{"id":2213,"date":"2012-03-20T09:01:52","date_gmt":"2012-03-20T08:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=2213"},"modified":"2012-03-20T11:24:46","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T10:24:46","slug":"poetic-brilliance-and-imagination-trumps-dreaming-spires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=2213","title":{"rendered":"Poetic brilliance and imagination trumps dreaming spires"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small; color: #000000; font-family: Tahoma;\">Ian Flintoff\u00a0 was a language scholar at Oxford University before becoming a professional actor and director. |He started his OU career in 1989.His academic qualifications are mainly in biological sciences and he has a doctorate in science communication. He appeared on an album compiled by Richard Holliman for iTunes U, <a href=\"http:\/\/isotope.open.ac.uk\/?q=node\/700 \" ><em>Science communication and public engagement<\/em>. <\/a>The album\u00a0also\u00a0features contributions from Alan Irwin, Jon Turney, Susan Greenfield, Vic Pearson, Robert Lambourne and Richard Holliman.Here Dr Flintoff r<\/span><span style=\"font-size: x-small; color: #000000; font-family: Tahoma;\">ecalls the residential element of his OU experience:<\/span><\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\u00a0<span style=\"font-size: x-small; color: #000000; font-family: times new roman;\">You can never go to an OU summer school without seeing this amazing cross-section of society. The first time it brought tears to my eyes, the beauty of it &#8230; I was in an all-male college at Oxford which was mainly Etonians who were charming people, but I can&#8217;t kid myself for a moment that Trinity had anything on the majesty or poetic brilliance and imagination of the Open University.The Open University is a century or two ahead of Oxford.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\u00a0<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small; color: #000000; font-family: Tahoma;\">Quoted in Patricia W. Lunneborg, <em>OU Men. Work through lifelong learning<\/em>, Lutterworth, Cambridge, 1997, p. 117.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ian Flintoff\u00a0 was a language scholar at Oxford University before becoming a professional actor and director. |He started his OU career in 1989.His academic qualifications are mainly in biological sciences and he has a doctorate in science communication. He appeared on an album compiled by Richard Holliman for iTunes U, Science communication and public engagement. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,10,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-methods-history-of-the-ou","category-residential-schools","category-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2213"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2215,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2213\/revisions\/2215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}