Category Archives: Culture

Maps & Atlases – Beware and Be Grateful | Music Review

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I must confess that before being given this to review, I didn’t know of Maps & Atlases. Having listened to their new album “Beware and Be Grateful” I’m still not sure I know them. Getting to grips with them is a tough grind but wonderful, nonetheless.

The band formed in 2004 at art school in Chicago and in that time they’ve grooved their way from being a pure math rock/post rock band to making beautiful pop music but based on the old math-rock principles of signature time changes. We’ll call it Math-pop.

The record begins with “Old And Gray”, a six minute affair that doesn’t exactly blow the doors off of the house that is “Beware and Be Grateful”, but tiptoes gently in and makes a nice cup of tea. It’s clever. It knows it doesn’t need to be route one. It will sit waiting for you in the living room, until you come to and will assassinate you there and then. It’s pop Jim, but not as we know it!

“Fever” moves towards more straightforward pop music and “Winter” is very much in the same vein. Both songs have a million things going on behind the music in the way of vocals and music. It’s all incredibly well arranged – a beautiful layering of the music and backed up by soft electronic beats. On “Remote and Dark Years” Dave Davison’s lush baritone vocal has more than a tilt towards Paul Simon and the song has a lot in common with his African moments.

Throughout the record you can hear morsels of the influences behind the record – all sorts. From Vampire Weekend to Paul Simon to Secret Machines to Joeyfat but built around those math-rock principles. It’s a stunning mix but it’s a mix that needs to be played in the order it was made – no skipping, no shuffle etc. I don’t they Maps & Atlases have quite realised that the internet has rendered the album superfluous but their ignorance is our gain – a finer collection of songs you’ll struggle to find all year.

 

“Beware and Be Grateful” is released 17th April 2012. They tour the UK from 16th – 20th April.

 

EX-MINING TOWN PIONEERS ‘CROWD FUNDING’ MOVEMENT

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EX-MINING TOWN PIONEERS ‘CROWD FUNDING’ MOVEMENT ALLOWING COMMUNITIES TO TAKE PLANNING PUBLIC SPACE INTO THEIR OWN HANDS

I really love this story, it shows what can happen if you but your mind to it.

Stephen Fry, Martha Lane Fox, Wales’ rugby heroes and firms including Admiral, Asda, Tesco and Deloitte have all helped to pioneer a new online hub allowing communities to fund public developments that have suffered following a halving of council spending.

The ex-mining town of Glyncoch, South Wales, has become the unlikely pioneer of a “crowd-funding” movement that harnesses private funding for community building projects.

After spending seven years chasing state cash for a much-needed £792,000 community centre, residents turned to Spacehive.com, an award-winning new initiative, to reverse their fortunes.

With tens of thousands still to raise before their grants expired, the town appealed to local families, celebrities and businesses to fill the void. Using Spacehive.com as an online hub for donations, the town was able to garner support from an unlikely array of places.

The site works by allowing anyone with an idea to pitch it online and, once it’s been certified by the Spacehive.com if it achieves the necessary funding, it can go ahead and get built.

Their success this week, after Tesco contributed the final £12,000, raised hopes that Spacehive’s model could help revive hundreds more community building projects hit by the economic downturn.

State spending on such projects, from sports facilities to parks and playgrounds, is estimated to have halved from a pre-recession average of £500m a year, according to the British Property Federation.

Glyncoch’s campaign was boosted by comedian Stephen Fry who asked his four million Twitter followers to each donate “the cost of a cucumber sandwich”, Matha Lane-Fox, the government’s “digital champion” and co-founder of Lastminute.com, and Welsh comic Griff Rhys Jones, who urged supporters to: “help Glyncoch win.”

Fresh from their Six Nations triumph, the Welsh rugby team also encouraged people to dig deep. Yesterday Captain Sam Warburton said: “We think what Glyncoch has done is amazing and an inspiration to us all. We’re right behind the community. The regeneration of this town – which has produced so much rugby talent over the years – is another victory for team Wales!”

Corporates including Deloitte, Asda, and Wales and West Utilities quickly added to the pot, alongside local businesses from the coach firm to the golf club. Henry Engelhardt, founder of Admiral Insurance gave £10,000 and Tesco finished the campaign off with a £12,000 donation.

Residents themselves dug deep, raising thousands through street collections, bingo nights and even a sponsored silence by the town chatterbox. Pledges came as far afield as Newfoundland, where a Welsh descendant pledged £100.

As the community celebrated yesterday Deputy Mayor Doug Williams said: “We’re absolutely ecstatic that by summer we’ll see a state-of-the-art centre offering the types of training and education that will kick-start people’s ambitions.

“Glyncoch is a deprived area; people are used to being let down. Now people are thinking ‘we can get out of this rut.’”

Lucy Neville-Rolfe, from the Tesco Charity Trust, the retailer’s charitable arm, said: “This unique project shows just how much communities can achieve when they work together. We’re delighted to help the people of Glyncoch reach their target.”

Spacehive aims to shake up neighbourhood planning by allowing anyone to pitch proposals for community building projects and anyone to pledge funding through Spacehive.com. Funders are only charged if the project goes ahead.

The model, co-designed by Deloitte, means the cost of popular projects can be split between hundreds of individuals, businesses, and councils.

Projects in Spacehive’s pipeline range from new playgrounds to the transformation of a derelict East London dock into a creative hub and marina.

Founder Chris Gourlay said: “Success in Glyncoch, one of the UK’s most deprived towns, really shows the potential power of Spacehive’s model in helping communities to transform where they live.

“This isn’t about privatising planning. The state mustn’t shrink from its responsibilities. It’s just an approach that allows communities cut through the inertia and make popular projects happen. We think town planning should be faster, more people-powered, and more fun.”

Liz Peace, Chief Executive of the British Property Federation, which along with the Royal Institute of British Architects is a supporter of Spacehive, said: “We support the government’s intention to create a planning system that supports economic growth but the reality is nearly £300m of funding for capital public space developments has been lost.

“Enabling the public to take direct action through Spacehive.com could help ensure vital improvements go ahead by channelling funding from companies and individuals.”

The Glyncoch pilot was supported by Nexters, an initiative to boost online giving in the UK, which helped the local community reach corporate backers.

Efforts to regenerate Glyncoch were kicked-off by social action network Your Square Mile a year ago. Paul Twivy, the network’s Chief Executive, said: “To see everyone from local family firms to the country’s biggest retailer coming together to help this entrepreneurial community is heartwarming.”

Ridge Racer Unbounded Review

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Namco should be slapped on their botties for letting what could have been a tremendous title go to waste and with good reason sent to their room for the rest of the month.

One question deserves to be continually asked: Why oh why would you give away a game with so much history and so much of a following and allow it to be utterly ruined? It is the equivalent of having a million pound winning lottery ticket and giving it away to an alcoholic.

Imagine this: you have an incredible franchise that you develop over the years. Sure, it may not be realistic enough to warrant the title ‘A Driving Simulator’ but hey, it is a fun arcade racer, the graphics are top notch, the speed and the flavour of racing is such that you build a world-wide following of fans that stay with you over three generations of consoles. At the last hurdle, maybe time is the issue or resources either way you allow another developer to step in and as such they drop the ball, next thing you know it is 3 nill to your opponents…

I really wanted this game to be good, I really did. So much so that when I read some of the other reviews on the game I refused to believe them. When one of my friends pointed out that the key to the game is about learning how to use the ‘Drift Button’ effectively. Inside I jumped for joy; maybe it was a whole misunderstanding for the other reviewers but now, two whole days later, I realised he was under the same deluded self deception as me. You see, gamers like us who grew up on the whole Ridge Racer series just don’t want to believe their beloved franchise is in the pan. But trust me, for this game it is; it is in the pan with a little bit of extra virgin oil and under a high heat.

I’ve always said that I would put the boot in when it came to crap titles but the only thing that is worse in this world than a crap game is an expensive crap game. Oh and this game is crap with more crappy pieces than a crappy bits lunch box meal made by a crappy deep fried chicken chop shop that is crap. You see I wouldn’t enjoy this game if it came as a PSN cheap download – the fact that it costs £40 is plain pathetic and a waste of money. I actually owe it to gamers to stop them going out there and buying this tosh.

Where do I start? Ridge Racer Unbounded tries to bring in core elements of Split/Second and Burnout series to the franchise of old. By itself this should not be a nail in the coffin. Like Split/Second you can open up shortcuts around the track by filling a power meter which generates by sliding and tailing other racers you can use this power in one of four ways; to provide a quick boost, open up shortcuts, smash into your opponents or create explosions. Unlike Split/Second however, you don’t trigger the explosions or shortcuts remotely: you smash into them to explode them or open them up. The problem here is in the execution. Question: When is a shortcut not a shortcut? When you take it and more often than not it puts you behind the competitors…duh… It’s an idea that sounds pants on paper and in reality is pants to see. Practically all shortcuts I have seen besides looking good, offer very little else. The explosions are nothing to write home about and have none of that ‘Ream-ability’ factor seen in Split/Second.

Secondly is control. Ridge Racer has always been renowned for its pick up and play capability. It is an arcade racer; mistime your brake and you don’t always screw up or end up in a wall. Unbounded follows this legacy; in fact most of the walls are destructible, which to its credit is a nice touch, but rather than keeping with the common traits of the genre i.e. gas, brake, boost, what we have here is an addition in the form of a ‘slide button’ that is supposed to allow you powerslide round corners. You see, if you hit the brake, handbrake, or hit a wall you lose a lot of speed but if you power-slide you lose just a little bit of speed but go into a wide angle slide in which you will hit the wall anyway. Makes sense doesn’t it? I thought so. Adding to this is that your opponents never make mistakes – the AI difficulty is incredible and there are no options to change it – this all means you will be sitting there for a long time playing the same tracks again and again just to qualify one race. Now some of you might be forgiven for thinking ‘I bet you he is just having a moan because he is not good at racing games’ but the reality is I have played and completed most of this game’s competitors and it is their qualities that make this game pale in comparison.

Graphics is average. Split/Second (a game that is almost a year and a half old) and Motorstorm Apocalypse easily outdoes this title in terms of quality and execution and even with Unbounded’s exploding walls or vehicles it brings nothing that hasn’t been seen or done better elsewhere. And what happened to the 3D? Is this yet another title that had dropped the notion of 3D gaming?

Music is poor. A classic element of Ridge Racer was the banging tracks and cheesy voice over. Thankfully the voice over is gone but where are the tracks? A host of Japanese unknowns and a couple of drum and bass tracks are all you get for your money. My gosh, that is such a wasted opportunity; Namco could have done remixes from the whole of the franchise, even SSX had tracks you knew or could dance to. This is just a really appalling effort.

To be fair to Bugbear, they have tried to introduce variety into the game and franchise but I don’t think they really spoke to the fans, or truly had a grasp of what made the original games so much fun. The only thing I could say I liked was the game’s much-hyped track editor. After all who wouldn’t want to build a Ridge Racer track from scratch? I found it flexible and easy to use, putting together a decent course in a very short space of time which was great, obviously, but the underlying problems that affect the racing on the ‘actual’ tracks still applied. Ho-Hum…

My Verdict

Ridge Racer Unbounded is nothing but a shame and a waste of money. I simply cannot recommend a game when I know there are superior, cheaper alternatives out there. Even if you find it out on your travels as a cheapie, avoid like the plague. You have been warned.

2 out of 10

We Face Forward: Art from West Africa Today

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We Face Forward: Art from West Africa Today

Manchester celebrates London 2012 Festival

2 June to 16 September 2012

· City-wide exhibition of leading contemporary artists from West Africa

· Major new installations commissioned for galleries and parks

· Concerts with many world-renowned musicians, including AfroCubism

· Further exhibitions of fashion, photography, football and storytelling

· African art bus to tour creative activities around Greater Manchester

We Face Forward is a season of contemporary art and music from West Africa, celebrated across Manchester’s galleries, museums, music venues and public spaces, from 2 June to 16 September as part of London 2012 Festival.

The exhibitions, concerts, events and community activities recognise both the historic and contemporary links between Manchester and the various countries that make up West Africa. They will explore ideas of economic and cultural exchange, environment and sustainability, and the place of tradition in contemporary culture.

The core of the season is a city-wide exhibition of contemporary art from the region, the first major collaboration between Manchester Art Gallery, Whitworth Art Gallery and Gallery of Costume, Platt Hall. It will feature painting, photography, textiles, sculpture, video and sound work from a wide range of internationally acclaimed artists, including Georges Adéagbo, Meschac Gaba, Romuald Hazoumè and George Osodi. The exhibition will also be the first major display in the UK of work by emerging artists such as Lucy Azubuike, Emeka Ogboh, Charles Okereke, Nyani Quarmyne and Victoria Udondian.

New, large-scale installations have been commissioned from Barthélémy Toguo at Manchester Art Gallery, and from Pascale Marthine Tayou at Whitworth Art Gallery.

The Gallery of Costume will show work by three esteemed Malian photographers, Malick Sidibé, Abderramane Sakaly and Soungalo Malé, whose archives are being preserved by the National Museum of Mali. Their extraordinary studio and social portraits will be shown alongside West African dress from the gallery collection, photographs by Hamidou Maiga and contemporary fashion pieces from British-Nigerian designer Duro Oluwu.

A music programme, curated by Band on the Wall and The Manchester Museum, will feature world-renowned acts including: AfroCubism (the new international supergroup formed by Eliades Ochoa of Buena Vista Social Club and Toumani Diabaté); a multi-media concert by Niger supergroup The Endless Journey (Mamane Barka and Etran Finatawa); Angelique Kidjo; Jaliba Kuyateh; Kanda Bongo Man and many more to be confirmed. Taking place in music venues and galleries across the city, the season will open with AfroCubism at Bridgewater Hall on Sunday 3 June.

Exhibitions and events will also take place at The Manchester Museum and the National Football Museum. The city is hosting nine football matches during the 2012 Olympics and the National Football Museum will present African artists for whom football gives a means to explore protest, politics and social engagement.

The Manchester Museum is working with the African Caribbean Carers Group to present a re-interpretation of the Anansi spider stories using the Museum’s natural history and anthropology collections. The programme will be launched with Big Saturday: Manchester Anansi Spider on Saturday 2 June where the story will be performed by the Men’s Room community group, working in partnership with the Royal Exchange Theatre Company.

A summer-long creative programme will engage with a range of people right across Greater Manchester. Modelled on the highly decorated taxi-buses that ferry people across Dakar, Accra and Bamako, an art bus will take creative activities out beyond the participating galleries and parks to other locations across the city.

To draw the different locations together, artist Meschac Gaba has been commissioned to design an artwork which incorporates the flags of all the West African nations. This colourful motif will be on display at participating galleries and venues.

The title for the season is taken from a speech by Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, made in 1960. Stating his resistance to Cold War super powers, Nkrumah’s full quote is “We face neither East nor West: we face forward.” The festival takes its direction from Nkrumah’s statement of independence, deriving inspiration from his sense of West African cultural dynamism.

Dr Maria Balshaw, Director of Whitworth Art Gallery and Manchester City Galleries, said: “Manchester’s connections to West Africa are part of its industrial and trading history. This exhibition brings the dynamism of West African art today to Manchester, as the world comes to the UK for the Olympics.”

Ruth Mackenzie, Director, London 2012 Festival, said: “I am particularly delighted that this exceptional exhibition of art from West Africa will be part of the London 2012 Festival programme bringing once in a lifetime opportunities to experience culture to people across the north west.”

www.wefaceforward.org

Hatcham Social – About Girls | Music Review

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I like About Girls. It’s a record that reminds me of the time when I first got into music, in the late 1990’s, and went to shows. It was a time when Britpop was dying and the last of the scene was coming through. The likes of the Warm Jets and Gay Dad. It’s a time that most people look back on with regret and perhaps a little bit of a snigger. Nobody’s going to describe being there in the same way they do as San Francisco in the 60’s or New York in 1977 but, d’you know what – it’s my Hacienda and I rather like it.

About Girls captures the post-Britpop sound brilliantly. It’s a better effort than their debut,You Dig The Tunnel, I’ll Hide The Soil, released in 2009 which tried to hard and had too much going on. About Girls is a less complicated and straightforward album. Less try-hard. Nobody likes a try-hard. The album works best when played as a complete album in the order it was intended. I’ve listened to this album a dozen or so times and it sounds best when you turn shuffle off on your mp3 player and play it from 1-13 with each song telling the next chapter of the story.

It begins with NY Girl, the archetypal tale of lost love, which could be Olympian-era Gene and with its driving bassline it begins with a confidence and swagger, which dissipates as the song goes on and it becomes clear this won’t end well. Nicola Tells Me is a slice of Shed Seven-esque jangly pop, Lois Lane is built entirely around a beautiful swooning bass. Little Savage appears to have borrowed heavily from the Johnny Borrell songbook but setting that aside is two and a half minutes of nice catchy hooky pop. Escape From London is that moment, committed to tape, where once in a while you need to escape the business of living in the big city and run to the hills.

About Girls isn’t just a record that’s borrowed heavily from the dying days of Britpop, it’s a record that’s the soundtrack to your emotions. Every emotion. It’s about growing up, something the band have clearly done on this record. It’s about life. It’s about love. It’s about loss. It’s about whatever emotion you want it to be, it’s got everything on here. Buy it and enjoy it and whatever you do don’t put it on shuffle!

 

About Girls is released on 2nd April 2012 by Fierce Panda Records

 

 

 

 

 

New Music Profiles | Nehedar

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This profile is a first in a series for Frost magazine. We are profiling new music and trying to discover new artists. The artist might not be actually ‘new’, but someone who we think may be about to breakthrough or go onto another level of fame. They do say it takes ten years to become an overnight success….

Artist: Nehedar
Location: NYC
CD: High Tide
Release date: Out now.
Production: Craig Levy @ Little Pioneer Cider House, Brooklyn, NY
Websites: http://www.nehedar.com, www.facebook.com/nehedarmusic
Streaming link: http://music.nehedar.com/releases
Secure download link: http://www.mediafire.com/?8axodrg39c5ra2e
Styles: Indie Pop, Alternative, Singer-Songwriter
Similar to: Tracy Bonham, Aimee Man, Emma Pollock

Highlights/Accolades: Power Plant Beach was selected as one of Mother Jones Readers’ favorite albums of 2011. Emilia Cataldo was a finalist in the We R Indie singer songwriter contest in 2011. Nehedar provided most of the soundtrack to an upcoming independent film. (working title: Strike Anywhere Matches).

Nehedar is the project of New York-based singer-songwriter Emilia Cataldo.

The daughter of two New York musicians who fled urban life for the country, Cataldo was born in Southbridge, Massachusetts, where her family lived in a barn on the outskirts of town. Music always permeated their home – her mother a hippie piano teacher from a Jewish home & her father a Puerto Rican jazz saxophonist.

The Cataldo family which grew to six children, moved from Massachusetts, to Miami FL, & eventually to the religiously-infused town of Zion, Illinois, on the outskirts of Chicago where Cataldo briefly attended high school.

Cataldo quickly grew disenchanted with her small town surroundings. As soon as she was old enough, she left high school to travel the country, and later the world, on a journey that would eventually lead her to Israel, where she would study the Jewish faith in Seminary, and take on the Hebrew name Nehedar, which means ‘wonderful.’

In 2000, Cataldo settled in New York City, where she began writing & performing her own music in 2001 following a difficult period involving the loss of her mother to an aggressive brain tumor. She adopted ‘Nehedar’ as her stage-name & that of her band. Eventually, Cataldo would return to school to complete her B.A. in music at Stern College in Manhattan.

Nehedar has self-released five albums – Pick Your Battles in 2007, the critically-acclaimed Dreamlike in 2008, Pterodactyl Baby in 2009, Power Plant Beach in 2010 and just released her latest album High Tide on March 15, 2012. For the duration of her recording Nehedar has worked closely with Craig Levy of Little Pioneer Cider House in Brooklyn New York, although she has enjoyed experimenting with other producers. Nehedar’s backing band has included a revolving cast of friends and thereby changed shape over the years. Whenever possible Nehedar includes Luis Cataldo (her saxaphone playing father) in the mix.

While spanning indie-rock, folk, jazz and pop genres, the music of Nehedar has continued to deliver her blend of deeply personal lyrics, beautiful vocal harmonies & a variety of instrumentation. Momentary departures from strict chord progressions set her music apart, surely a result of her childhood spent listening to jazz. As a writer and performer she has enjoyed comparisons to Tracy Bonham, Bebel Gilberto and Ingrid Michaelson.

The Next Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis – We Have Learnt Nothing

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Some lessons are never learned and the boom and bust of the housing market is one of them. As we finish one housing crash we are already setting ourselves up for the next one. The seeds for the next sub-prime mortgage crisis have already been sown.

It stems from a desire by all parties to encourage people to buy their own homes and keep house prices going up. This results in an unsustainable boom followed by a sharp correction, all to the detriment of stability and economic growth.

Everyone from the building companies, estate agents, mortgage brokers, banks, government, owners and even buyers all want to see the market rise. Prior to the crash we had mortgages being offered for 120% of a home’s value. We now have offers encouraging people to buy houses which are equally or more dangerous.

The reality of the situation is that house buyers (particularly first time buyers) are not earning enough to get onto the housing ladder at the moment. There simply isn’t the demand.

Desperate to sell the houses on their books, Estate agents and builders have been offering shared equity solutions to first time buyers. The buyer only buys a percentage of the property (making it more affordable and much easier for them to get a mortgage). They then pay rent to the building company on the percentage they do not own. The scheme is all over housing websites. The government has been encouraging this scheme. In fact it is taking part in it.

On the face of it the scheme looks attractive. I admit even being interested in it myself initially. However once you understand the motives behind it and the reality of it we see how dangerous it can be.

You can see how it can become very expensive for someone who takes on this scheme. They are paying a mortgage, rent and service charges, not to mention maintaining 100% of a property they don’t fully own.

Many newspapers were initially very critical, until building companies started taking ads out in their papers advertising the scheme.

The service charges and rent often rocket and the homes are almost impossible to sell leaving owners completely trapped even when they need to move in an emergency. You can read some people’s nightmare experiences here.

Now, in what can only be described as utter madness, the UK government’s latest plan is to guarantee 95% mortgages. The ‘New Buy’ or mortgage indemnity scheme (MIG) only requires a 5% deposit from the buyer and if they default the government will pick up the tab along with the bank.

The government is trying to artificially inflate demand in the short term to boost the construction sector and push house prices up so everyone feels wealthier. This should also boost consumer spending and the economy as a whole. But this is a typically short term politically motivated view. The current government cares nothing for a future crisis which might occur in 10 years’ time. At some point the market will have to correct to an equilibrium level and the more we inflate prices artificially the bigger that crash will be. All the jobs created will be lost along with many more as well.

Nothing has been learnt from the recent crisis. With a government guarantee, banks and mortgage brokers will be flogging mortgages to anyone they can. This is exactly what happened before the recent crisis in America. Just look at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

When prices do start to fall owners will have no incentive to keep paying their mortgages as they move into negative equity. If house prices fall by 20% and you have only put down a 5% deposit what incentive do you have to keep paying the mortgage? As prices continue to fall this gets worse and turns into a negative cycle.

When the bubble does burst the ensuing crisis will be just like the recent one, except this time instead of the banks bearing the brunt of the loses, it will be the you and I the taxpayer.

Unfortunately we never learn from our mistakes. We must stop creating these damaging bubbles. We should just let the housing market correct itself naturally; unfortunately the government just can’t help itself. It is now just a matter of time before the next major sub-prime mortgage crisis. I just hope we can survive the fallout.

Leading scientists ask British public to measure their sleep

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· International survey findings to be discussed at The Times Cheltenham Science Festival

· What is sleep, why do we need it and how much of it do we really require?

Researchers from the universities of Oxford and Munich have called on the British public to contribute to an international survey looking at the quantity – and quality – of sleep amongst the population.

Professor Russell Foster, Chair of The Times Cheltenham Science Festival, and Professor Dr Till Roenneberg from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, who are both experts in chronobiology – the study of the circadian rhythms which govern our waking and sleeping patterns, and their interaction with daylight – will discuss the responses to the survey at the Festival in June 2012. The pair will discuss the regenerative powers of sleep as well as comparing and contrasting the sleep patterns of the UK respondents with their continental counterparts.

The survey takes just a few minutes to complete online, and asks questions relating to work schedule, differing sleep habits during the week and at the weekend, consumption of alcoholic and caffeinated drinks, exposure to cigarettes and the time taken to fall asleep each night.

So far, more than 65,000 people in Germany have taken Professor Dr Roenneberg’s simple online survey relating their sleeping habits, and the scientists are keen to capture more data relating to the British population.

Russell Foster, a professor of circadian neuroscience at Brasenose College, Oxford, and Chair of The Times Cheltenham Science Festival said, “We felt that the arrival of British Summer Time, with its lighter mornings and longer evenings – plus people perhaps feeling like they’ve ‘lost’ an hour’s sleep – was an excellent moment to get people thinking about the quality and quantity of sleep they get.

“With the help of this questionnaire, we aim to understand the underlying complexity of the biological clock by gathering a picture of everyday behaviour. We all know that individuals show distinct preferences for various activities over the course of a day. A simple example is the time at which an individual prefers to go to bed and get up. Collecting this information will help us understand how and why the biological clock ticks.”

Each participant will receive a personal profile which evaluates their chronotype, and compares their results to those of other participants. A person’s chronotype relates to their preference for mornings or evenings – those who are at their best at the crack of dawn are often described as ‘larks’, whereas people who brighten up in the evenings are known as ‘owls’.

Professor Dr Till Roenneberg, of the Munich Centre of Chronobiology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, adds, “It will be particularly interesting to gather more information on British sleep patterns in order to compare chronotypes of people living in different geographical locations.

“This will enable us to consider factors such as longitude and latitude, which can make a difference to the amount of daylight to which people are exposed.”

People are encouraged to take the survey online.

Professor Russell Foster will be talking about the regenerative power of sleep at The Times Cheltenham Science Festival on Tuesday 12 June 2012 at 6:30pm.

Priority booking is open to Cheltenham Festivals Members from Monday 26th March, ahead of public booking from 2nd April. The full programme is available at www.cheltenhamfestivals.com/science