TRANSCRIPT

Part 1:
You will hear an interview with Maria Stefanovich, co-founder of a creativity
group which organizes workshops for executives.
Interviewer: Not long ago stressed-out executives at embattled Marks & Spencers
were packed off on a training course. There’s nothing unusual about that. But the
team was in for a surprise. There was no time management seminar, no flashy flip-
charts. Instead they were faced with cardboard, paint and glue. With us here is
Maria Stefanovich, co-founder of Droll, the creativity group which ran the creative
workshop for those executives. What exactly did the team do with these art
supplies?
Maria: During the particular day-long session, each delegate was required to
create a mask to show the face they presented at work. You see. mask-making is a
very effective corporate tool. Often people create faces that are anxious and
alienated. The process of looking inwards and transforming difficult issues helps
them access their intuitive, imaginative skills.
Interviewer: Why do you believe such an unconventional approach to seminars has
caught on?
Maria: Creativity has become a prized commodity, even in such professions as
accountancy. Whereas once we could drag ourselves into work, safe in the
expectation of doing nothing more taxing than work, now bosses have other ideas.
They have begun to see that if you sit in a boring
meeting in a boring conference room, you will emerge with boring ideas. All
companies are hungry for new ideas, but if you push and pull in a pressured
atmosphere, there's creative bankruptcy. As companies become desperate to
harness creativity and lateral thinking, they are being forced to look at new ways of
fostering those talents.
Interviewer: Where did such programmes originate from?
Maria: The roots of the play industry lie on the other side of the Atlantic. Ten
years ago. the marketing firm, Play, pioneered the techniques now taking off here
in Britain Staff at Play invent their own superheroes and costumes. They have an
office playroom and a company dog which is picked up for work even when its
owner is away, and there are no conventional job titles. Instead, employees have
business cards printed with peculiar slogans such as ‘What if?' and ‘Voice of
reason’. When you turn work into a place that encourages people to be themselves,
have fun and take risks, you unleash their creativity. It all comes down to
employers having at last realized that a happy team is a creative one. Funnily
enough, excuse the pun. Most of the companies that sign up are the ones that have
least need for it; young, gung-ho firms in new media and advertising. They do a lot
of presentations, but their workers do them in a linear way. Creativity programmes
make them think laterally. Some companies send people on adventure excursions.
Creativity groups are another way of getting people focused and excited.
Interviewer: The Humberside Training and Enterprise Council found that
storytelling workshops breed confidence. How so?
Maria: Storytelling workshops are particularly beneficial in confidence building.
There was one woman who presented a story about how nervous she felt giving a
presentation to the board. She said she felt like a rabbit caught in the headlights
and her teeth felt too big for her mouth. So, we acted out a story with her as the
rabbit. The humor of it allowed her to overcome that fear. These days, we are
seeing everything from mime, circus skills and comedy to finger-painting. It all
sounds worryingly New Age. but our company has been called in by such
conservative and long- established corporations such as Smith-Kline Beecham.
Hedron, Chesterton Property and government agencies. It has also worked with
staff at the Industrial Society. We asked them to describe the society as if it were a
landscape. At first, everyone talked about how it was a beautiful, serene place.
Then someone described a bog. another volcano about to erupt. It's all about
encouraging better communication. The benefits are tangible. We've had lots of
feedback about how staff bring more passion and ideas to their work. They take
more risks and are more honest.
Part 2:
Lecturer: Franz Marc is one of the lesser known artists of the group known as the
German Expressionists, but he was instrumental in pointing the way towards
abstract art. In 1998 several of Marc's paintings fetched record prices at auction in
London, and today he is recognised as one of the most significant artists of the
twentieth century.
Born in Munich in 1880, Marc was profoundly influenced by the work of the Post-
impressionists, in particular Van Gogh and Gauguin, which led him to experiment
with bright primary colors. His subject matter consisted mainly of animals, which
he perceived as beings with spiritual qualities, at one with nature. It was this purity
that he wanted to express through color. In this important 1910 painting. Horse in
a Landscape, observe the blue mane and tail of a purple horse presiding over a
vista of rich primary colors. This work is an excellent example of Marc's attempt to
depict the world through an animal's eyes. Yellow cows, blue horses, green foxes
and orange deer are just some of the animals Marc painted with a profound love
and sensitivity. In Yellow Cow, observe how the animal kicks up its hind legs and
raises its head to the sky, leaping and bellowing with joy.
As Marc's art matures, we see the influence of Cubism enter his work - the softer
flat areas of color give wav to more angular, geometrical shapes. In this next
picture, Deer in the Forest II, a dense network of abstract shapes representing the
forest pulls the eye toward the graceful forms of deer emerging through the
undergrowth. Note how the animals appear to be at peace, far from the danger and
corruption of a human world. Yet in a series of paintings dated around 1913, there
is a sense of trouble in the air - a presentiment of the coming of the Great War. In
The Fate of the Animals, the artist offers a glimpse of what is to come. The green
horses in the top left of the picture look panic-stricken, while the blue deer in the
center is frozen, its head thrown back to the sky. Has it just been shot? Or is it
perhaps simply relishing its life? If you look to the right of the picture, in the
direction the animals were probably headed, there are dense brown and murky
images, a rare departure from Marc's beloved primary colors, and they seem to
forewarn of something unnatural and dark. In The Wolves, Marc abandons his
favorite horses and deer and offers yet another vision of impending doom. Here, a
group of wolves are depicted in various attitudes - defensive, aggressive,
menacing. Green flames and clouds of purple smoke denote the destruction of the
landscape, while in the bottom right-hand corner some pink flowers, a symbol of
natural beauty, droop and die.
By this time, Marc had co-founded the group Der Blaue Reiter, which can be
translated as The Blue Rider, with the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky. Their aim
was to express spiritual truth and they adopted a spontaneous, intuitive approach to
painting, reminiscent of primitivism and the pure art of children. Despite having no
particular ideology as such, the group believed in bringing art into the future. More
on them later.
Now, let's look at some of Marc's later works from 1913 and 1914. At this stage his
work showed great promise and development of an individual style. Stables consist
of almost purely geometrical forms overlapping and shining through each other, a
curve of red or white representing a horse's flank or fetlock. Fighting Forms is
entirely abstract and brings together swirling complementary colors - orange and
blue.
When the war finally broke out in 1914, Marc was called to the front. He was
greatly disturbed by the loss of life around him, including that of the animals
caught up in the fighting. Marc's sketches from the front reflect his fears and
worries, though he hoped that something good would eventually come out of the
war. Tragically. Marc did not survive the slaughter: he was killed bv a grenade in
1916 while patrolling on his horse near Verdun in France. He was only thirty-six.
Part 3:
Interviewer: Today we're pleased to welcome Ruth Browning of the Gaia
Institute, where for the past fifteen years they've been examining a phenomenon
known as ley lines. Ruth, what can you tell us about ley lines?
Ruth: Well, first of all, it has to be said that there is still a lot of controversy
surrounding ley lines, with many skeptics doubting their existence altogether. One
definition of ley lines is that they are imaginary lines marking the alignment of
ancient places of worship, but we believe there is nothing imaginary about them,
that real geophysical power is at the root of it all. However, whether you believe in
them or not, it is true that the vast majority of ancient temples, castles, churches,
stone circles, megaliths and shrines tend to align in straight lines. Anyone with a
comprehensive tourist map, a pencil and a ruler can verify this. For example, if we
consider a significant site in British folklore - the Tor at Glastonbury - we see that
it sits at the hub of a large number of ley lines which lead off directly through
hundreds of other ancient sites. Ley lines have been found connecting the stone
circles of Scotland and there is even a ley line purported to be running right
through Buckingham Palace. But lev lines are not confined to the British Isles. The
Nazca lines, which cross the plains of Peru, are just one other example. They also
occur in China, Greece, Egypt and anywhere ancient peoples constructed their
temples.
In the past thirty years or so there has been a resurgence of interest in ley lines.
Their existence was discovered, or should I say rediscovered, by a man called
Alfred Watkins in 1921, who, while studying an ordnance survey map in
Hertfordshire, noticed that a series of geological features and man-made sites
appeared to have a most singular alignment. He went on to publish a book
propounding the theory that the constructions on lev lines were the navigational
markers of ancient trade routes. This theory was soon discredited, however, as few
considered it plausible that a trader would have been willing to scale a high hill and
then clamber down to the valley just to follow the straightest line across the land.
While most people agree that there appears to be a definite arrangement in the
placing of these sites, many consider them to be a mere coincidence.
Our own research at the institute has indicated that an alignment of historical sites
does not automatically determine the presence of a ley line, although it often points
to one being there. Instead, we believe that lev lines are a manifestation of the
Earth's geomagnetic energy, which crisscrosses the land creating a network of
natural power right under our feet. There is compelling evidence to suggest that
this energy runs in straight lines, much like the meridians - as any acupuncturist
will tell you - that cover our bodies. The monuments on them merely serve to
reveal this network.
This would imply that either the peoples of ancient civilisations all over the world
were aware of lev lines, or they were unwittingly drawn to their power. In ancient
times, people were far more in tune with nature and the earth than we are today,
relying more on their body's natural sensitivity and intuitive powers to locate
underground water supplies or a sacred site for a temple or shrine.
There are other theories about lev lines. Some believe that the location of ancient
sites along specific lines was based on complex astronomical calculations made by
the builders of ancient monuments, whose intention was to mirror the alignment of
constellations in the skv. And, according to some claims, UFO sightings often
occur above ley line intensive areas. In recent years, proving the existence of ley
lines has been a favorite pastime of New Age enthusiasts, which is why scientists
tend to take a dim view of the subject.
However, scientists who have studied lev lines claim that the place where they are
said to intersect seem to have a stronger magnetic intensity than other areas, but the
data is currently Inconclusive, so the jury is still out on the subject.
Part 4:
Researchers recently discovered a void in the Great Pyramid they hadn’t known
about before. By void, we mean a space that’s almost 100 feet long. The journal
“Nature”, which details the finding, says this is the first time since the 1800s that a
space this significant has been identified in the pyramid. But whether it adds to the
structure’s mysteries or answers ancient secrets is up for debate. A spokesman for
Egypt’s government says there’s no evidence that suggests this space leads to an
undiscovered gallery or burial chamber. And archaeologists point out that the
pyramid has other voids, so this could just be one that hadn't been found yet.
Still, there are a lot of unanswered questions about the Great Pyramid, and
researchers hope this discovery will help them learn how it was built. They’re not
allowed to drill holes or use cameras. To identify this void, they used equipment to
track cosmic ray particles inside the structure. But that’s not the only way in which
modern technology is helping archaeologists study ancient history. The magic is
seeing this with candlelight. – Adam Low freely admits that he’s a man with an
obsession to document the tomb of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, Seti I.
“The tomb actually tells us how the people from 3,500 years ago think different
things, have different philosophies, value different things. The way they thought
can be read through the very articulate evidence that's on the walls of these tombs.
And if we can really build a dialogue that crosses time and use technology to help
that, I think we’re at an incredibly exciting moment.”
- Just a room, you think, but what a room. Known among Egyptologists as “the
Hall of beauties,” what’s just astonishing is that this is, in fact, a facsimile, a
precise recreation in a museum in Switzerland of how the room looked exactly 200
years ago, when the tomb was discovered.