Hi All,

This week Anjali and Hugh have been in Cannes, producing Caught Up on Cannes, our 9 minute cappuccino-length catchup of all the gossip, awards, and creative insights from the Cannes Lions Festival, made in partnership with our friends at UK Advertising. If you haven’t been listening, it’s well worth a catchup – where else would you get to hear from Mary Earps, Gwyneth Paltrow and the creative god that is Munya Chawawa?

We’ve really enjoyed getting the format and workflow right for a very fast turn-around daily podcast. Props to our Podcast Producer Christopher Mitchell for his late night editing and hosting work. If you want to talk to us about producing a ‘Caught up on…’ podcast for your event, hit the button below and we’ll book in a call.

In the meantime, here’s 10 more links full of creative inspiration to see you into the weekend.

Matt

Dance Like David Byrne ($6 zine)

Why AI shouldn’t be a ‘magic girlfriend’ (5 min read)

A Useful List of 53 Cognitive Biases (list)

How to Know What’s Real (6 episode podcast series)

Believe in Chicken (2-min watch)

Attention Matters: How to Find Your Next Audience (4-min read)

A Guide to Impact Storytelling (deep dive report)

Anthony McCall: Solid Light (Art Exhibition)

If Fonts Were Outfits (1-min watch)

A Bossa Nova Summer Classic (4-min dance)

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Dance Like David Byrne ($6 zine)
I really have to limit the amount of time I spend browsing the A24 store, which is full of excellent merch from their Film and TV list. I went to see their 40th anniversary IMAX release of Stop Making Sense when I was in New York last October, but have only just seen the zine explaining David Byrne’s dance moves, and how they were influenced by Japanese Butoh. There’s also an interview with his Big Suit, which is surely worth $6 alone.

Why AI shouldn’t be a ‘magic girlfriend’ (5 min read)
Matt Jones has a brilliant take on Apple’s recent AI announcements, and why embodying AI in personal assistants is not just sexist, but closing off much more playful and useful routes: “I think that’s what I object to, or at least recoil from in the ‘assistant’ model – we’re abandoning exploring loads of really rich, playful ways in which we already think with technology. Drawing, model making, acting things out in embodied ways.”

A Useful List of 53 Cognitive Biases (list)
We talk a lot at Storythings about audience behaviours, and how we need to consider them in content and format design. This list of 53 cognitive biases will help you really understand how we all manage our attention and focus.

How to Know What’s Real (6 episode podcast series)
Building on AI and cognitive biases, this six episode podcast by Andrea Valdez and Megan Garber at The Atlantic looks at how our emotions decide what is real, and what we believe, drawing on reality television, deepfakes and magic.

Believe in Chicken (2-min watch)
Sometimes an ad comes along that is so weird it’s just great. You might have seen this new KFC ad during the Euros. It’s like a mashup between Jordan Peele and Michael Gondry. We love it.

Attention Matters: How to Find Your Next Audience (4-min read)
For Attention Matters this week I wrote about the framing we use at Storythings to help our clients grow their audience: “Building audiences now is like making a patchwork quilt - the best way to build a large audience is by combining lots of small ones.”

A Guide to Impact Storytelling (deep dive report)
Last year, University of the Arts London launched the AKO Storytelling Institute, a new research centre looking at the intersection of storytelling and social change. As the first cohort of fellowships comes to an end, they’ve published a hugely detailed analysis and set of resources about the practise of Impact Storytelling. This is absolutely one to bookmark and share if you’re working in this sector.

Anthony McCall: Solid Light (Art Exhibition)
I was lucky enough to see McCall’s Line Describing a Cone at a new media festival in Europe back in the late 90s. It’s one of those simple, but mesmerising, artworks that leaves you more aware of your body and its relationship to space. Starting June 27th, the Tate Modern in London is showing a retrospective of McCall’s work. If you can, get along and experience them yourself.

If Fonts Were Outfits (1-min watch)
Wisdom Kaye is a Director and Stylist with a huge following for his videos translating odd cultural niches into high fashion outfits. In this video he styles some of the internet’s most/least favourite fonts. Papyrus! Courier! Impact! COMIC SANS!!!!

A Bossa Nova Summer Classic (4-min dance)
Excuse me for this indulgence. It looks like the summer weather is finally arriving in the UK, and when that happens, the first thing I do is put on Aldeia De Ogum, an absolute classic from Joyce’s epic 1980 album Feminina. Hit play on this, open the windows, then get up and dance like David Byrne!

We hope you've enjoyed this week’s newsletter. Pass it on to some of your non-subscriber friends - sharing would be really appreciated.

Thanks for reading. Till next week!

Hugh, Matt, Anjali and the whole team at Storythings.