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How representative are your communications?
Sport England have released a free-to-use image bank of over 400 pictures as part of its “This Girl Can” campaign. It’s a response to the prevalence of unrealistic images of women taking part in sport: never red-faced, never breaking a sweat and with little diversity in age, ethnicity and body size. As a result, individuals who…
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Business lessons from the Bard
Shakespeare Week is a national annual celebration giving primary-aged children their first great encounter with Shakespeare. Running between 15-21 March, this year’s theme is “wellbeing”, using Shakespeare’s timeless stories as a tool for children to understand themselves, others and their experience in the world. Surprisingly, you may also find that the kids bring home some pretty…
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What are we really saying?
Could our body unwittingly be our very own PR manager? It takes just 7 seconds for someone new to form an opinion of us, these perceptions are based on how we look and sound, rather than what we say. When we get a “gut feeling” about someone, it’s often hard to establish what exactly we’re…
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Should we be teaching creativity?
Are schools killing creativity? Susie Pearl opens her book “The Art of Creativity” referencing a TED talk by education expert Sir Ken Robinson who asserts our modern education system encourages uniformity in thinking. With a focus on fact-learning and standardised tests, creative undertakings and emotional intelligence are pushed to the side-lines. At the same time…
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What could a protect duty mean for business?
The Government is calling on businesses and individuals “who own or operate at publicly accessible locations” to respond to a new consultation on “Protect Duty”. The new law, proposed in the wake of the Manchester Arena bombing, would make it a legal requirement for venues to improve their security measures in order to “minimise risk of harm”…
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From bear markets to the wolf economy
Have you ever considered the absolute abundance of animal metaphors within business and financial jargon? Fat-cats, black swans, loan sharks, bull markets… In their strikingly illustrated “Bestiary of Business Terms”, journalists Dhruti Shah and Dominic Bailey take you on a veritable safari of examples. Speaking with writer Micheal Rosen on his Radio 4 show “Word…
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Guppy love
In the latest of a series of “fish rebranding campaigns”, megrim sole and spider crab will henceforth be known as “Cornish sole” and “Cornish king crab”. They’ve become the latest unfortunate sea creatures to undergo a rebrand, riding on the coattails of the Chilean seabass (formerly the Patagonian Toothfish) and the Orange Roughy (in a previous…
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The great egg box shortage
The local cardboard recycling bin seems to be constantly overflowing. If I ever walk past on the blessed day it’s been emptied, I return home to remove the small pile of packaging that’s undoubtedly been accumulating by the front door. I’m not particularly proud of this fact, but it certainly seems I’m not the only…
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The office jargon we love to hate
Do office buzzwords make you die a tiny bit on the inside? If so, it turns out you’re not the only one. According to a Get Response poll, cliché business terms can be in equal parts “annoying and exhausting”. Let’s unpack this a bit further by taking a holistic overview in order to really drill down on our feelings. Are your toes…