I recently presented at the 21st instalment of PechaKucha Manchester at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation (more of him later) and had a thoroughly wonderful evening. Presentations on the theme of 'Making Connections' covered topics as broad as mentoring, origami and oxytocin (almost certainly the most entertaining biology lesson I have ever had).

The PechaKucha format (20 slides, 20 seconds each) really forces you to distil your message and focus on the narrative – a point driven home by Chris Tomlin (official title: Head of Storytelling!).

Spoken word artist and comedian Fat Roland embraced the format and gave us a hugely entertaining history of the life of Mancunian author Anthony Burgess. There were also stories of finding inspiration in bins, and architecture in various forms – from a railway bridge (quite literally making connections) to global collaborative creativity.

My own presentation looked at the ways we seek to engage with communities in order to better understand how to design for them. I received a lovely response to some of the examples I showed – if anyone would like to read more on these please click on the links for City of Stories and Building Memories. You can hear my talk in full here.