Mark Anderson

Artist, Atheist, Change Agent, Educator/Teacher, Parent, Project manager, Social entrepreneur, World traveler, Writer/Editor

Head of International Programmes at Glasgow Caledonian University. I direct an innovation project in Latin American under the EU ALFA programme setting up innovation hubs in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. We have organised a Latin American Innovation Awards Programme and will be presenting the finalists at our Innovation Support Conference in Valparaiso, Chile in 2011. I have developed a number of initiatives to support social innovation especially within universities. I am also on the board of the UK Institute of Knowledge Transfer. But my passion is theatre and writing. For eight years, I ran a multilingual theatre group at the University of Salamanca and have since written two novels (as yet unpublished and unsubmitted!)

Writing, theatre and innovation. Most of all, I am inspired by people and their ability to achieve extraordinary things with the minimum of resources. Beyond that:good food and wine!

Multilingual theatre... Plays with an assortment of actors from different cultures speaking different language but telling the same story... I've done it and the extraordiary thing is that the audience - whether academics or the inmates of a jail - really understand what's going on. It reveals more effectively than any means I know, how communication and comprehension really work. And conversely, how our own pre-conceived notions make us deaf and blind to what's actually happening, whether it is on the stage or in 'real' life.... A second idea: social innovation support units within universities to ensure that knowledge is given social value that goes beyond commercialisation.

Innovation, Knowledge Transfer Models, Language, Theatre

Nobody knows what a great writer I could be if I weren't so damned lazy!