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The first Festival of the Mind
The Festival of the Mind at the Royal Albert Hall had been in the planning for many years. This great celebration of the 21st birthday of Use Your Head, Mental Literacy and the powers of the human mind finally went ahead on the 21st April and proved to be a tremendous success.
As the Albert Hall filled on the afternoon of Friday April 21, the official 21st birth-day of the first publication of Tony Buzan's ground-breaking book Use Your Head, a party atmosphere reigned. Balloons cascaded down from the ceiling and confetti cannon roared around the hall scattering the celebrants with multi-coloured streamers. Tony Buzan then opened proceedings by introducing an entire panel of brain stars including grand master Mind Mapper Vanda North and champion juggler Michael GeIb. Tony proceeded to inspire the audience with well chosen remarks about the unlimited power of the human brain. Rikki Hunt had seized the opportunity offered by the Festival of the Mind to engage Tony Buzan, Vanda North and Ray Keene to give a private address to his company Burmah Petroleum Fuels Ltd on the morning of the event. As a result, Burmah was invited to become one of the main sponsors of the day. During the afternoon Rikki Hunt packed out the Elgar Room to the seams with his own lecture on creating the Thinking Organisation and the 'can-do' philosophy. He was followed with an equally successful representation by Richard Israel, the father of prodigy Lana Israel, whose book Brain Seji, co-authored by Tony Buzan, is already taking the business community by storm.
Meanwhile, on stage the world's largest ever Mind Map was being produced on a gigantic scroll stretching across the hall. The first branches were drawn by Vanda North and anyone with something to map that was relevant to the day was invited to join in the mind-bending fun. This will be one for the Guinness Book of Records or indeed for Tony Buzan's own soon to be published Book of Mental World Records. |
On the floor of the hall Grandmaster Ray Keene took on all-comers at chess. During the course of the afternoon, with juggling, a general party atmosphere and party-poppers going off all round him, he won over 50 games and drew just one -with the day's duty manager of the Royal Albert Hall.
Professor Barry Buzan lent an international air to the proceedings with a polished overview of international relations. This led on to one of the day's climaxes, grandmaster juggler Michael Gelb's effort to teach a world record number of people how to juggle. His book with Tony Buzan, Lessons from the Art of juggling, was hot off the press and with juggling being seen as an increasingly useful business metaphor this performance
USE YOUR HEAD - SUMMER 1995 was of intense interest. As it was, Michael did not break the world record, but with 200+ members of the audience learning to keep their balls in the air for more than 10 seconds he did break the Albert Hall record.
As the festivities reached a climax in the main hall the side-rooms continued to be packed by the prodigies Lana Israel and James Lee, both Mind Mapping champions expounding their own highly successful techniques for studying and learning, which have resulted in accolades being awarded from
around the world.
On stage a similar effort was undertaken by Gordon Dryden, who, to the immense surprise of the audience, managed to teach them to count to ten in Japanese in just 30 seconds. A truly memorable experience.
Meanwhile, outside the main hall, a fantastic Mind Map exhibition had been assembled by Lynn Collins. This was the first exhibition ever to feature Mind Maps from all over the world. The total number of maps on display was over 300 and the exhibition aroused great interest throughout the day.
Pecub, the Use Your Head magazine artist, made a special trip from Switzerland to attend the festival and dashed off 50 of his distinctive large cartoons in four hours. He also signed copies of the newly launched Brain Training which he has written with Tony Buzan.
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