Launching: Tactile Academia (& Beyond) – The Substack!

I’ve been very quiet on here, because I have been working on a new idea that I hope you will be interested in…

Yes, Tactile Academia has joined substack – please come and join me as a subscriber!

Need some more info? Keep reading:

While I really like the blogging format, for me that has always been a way to jot down quick ideas or impressions. Whenever I had something exciting I wanted to share with you, my faithful readers, I’ve just put it on here if I had the time. If I didn’t have the time, the idea for the post remained in my head or on a post-it. Sometimes it came back up again, but more often it didn’t. And even though I’ve had good intentions in regards to posting regularly, I have not been successful in that. At all.

I have also been asked numerous times whether I am ever going to write a book for staff. As you know, the book I did write that is Tactile Academia related – Writing Essays by Pictures – is a workbook for students. Is it useful for staff wanting to get familiar with my analogies? Sure. But it is not written for staff. For example, it doesn’t include commentary or instructions on how to implement the activities in the classroom. And it only focuses on the study skills aspect of my work, and doesn’t go beyond that.

For anything else, I have always been quite happy to refer people to this blog, which does some of this, but, to be honest, in a sort of slapdash way. I think you can find some good stuff here, but digging might be involved. And I have been looking for a new way of pulling these things together, I just wasn’t convinced a book was going to be it.

Earlier this year, I was introduced to SubStack – a website and app that basically combines blogging with a newsletter format. I started experimenting with one to tell people about my adventures now that I have taken some time away from academia, and found that I really liked the way it is organised – and the way this works for me specifically. Thinking about this in terms of newsletters provided me with deadlines, which has been really helpful and has helped me build a new writing discipline. And I found myself asking – Is this something I could also apply to Tactile Academia?

Reader, I think it is, and I’m therefore happy to announce that I am launching a new substack today. I’ve called it Tactile Academia and Beyond, because I want to use it to not just reflect and pull together content that is on this blog, or that should have been on this blog, but also new perspectives on it, specifically looking through the lens of experiential learning and experiential design.

The other thing that is very attractive about the substack model is that you can ask subscribers to support you financially. Because I am currently not working regularly at a university anymore (though I’m still running freelance workshops, so let me know if you want me to come do one for/with you!), I am curious whether this is a way to generate a little income. I am not asking for much, and some of the posts will be at least partly for free, so I believe it is worth signing up even if you don’t want to pledge your support. But you would help support this work if you did.

What will you get? I’m aiming to do between 2 and 4 posts a month. They will range from featuring some of the Tactile Academia activities, to looking back at things I have previously written for publication, as well as introducing the Creative Conference Consultancy – a look at how you can make any (academic) event you organise more creative, engaging and enjoyable. And I am also open to what my subscribers want to read about, so sign up and let me know!