On Thursday evening, I was privileged to join a group of people at the House of Lords to celebrate a significant milestone reached by the Rix Centre.  The Rix Centre, hosted within the University of East London, is a charitable organisation that uses technology to improve the lives of people with learning disabilities.  Last week’s event was to celebrate the Centre achieving 5 years of innovation with its “Living Lab”.  It was both wonderful and humbling to speak with some of the Centre’s Champions who were present on the evening showcasing various video and other multimedia projects they have created.  You can find out more about the work of the Rix Centre here http://www.rixcentre.org/about-us/

I attended the event with Maureen Piggot, Trustee of the Rix Centre and Director of Mencap in Northern Ireland and Ian Graham, Chief Executive of Momentum, the trade association for Northern Ireland’s ICT industry.  All of us have a career long interest in helping people learn so it made for a useful and fascinating evening.

Lord Brian Rix is by far the most sprightly 87 year old I’ve met in a long time.  He and his wife Elspet Gray (I’m ashamed to admit I know her best from the first series of Blackadder, she played the Queen) were delightful hosts and hearing about the various charities they are involved in made me really want to do more both personally and with Learning Pool.  On that note I’ll be contacting Rix Centre Director Andy Minnion next week to see if there’s anything we at Learning Pool can co-produce or help out with at the Centre.  You should too.