"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn"

Richard Adams will be joining us for this special lunchtime talk to discuss his views on education. He tells us "Education is a political football with politicians trying to score by moving the goalposts. My experience of teaching and setting up course and colleges using both old fashioned and radical new methods to teach art, music and digital art, is that education in its current forms simply doesn't work with the emerging 21st century economy and no amount of rote learning or centralized control will fix it. Education needs to radicalize itself, drop the obsession with 19th century rote learning or twentieth century socialized teaching and start to look at how we equip people to keep learning."

Graduating as a Fine Artist Richard began working with creative technologies in the early 90's after completing a unique MA that taught artists how to program & understand hardware to make interactive art. He has since had a variety of roles in both educational sector and in tech and media companies including spells at the BBC, BSkyB, Aviva and a number of others where he has either coded, designed or produced interactive services, apps, games and sites across platforms. He has been responsible for design and build of numerous interactive TV games and services starting in the early 90's at TwoWayTV and at Yoomedia, a spell as Head of Digital in agencyland working for large global brands was followed by a period of private consulting with companies across the interactive sector.

Along the way he has been a teacher, was founding Head of Digital Arts at Thames Valley University (creating a  suite of digital courses), Principal of the School of Communication Arts 2.0 (www.schoolcommunicationarts.com) as well as holding a Visiting Professorship in Digital Media. He has lectured at Birkbeck College University of London on digital and was an external examiner at two universities  As a mentor for Crossover Labs, he has worked with producers on creating 360 degree interactive narrative experiences and was a specialist adviser to the Singapore Media Development Authority. He is currently a Visiting Senior Fellow in Digital at Lincoln University, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of The Society of Authors.

His current day job is as senior academic program manger at Microsoft Studios.

A regular speaker on interactive media at conferences, he is also a published author and in spare time is currently to be found writing hard sci-fi short stories under his imaginative pen name of Richard F Adams on Kindle, in which he plays with the effects of the Singularity on people and is about to introduce cool ray guns to that universe.

This Lunchtime Talk is part of Open Studio Friday, which takes place at the Studio every week.

Do you want to find out what is going on at the Pervasive Media Studio? Are you interested in meeting our residents, talking about a specific project or curious about pervasive media? Why not pack a sandwich and join us for one of our Lunchtime Talks and Open Studio Friday.

Lunchtime Talks are informal presentations by Studio residents and associates. They normally take place at 1pm on Friday, are free and open to everybody who’s interested in what we do.

After the Talk, we also invite you to stay with us for the afternoon to continue the conversation or work on your own projects. We provide chairs, tables, wireless and a great space. You bring what you need to work with (laptop/mobile). Our open afternoons close at 5pm.

Let us know if you’d like a tour of the space and we'll be happy to show you around. Send an email to admin@pmstudio.co.uk