And the good old Sheffield Shop's own website: www.sheffield-made.com

then there's this Sheffield Heritage Brands list www.sheffieldheritagebrands.com

This is wider than knives, but there are a couple. First one here: www.madeinsheffield.org/licence-hold...

Oh good grief, there goes another month, sorry!

Sorry for *extremely* late reply 😬 Wanna let me know your favoured inbox address and I'll send over a very quick summary I did for our board (and my own brain...).

Did you find it..?! In the absence of socials gossip, I keyword searched the surprise entrant to the ‘reasons to postpone NPO bingo card - the Devolution White Paper. It’s… definitely interesting.

"…funding bodies like the Arts Council England, will be asked to reconfigure how they work so that the national and the local work seamlessly to benefit the public”.

So, could we be looking at a move back towards regional arts boards?

Yeah. And as that news blew a hole in my afternoon anyway, I decided to look at the Devolution White Paper that was the surprise entrant in the list of reasons.

I didn't read all 60 pages of it, but key word searched Arts and Culture. And this sentence seems a candidate for the headline...

Spare a thought for all the @artscouncilengland.bsky.social Relationship Managers this pm. RIP their inboxes. #NPO #ArtsCouncilEngland

...a last minute opportunity to be a) less overworked and b) put that time / money into other activity this summer. Which I'm currently happy about, even though it's very close to the beginning of the financial year to be messing with the next four months.

Yeah, I need some processing time tbh, and the personal does not agree with the professional right now. I'm immediately sad (and a bit cross) for those who were going to apply to join; that's another year of project funding they've got to plan instead. But from a small NPO's pov, it offers...

And yes I have many reservations about AI, from copyright to homogenisation to AI hallucinations and very much also how resource hungry it is as it requires so much energy and water. So I try to use it carefully, sparingly, and only when it really does something unique. But I did have fun 😸

2 different AIs to create a plot summary of Macbeth in the style of a true crime podcast script. And the results were epic.
“Blood on the Throne: The True Crime of Macbeth.
The Scottish King Who Killed for the Crown

🎙️[Music: Ominous drumbeats, eerie Scottish bagpipes fading into a slow heartbeat]

in a delicious post-webinar coincidence, 15yo asked if I’d seen the ‘ChatGPT explains X topic in the style of gossip.’ I hadn’t, so we tried it with a chemistry topic. And it was a) very funny and therefore b) engaging and also c) 15yo said it was really helpful. So, not to be outdone, I asked…

eg creating a schedule for X syllabus (or specific topics), from Y exam board assuming you have 12 weeks & about 1hr a day to revise. That could be *brilliant* for #neurodivergent students. & eg breaking a sub topic down more to aid understanding, creating interactive flash cards & more. And THEN…

I loved it. I'm not a designer, and I had to figure out the program myself, but for a few glorious (skint) years we produced flyers and posters that still look good now. Though feel a little sheepish that it was a beta version that had a use by date, and I had to change the computer date to use it 😬