For those interested in my, well… eccentric writing side, I’ve just started a new column over at the awesome, London-based Mint Magazine about my experiences in the city’s dark streets entitled “A Gutter Rat in London”. I’m feeling quite hyped to share my thoughts through this avenue - because as all word-crafters know, there’s nothing worse than a writer with odd ideas and no soapbox to stand on!

An excerpt: “London is literally awash with cool shit. In its graffiti-covered alleyways, its dirty puke-filled gutters, its art student ‘happenings’, its crumbling warehouses and its pirate radio rooftops, this city is pulsating with a chaotic energy that’s both subversive and fascinating.” If you’re reading this and have ideas of odd and interesting London-based things I should sniff out, do let me know. I’ll buy you a rat….

As my London self, I’ve done some work with the always-rad #media2012 folks lately. #media2012 is a collaborative project aimed at using London’s 2012 Olympics to help create a positive, citizen-focused media legacy in the region. Says #media2012: “We propose to build artist-led community media hubs around the UK and in London during Games time, which will draw in stories from the Nations and Regions, affecting the core media narrative about the Games and building a new media legacy for the Olympic Movement.”

My participation has included representing #media2012 as a student citizen journalist at the [very official] PODiUM conference for higher education and the Olympics [see a story on our participation here, and my photos from the event here], and I’m looking at other ways to involve the collaborative’s potential in London pre-Olympics community building. The reason I’m such a big fan of #media2012 [outside of the awesome people who started it, including Andy Miah and Jennifer M Jones] is because it reminds me of the work all of us Vancouver community organizers did with the W2 Media + Culture House to build citizen empowerment around Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics. Here’s hoping #media2012 can build an even more successful coalition of cool and empowered folk in 2012!