with any official body or even give themselves a name. Theyare as transparent as the Berlin Wall on a cloudy day. Astonishingly, these associations are a legal channel for campaign finance in the United Kingdom.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist. Join him for a Guardian Live online event on Wednesday 8 May at 8pm BST. He will be talking about his new book, The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism. Book tickets here

In history, as in romance, beginnings matter a so what we do now will be crucial in shaping the future

In these times of planetary polycrisis, we try to get our bearings by looking to the past. Are we perhaps in The New Cold War, as Robin Niblett, the former director of the foreign affairs thinktank Chatham House, proposes in a new book? Is this bringing us towards the brink of a third world war, as the historian Niall Ferguson has argued? Or, as I have found myself suggesting on occasion, is the world beginning to resemble the late 19th-century Europe of competing empires and great powers writ large?

Another way of trying to put our travails into historically comprehensible shape is to label them as an aage of a|a, with the words that follow suggesting either a parallel with or a sharp contrast to an earlier age. So the CNN foreign affairs guru Fareed Zakaria suggests in his latest book that we are in a new Age of Revolutions, meaning that we can learn something from the French, Industrial and American revolutions. Or is it rather The Age of the Strongman, as proposed by the Financial Times foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rachman? No, itas The Age of Unpeace, says Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, since aconnectivity causes conflicta.

The government wants to scrap Englandas 50% cap on afaith admissionsa. It will just lead to religious discrimination

To gain admission to the local church school near my home, parents were always advised to attend church. Otherwise, they were told, they should try elsewhere. The result was local antagonism: cars and buses filled with local children were ferried to more distant schools. It was a bad system in every sense.

In 2010, in an attempt to stem the growth of sectarian free schools, the Cameron government imposed a 50% cap on afaith admissionsa where schools were oversubscribed. Now Rishi Sunak is proposing to end that cap. To encourage their creation, new faith-based schools a Anglican, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, whatever a can be as exclusive as they want. Since most faith schools tend to become socially selective and thus enjoy parental preference, the move has been welcomed by church leaders. They have something to sell. Anything will do to counter plummeting church attendance.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Have you ever had the experience of getting tantalisingly close to a big opportunity in your creative career a but not quite making it? Maybe it was a pitch, or a competition, a publishing opportunity, a senior role, or a funding application. Maybe you got really positive feedback. They said you were great, your work […]

The post Are You in the Ballpark? (finally, The 21st Century Creative on YouTube) appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

When the Covid 19 pandemic struck in 2020, human life on earth was massively disrupted. Not only the human tragedy of millions of lives lost, but also the social and economic damage caused by the virus and our attempts to control it. As a writer and a coach for creatives, I have been particularly concerned […]

The post Creative Disruption: How 12 Creatives on 5 Continents Rose to the Challenge of the Pandemic appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

Welcome to Episode 10 of the Creative Disruption season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challenges of the pandemic. Itas been my most ambitious season yet, with creatives from 5 continents and probably the closest Iall ever […]

The post How I Created, Funded and Launched My New Podcast (while the World Was in Meltdown) appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

Welcome to Episode 9 of the Creative Disruption season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challenges of the pandemic. This week we are off to Tokyo, to meet Ichi Hatano, a wonderful artist whose work has deep […]

The post From Tattoos to NFTs with Ichi Hatano appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

Welcome to Episode 8 of the Creative Disruption season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challenges of the pandemic. Have you ever had the idea for a creative project that youave never quite got round to starting? […]

The post Using Lockdown to Launch a Dream Project with Nicky Mondellini appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

If you work on your own a in your office or studio, or your bedroom or at your kitchen table a it can feel like no one is watching. So it doesnat matter whether you show up. If you skipped a day on your novel, who would know? If you didnat go to the studio […]

The post All Arts Are Performing Arts appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

Welcome to Episode 7 of the Creative Disruption season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challenges of the pandemic. Today weare focusing on a creative sector that is close to my heart, which was massively disrupted but […]

The post Taking Deep Work Online with Laura Davis appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

A few months ago I was listening to the DavidBowie: AlbumtoAlbum podcast, a terrific show about Bowie hosted by Arsalan Mohammed. In Season 3 episode 11 Arsalan spoke to Donny McCaslin, the leader of the jazz band that Bowie discovered in a New York club, and asked to work with him on what turned out […]

The post Sometimes You Have to Grind the Work Out appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

Welcome to Episode 6 of the Creative Disruption season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challenges of the pandemic. Today we are off to Australia in the company of Charlotte Abroms, a music manager based in Melbourne […]

The post Helping Musicians Through Lockdown with Charlotte Abroms appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

Last week I suggested that if youare serious about achieving your creative ambitions, you need to think in terms of projects, not tasks. Because if you get up every morning and ask yourself aWhat should I work on today?a you risk making decisions based on what feels urgent right now, rather than what will make […]

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Welcome to Episode 5 of the CREATIVE DISRUPTION season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challenges of the pandemic. Today we are going to look at one of the biggest challenge for many people during lockdown, whether […]

The post Staying Creative as a Parent (Even in a Pandemic) with Kay Lock Kolp appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

When we think of productivity we typically think about tasks and to-do lists, working habits and routines. We focus on how to make the most of our time on a daily or at most a weekly basis. All of which is great, but if this is all we focus on, thereas a danger of getting […]

The post Focus on Projects, Not Tasks appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

Welcome to Episode 4 of the CREATIVE DISRUPTION season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challenges of the pandemic. Today we meet Amrita Kumar, the co-founder and CEO of Candid Marketing, an innovative marketing agency in India. […]

The post Launching a New Business in the Pandemic with Amrita Kumar appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

Marketing is a word that strikes fear into the heart of a lot of creatives. Itas an area where a lot of us feel we donat have a natural talent a weare far more comfortable making work than telling the world about it, let alone trying to get people to buy it. One reason for […]

The post Make Your Marketing Personal with a Media Dashboard appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

Welcome to Episode 3 of the CREATIVE DISRUPTION season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challenges of the pandemic. Today we are looking at the world of film and TV production, which was massively disrupted by the […]

The post Rebooting Global Filming with Hometeam appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

A lot of creative professions involve submitting work to gatekeepers of various kinds: agents, editors, publishers, gallerists, funders, producers, studios and competition judges and so on. Yes, the 21st century gives us plenty of options for creating things without gatekeepers a you can sell direct, build your own platform, launch your own event, self-publish or […]

The post Why Rejection Doesnat (Necessarily) Mean Your Work Isnat Good Enough appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

Welcome to Episode 2 of the CREATIVE DISRUPTION season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challenges of the pandemic. This week we are off to South Africa, to hear from Earl Abrahams, an artist and filmmaker who […]

The post Lockdown Series: Windows on a Changed World with Earl Abrahams appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

aEat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day.a This quote is often attributed to Mark Twain. Apparently thereas no hard evidence linking it to him, but that hasnat stopped it from concentrating the minds of many people when they ask themselves […]

The post Eat that Frog (But Eat the Cake as Well) appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

Today we kick off Season 6 of The 21st Century Creative, the podcast that helps you thrive as a creative professional amid the demands, distractions and opportunities of the 21st Century. The theme for this season is CREATIVE DISRUPTION. Every episode will feature an interview with a creator whose work was disrupted by the Covid-19 […]

The post The Rocky Road for Theatre through the Pandemic with Steven Kunis appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

I hope this finds you as well as can be. Here in the UK weare bracing for what we are assured will be a large wave of Omicron. I know things may be very different for you, depending on where you are in the world. But whatever the circumstances, I hope you are finding your […]

The post Video: Forget the Career Ladder a Start Creating Assets appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

Today is the launch of my new podcast, and itas something Iave been planning and dreaming of sharing with you for years. Itas called A Mouthful of Air. And in several ways, itas the opposite of my 21st Century Creative podcast. I designed the two shows to work together from the start, although it’s taken […]

The post My new podcast (and why itas the opposite of The 21st Century Creative) appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

Last night I was about to go to bed when I suddenly remembered an idea Iad had for an article a few months ago. Though I say so myself, it was a great idea, and I was keen to revisit it, so I opened up the Scrivener project where I had written it downa| and […]

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Todayas guest on The 21st Century Creative is Michael Bungay Stanier, a returning guest whose interview way back in Season 1 proved very popular. And his book The Coaching Habit turned out to be even more popular, as it went on to sell three quarters of a million copies. Michael is back with some excellent […]

The post Avoiding the Advice Trap with Michael Bungay Stanier appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

A lot of productivity advice tells us that we need to stop procrastinating, beat Resistance, and get things done. The Americans like to talk about ashippinga, meaning finished and sent out for delivery. This emphasis on getting things done and out to market is part of their extraordinary entrepreneurial culture. Famously, Guy Kawasaki even said […]

The post Every Creative Project Is a Revolving Door appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

Todayas guest on The 21st Century Creative is Krystal Lauk, an illustrator who took an unconventional path by creating illustrations for tech companies, and founded a studio that counts Google, Uber, Facebook and The New York Times among its clients. Itas a fascinating story of discovery and enterprise at what Krystal calls athe intersection of […]

The post The 21st Century Illustrator with Krystal Lauk appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

Iave recently started taking one-to-one Japanese conversation lessons. It hasnat been easy. In fact, itas been a bit of a humbling experience. Between work and family responsibilities, I only have 30 minutes a day to study Japanese, and Iave spent this time every day for the past two years memorising kanji characters, vocabulary and grammar […]

The post You Have to be Bad to Get Good appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

Todayas guest on The 21st Century Creative is Cynthia Morris, a coach for creatives who shares insights on the book-writing process, based on her latest book The Busy Womanas Guide to Writing a World-Changing Book. So if you are contemplating writing a book – whether itas your first one or your twenty-first – there is […]

The post Writing a World-Changing Book with Cynthia Morris appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.

If you think about overhearing something, you probably think of listening to someone elseas conversation, whether deliberately or accidentally, and picking up a titbit of information that you would never otherwise have been privy to. It might be funny, or shocking or useful, or – as in the case of so many loud phone calls […]

The post The Art of Overhearing Yourself appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996.