Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Just a quick post to say congratulations to my sister Katie who graduated with her bachelor’s degree in theatre costume design on Monday.

The degree is accredited by Teesside University which I’m told is currently University of the Year being the first new university to win the award. This to me seems somewhat analogous to Stewart Lee’s “world’s tallest dwarf” (very impressive in relation, but still never the less a dwarf, and therefore restricted by law from holding positions with a minimum height requirement such as a firefighter, or owner slash operator of an enchanted beanstalk).

Never the less, I’m sure most of us are all too aware of just how much work there is to earn a degree in any subject that doesn’t contain the word “media” in the title, so congratulations are certainly in order.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of the new Perspective Course website! During interfaith week we will be launching the new version of the Perspective Course Leader’s Guide which will be made freely available to groups which are interested in running their own version of the course. You can request a pack for your group from the website.

In a very drunken state on New Year’s Eve I got up and announced to my good friends attending the bash that this year was going to be the year of the Chris Worfolk Foundation.

And I mean it.

As such the foundation is officially making 2010 the year which we make a name for ourselves. We have some very exciting projects on the way which we will be announcing soon alongside the exciting projects that we are already working on.

I find the current climate an incredibly interesting one, interest in making a difference in the world has never been higher, people are really passionate about improving quality of life. With the right opportunities being provided this can be put to work to do tremendous good and I fully believe we have the experience, the skills, the drive and the ambition to achieve this.

We’re already on our way building better links in the community. Next week Leeds Skeptics will be celebrating its first birthday and in February our first humanist community will launch – I can’t express how excited I am about opportunities such as these to bring people together in the spirit of celebrating shared human experiences.

Later this year we will be doing this on a larger scale and will expand our activities to other regions as well as continuing to drive forward with new projects, form stronger links with other organisations and inspire more people to get involved and make a difference.

2010 will be a year to remember. I hope you will join us on the journey.

Best regards,
Chris
Trustee, Chris Worfolk Foundation

Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing in the Name” beats out the X Factor single to be Christmas number one. Win.

Yesterday we re-launched the Leeds Skeptics in the Pub group with a new venue, new format and new speakers. The event went quite well despite Ariane have cancelled us on due to illness earlier the week – we got a better than average turn out and it was thumbs up all round for the new venue. We also took a lot of feedback about how we can improve in the future so we will continue to improve from here.

Yesterday the new foundation website went live! I say that like it is a whole new website, it isn’t, it’s just a slightly updated version but now located at ChrisWorfolkFoundation.org. There is some new content too though lots more new content is on it’s way soon.

Wednesday saw the first official meeting of the trustees since formation.

It was most productive with us talking long into the night over possible ideas and strategies for the organisation and out of it has come some really productive action points. I can’t talk about what these are yet but hopefully we’ll have more news on these soon!

We have also established regular trustee meetings now also so things should start moving forward at quite a pace.

Received the certificate of incorporation from Companies House on Monday! As such it went straight into the most expensive Tesco Value frame available – and no, I won’t be claiming that on expenses 😉 .

In preparation for a more formal launch of my foundation, ChrisWorfolk.com is being redesigned to be a bit more appropriate for incorporating the foundation’s website into it. Also it was finally time to move up the world – the days of 800×600 resolutions are gone and it just looks silly on the 22″ monitors the kids are knocking around with these days. As such the new design is expanded to fill more space.

The new site is now available for feedback before the final steps such as validating the HTML and doing browser compatibility are done, you can check it out here.

I’ve been playing around with a few new headers for a week or so now and have finally got round to adding them to the site. There is now a total of 18 (9 of which are new) all of which can be viewed in the shiny new gallery.