Created from monthly music fundraisers in support of Alzheimer’s Research Trust, this first video features 5 amazing Manchester bands and was filmed at the uber-cool Deaf Institute.

The exciting Manchester bands featured are Airship, Run Toto Run, Mutineers, Slow Readers Club and yours truly, This is Chichi.

What do you think?  Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Downloads:  iTunes | Windows Media | 3G Phone |

I’m pretty excited about this event, if only because I’m also playing in a line up that includes excellent Manchester bands Airship, Run Toto Run, Mutineers and Slow Readers Club.

I got a chance to meet with the fundraising team from Alzheimer’s Research Trust last week when they were in Manchester for the Full of Life Festival at the Museum of Science and Industry.

The museum had organised an evening event:  the Alzheimer’s Research Trust Talk as part of Manchester City Council’s ‘Valuing Older People in Manchester’ programme.

During the talk on 5 October I learnt a great deal about Alzheimer’s Research Trust’s efforts in funding world-class research to find a cure for Alzheimer’s and related dementias.

Some key facts I came away with:

• About half of the people in the UK know someone who has dementia.
• The number is predicted to double in the next 20 years.
• Alzheimer’s is a disease not a part of normal aging.
• Age is the biggest factor: in 1962 the Queen sent 200 telegrams to people celebrating their 100 year old birthday.   In 2005 she sent out 4600.
• Babies born now are more likely to reach the age of 100.
• This last fact means that dementia, a progressive deterioration of brain function, is likely to affect more people in the UK in coming years.

Speakers at the event included Dr Marie Janson, Director of Development at the Alzheimer’s Research Trust and Dr Stuart Pickering-Brown whose research into the genes that cause dementia at Manchester University is part of work at the university funded by Alzheimer’s Research Trust.

Also speaking was a rather special Alzheimer’s Research Trust supporter, Peter Ashley, who has been living with Dementia since 2000.

Here’s a short video interview I made with Peter at the event.

He shares how he copes with the disease and his work into de-stigmatising it.

As I reveal in the video, Peter is a bit of a YouTube star for his videos on living with dementia.  Here’s another video of his, this one created for the Lewy Body Society.

As it happens, June Brown MBE, the popular actress better known as Dot Cotton in the popular BBC soap Eastenders also has Dementia with Lewy Bodies and shares her experiences here.

What do you think?  Isn’t Peter Ashley just like Santa?  And so brave, stoic and full of warmth.

Share your thoughts in the comments.

And shout out if you’re at the gig later today!

Virgin Money Giving, the new online donations platform created by the clever clogs at Virgin Money is now on board as *the* online donations platform for the 7 Wonders in 7 Days project.

This is really exciting as working with Virgin Money Giving means that all donations to 7 Wonders in 7 Days will now be through one ‘Donate’ page.

This is going to simplify fundraising significantly as it makes more sense to offer people one place to donate to all 7 charities rather than 7 as would have been the case using JustGiving.com.

I’ll be linking the Donate page on this website to the Virgin Money Giving page for 7 Wonders in 7 Days as all the 7 charities sign up to the Virgin Money Giving service.  Only 3 are signed up at the moment as you can see.

I’m particularly excited about this new development because it comes directly out of discussions with two of the 7 charities I am supporting: British Red Cross and Feed The Minds.

Those of you following the 7 Wonders in 7 Days Twitter stream will know that I’ve been making contact with all 7 charities over the last month and had great initial meetings with British Red Cross and Feed The Minds last Tuesday.

I met with Alzheimer’s Research Trust earlier today and will be meeting Diabetes UK next week!

The meetings with the fundraising teams at the charities have been incredibly inspiring.

As mentioned briefly on Twitter, I’m now working with the charities to develop an online video competition based around the 7 wonders in 7 Days project.  The competition will be launching in January 2010 and I’m really excited about it!

I can’t give very much away just yet but I will say that it is the sort of thing you’d read about in Metro, the free newspaper available in most UK cities!

Do keep an eye on the 7 Wonders in  7 Days Twitter page as I regularly post daily updates there.  I’ll be blogging less frequently as I get on with planning the video competition.

Also, don’t forget to get your tickets to the first of our monthly music fundraisers, raising much needed funds for Alzheimer’s Research Trust.  It’s next Friday, 16th October!

As usual, I’d love to hear your feedback.

If you have any thoughts on the latest developments: signing up with Virgin Money Giving, the top secret video competition, next week’s music fundraiser or anything else 7 Wonders related, shout out in the comments!

Taking place at trendy music venue and bar Deaf Institute, just off Manchester’s Oxford Road it’s on Friday 16th October 2009 at 8pm.

Organised by respected Manchester music promoters Friends of Mine, it promises to be an evening of fantastic live music by some really good bands. You can download a flyer here if you wish.

Here’s a taster of the videos I’ll be creating from the event.  The plan is to create a Sounds in the Key of Life video podcast from each event!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47UsLzjQ2Qw 345 264 ]

I’ll be playing a short set at each event. Here’s a video of me performing at a similar event if you wanted to know what I sounded like:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcVCHY7c0VA 345 264 ]

This is a rather short blog post for me! Will be posting links to tickets for the fundraiser later in the week.

I’m chuffed to have successfully submitted a 1 minute video pitch for 7 Wonders in 7 Days for documentary makers and TV big wigs at the annual Sheffield Doc/Fest film festival in November.

Last week was rammed with meetings @work so I didn’t think I’d get it in on time but I did.  Here it is:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19RRofTwdk8 345 264 ]

So what’s Sheffield Doc/Fest?  In their own words:

Sheffield Doc/Fest brings the international documentary family together to celebrate the art and business of documentary making for five intense days in November.

Doc/Fest is the only place in the world where you will meet sectors of the whole of the British documentary industry under one roof. Each year, the industry conference attracts the leading names of British documentary makers and executives in British television.

Why did I Submit a One Minute Pitch to Sheffield Doc/Fest?

Well, as part of my ‘try everything approach’ for getting the word out about 7 Wonders in 7 Days, I decided to film a short pitch for Doc/Fest’s MeetMarket online pitching system.   As it says on Doc/Fest’s website:

Buyers view online one-minute pitch teasers of innovative documentary ideas, along with one-page treatments, in advance of Doc/Fest. From this, they select which projects they would like to discuss in one-to-one meetings at MeetMarket. Projects can be at any stage of development and cross-platform projects are also very welcome

I’ll have to wait and see if the buyers at Doc/Fest like 7 Wonders in 7 Days.

If they do, I get to meet a number of TV commissioners and documentary makers to discuss putting the 7 Wonders on 7 Days trip on TV as it happens!

It’s something I am already exploring with well-respected TV production company KEO films but I thought it would be worth opening up discussions with the wider documentary industry.

From talking to professionals in the broadcast media industry about the project, I get the impression 7 Wonders on 7 Days is considered a bold TV idea.

A few have said they’d be particularly interested in the online activity that would be happen on this site, on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc during the trip.

So, going to Doc/Fest would be a great opportunity to get a load of informed feedback from lots of TV professionals, and hopefully a TV commission for the project.

I think it needs that level of public support to achieve the target of raising £777,000 for 7 charities!

I was inspired to get on with uploading a submission after meeting Mark Bowness, the talented creative behind the groundbreaking TribeWanted.com project at an industry event last week.

Mark started TribeWanted.com with a friend after deciding to lease an island in Fiji and invite people to pay him to live there!  It’s now a fully fledged eco-community and was also the subject of a prime-time BBC TV series.  Awesome or what!

I’ll be blogging a bit more this week.  Watch out for updates on next month’s music fundraiser, the first of many hopefully and in aid of Alzheimer’s Research Trust.

I’ve also heard back from the lovely people at British Red Cross and will be meeting them to chat about my plans for 7 Wonders in 7 Days later on in the month.

Those of you who are following my blog posts will know that the  fundraising plans for 7 Wonders in 7 Days now involve working directly with each of the 7 charities.

I’ve been discussing such plans with Alzheimer’s Research Trust and have been blown away by how supportive and open they’ve been.   Look forward to sharing more about that soon.

Over to you.  What did you think of the video pitch?  Like it or not?  Leave me a comment and let me know!

This first instalment is a brief article on why I picked Alzheimer’s Research Trust.

In a sense, I’ve already shared why I am supporting Alzheimer’s Research Trust.

The About Page of this site details how I was inspired to start looking into a trip to “see the new 7 wonders of the world in 7 days, raising money for 7 charities” after being moved to tears by an episode of Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire TV show which showed a man caring for his elderly wife who suffered from Alzheimer’s.

I’d recently returned from a trip to my grandmother’s funeral in Nigeria.  She died aged 83 from complications arising from Alzheimer’s.   The TV programme was a stark reminder of how much she suffered.

As with the families of many of those troubled by this drawn out illness, mine had adjusted to life with a loved one who couldn’t recognise her own children and often broke into long spells of incoherent speech.

Closer to the end, it was my gran’s difficulties with motor functions that were particularly hard on us.  She had to be coaxed to eat and to move about (to prevent bed sores) and the strain took its toll on the entire family.

Everyone helped as they could and both my immediate and extended family in Nigeria pitched in considerably.  It was deeply troubling nonetheless.

My irrepressibly joyful yet tough gran, healthy in every other way, was now completely reliant on someone for help with the most basic of activities.

I will share more about my gran’s struggles with Alzheimer’s disease another time.  This post is about why I chose to support Alzheimer’s Research Trust.

Their website states it very well:

The Alzheimer’s Research Trust is funding world-class research to find ways to cure, prevent or treat Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

The patron of this inspiring UK charity is Sir Terry Pratchett, the million selling comic fantasy author who was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s a few years ago.

Sir Terry Pratchett, whose publisher Colin Smythe was kind enough to send a signed children’s novel for the 7 Wonders in 7 Days charity auction in June, recently donated $1 million of his own money to the charity.

If anyone can get somewhere to finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, I’m sure the Alzheimer’s Research Trust will be involved.

Research into this disease is incredibly underfunded, worrying when according to the website:

“700,000 people in the UK have dementia, a number forecast to double by 2030. Much more research is needed if we are to minimise dementia risk for everyone, as well as develop new treatments that are desperately needed now.”

And in Sir Terry Pratchett’s own words:

“Like 700,000 others in the UK, I’m scrabbling to stay ahead long enough to be there when the Cure comes along. I was shocked when I found out that funding for Alzheimer’s research is just 3% of that for cancer, but care costs are billions of pounds higher for Alzheimer’s. It makes me want to kick a politician in the teeth. I hope the MPs who are backing my call for an increase in research funding will do more than just talk about it.”

Four members of the public founded the Alzheimer’s Research Trust in 1992 as a result of their deep concerns at the lack of funding for Alzheimer’s research.

Some of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust’s achievements include:

Helping the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s to become more accurate – many scientists agree that improving early detection of Alzheimer’s will help current and future treatments to be more effective.  The Alzheimer’s Research Trust’s Clinical Research Fellow in Edinburgh showed that a reading test could help doctors to diagnose Alzheimer’s. (April 2003, Neurology, McGurn et al, Alzheimer’s Research Trust/William Lindsey Clinical Research Fellowship.)

Through 7 Wonders in 7 Days, I hope to support the great work of this charity and to support its research which I hope will benefit people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease in the UK and abroad.

Helping Out Via Social Media

One of the really helpful pieces advice that came out of the 7 Wonders in 7 Days Thank You Tweetup a couple of weeks ago was a suggestion about using the 7 Wonders in 7 Days campaign as a way to connect each of the 7 charities with their supporters using social media.

For the more tech-savvy charities like @BritishRedCross, @DiabetesUK and @YoungMindsUK who are already active on social media sites like Twitter, my activities on the campaign will provide something interesting for their supporters to get behind.  More on this soon )

For smaller charities like Alzheimer’s Research Trust who operate with a much smaller team, I’m going to be teaming up with their marketing team to find out how I can best support their fundraising efforts via social media.

They have been incredibly supportive of the campaign, getting in touch before I even approached them.

It’s going to be an interesting ride.

I could go on but I’ll stop here.

What do you think?  Your views welcomed as always.   Let me know in the comments.

When viewed in glossy, real-life, Work Life magazine is a brilliant concept.

Basically, the magazine is in two parts, with two corresponding covers.

The first half – Work, focuses on business and work issues.  The second half, which you read by flipping the magazine over to the back page to see the ‘Life’ cover, is all about lifestyle and leisure.

7 Wonders in 7 Days was covered in the Social Entrepreneur section of the latest edition’s Work feature.  The entire magazine is available online and you can read the article here.

Many thanks to ‘Work’ editor, Anna-Louise Gilhooley (and MD of the publishing company Rejuvenate Group) for the excellent article.

I also really enjoyed the article on Theo Paphitis, the business man and entrepreneur well known for his appearances on the BBC’s Dragons’ Den.

UPDATE: After reading the article, I am now following @therealtheo, Theo Paphitis Twitter account after he complains his name is currently being ‘Cybersquatted‘ on Twitter!

Check out Work Life Magazine if you come across it, it’s well worth a read.

10,000 copies of the magazine are distributed across Manchester city centre in hotspots and exclusive venues including The Hilton and Midland hotels and Bruntwood owned and managed offices.

What do you think?  Have you come across Work Life Magazine?

Let me know in the comments.

Regular readers of this blog will know that on Monday I held a closed invite Tweetup to thank supporters of 7 Wonders in 7 Days and members of Team 7 Wonders for their help with the campaign so far.

It was also an opportunity to share some of my fundraising plans for the campaign going forward after July’s decision to postpone the trip from September 2009 (9/09/09) to October 2010 (10/10/10) to allow enough time to involve more people in the campaign and raise the funds needed to go.

At Monday’s Thank you Tweetup, held at the Living Room on Deansgate, the venue for June’s Charity Auction and Tweetup, myself and the six five that could make it from Team 7 Wonders discussed my plans for 7 Wonders in 7 Days including the vision and strategy behind the campaign itself.

Thank You to All That Contributed

I’m really grateful to Julian Tait (@julianlstar), David Eaton (@_peak), Hwa Young Jung (@hwayoung) Josh R (@technicalfault) and Ricky Chotai (@ricky_chotai) for their frank questioning and fantastic ideas on Monday evening.

The discussion about the vision at the heart of 7 Wonders in 7 Days, which is to start an educational foundation in memory of my grandmother whose death from Alzheimer’s inspired the whole trip reminded me how important it is to “keep the main thing, the main thing”.

The Jessie Ekweozor Memorial Foundation is being created to do charitable work with disadvantaged young people both in the UK and in the Nigerian village where my grandmother lived most of her life.

Work on creating and registering this charitable foundation is underway.

Julian has extensive experience of starting charities.  His detailed questioning of how the foundation in memory of my gran was to be set up and what it was going to do made it apparent that setting up a charitable organisation is not for the faint hearted.

More importantly, the potentially time consuming process meant that it was possible that the charity may not be registered in time to raise funds for it through the trip in October 2010, meaning that the main reason for this year’s trip postponement could rear its ugly head again next year.

This realisation presented me with a tough decision to make.

I could decide to soldier on, shouldering the burden of raising funds for 7 Wonders in 7 Days and starting a charity from scratch (with some help from my parents, I must add)

or

I could select a ‘substitute charity’, one that had mutual aims to the educational foundation my parents envisioned in memory of my gran, and already existed.

I would then replace the yet-to-be-registered Jessie Ekweozor Memorial Foundation with this substitute charity in the line up of charities being supported by 7 Wonders in 7 Days, the aim being to raise £111,000 for this charity through the 7 Wonders in 7 Days trip instead.

Thanks to Josh for suggesting this.

A Tough Decision To Make

I spent a great deal of time thinking about this over the last 48 hours and have come to the decision that it is much wiser to select a new 7th Charity.

The reasoning behind this is to move as quickly as possible to the fundraising stage for 7 Wonders in 7 Days.

By this I mean moving on to being able to fund raise online for each of the charities using online donations platforms provided by the charities themselves or by sites like Just Giving.com.

Avoiding Embarrassment by Not Soldiering On

A very likely potential snag if I soldiered on with trying to create the charity as well as fundraise was the embarrassment of approaching corporate sponsors with a list of charities that is less than credible because one of them is not yet registered with the Charity Commission.

This was reason enough to choose a new, already established seventh charity.

Which Charity Did I Choose?

After some thought, I have picked Comic Relief as the  new 7th Charity and will be supporting them by raising £111,000 for in support of Sport Relief 2010.

Basically, I am replacing my grandmother’s yet to be created foundation with Comic Relief in the line up of the 7 charities I am fundraising for through 7 Wonders in 7 Days.

This decision allows me to go ahead with the trip in October 2010 even if my grandmother’s foundation is not yet registered by then.

Tough Decision Raises Profile of Foundation Being Created In Memory Of My Gran

Though a tough decision to make, the added benefit of pursuing the 7 Wonders in 7 Days challenge by raising £777,000 for 7 existing charities is that I’d be better equipped to fundraise and raise the profile of the foundation being created in memory of my gran after a successful 7 Wonders in 7 Days campaign.

I have contacted Sport Relief about my plans and will also be contacting the other 6 charities with details of the next stage of the 7 Wonders in 7 Days campaign.

The specific sporting activity I will be doing to raise funds for in support of Sports Relief via 7 Wonders in 7 Days is a weekly mile run at Manchester’s Sportcity running track which I will be blogging, Twittering about and occasionally YouTubing.

Though I once played football for the Women’s FA (I played for Harlow Town Women’s Football Club during my industrial placement year whilst studying Electronic Engineering at York University), I’m not a big fan of long distance running (aka running for the sake of running) so that’s going to be a challenge.

I’m also working on other fundraising plans for the other 6 charities.

Important Changes to Fundraising Plans

My fundraising for the 7 Wonders in 7 Days travel fund is also going to change after Monday’s discussions.

After a frank discussion about the way the 7 Wonders in 7 Days campaign appeared to some as a ‘7 Day Jolly’ it was suggested that I scrap the ‘Invite a Donor to join me on the trip idea’ and instead focus on finding a way to fund just me going through in kind donations, working with the airlines directly.

I’ll keep you posted on this and other plans.

In the mean time, expect to see the look of the 7 Wonders in 7 Days website change as the 7 charities I have chosen to support are given prominence in the design of the website.

I will also be changing much of the copy of the website to reflect these new plans.

What do you think?

Should I have ditched fundraising for the charity being started in memory of my gran so quickly?

Your comments, queries and questions welcomed as always.

UPDATE – 11th September 2009:

The Fundraising Team organising Sport Relief 2010 have been in touch and I’m pleased to say things are moving in an encouraging direction.

I am retrospectively changing the wording of ‘raising support for Sport Relief” in this blog post to ensure it is in keeping with how it should be presented.  Activity is being done ‘in support of Sport Relief 2010′.

I’m also replacing the Sport Relief logo with a substitute image (credited below) until I receive the official images for Sport Relief 2010.

Image Credit: Sport Relief.com MetaphorEvents.co.uk

I was also away for a brief but much needed holiday.

Some lovely folk have donated to the site and sent in signatures.  Check out the trip t-shirt on the right! Click the image for a larger version.  Looking good.

Many thanks to latest sponsors Robert Bruce of P45Camp.com and Kimberley Willis of globalsocialite.com who also followed up her donation with an intriguing blog post about 7 Wonders in 7 Days.

She argues that everyone has their own 7 Wonders and invites a discussion about this on her site.  Neat, I say…  Read on at globalsocialite.com.

I’ve also had some fantastic feedback from Alzheimer’s Research Trust who have been in touch with some really warm words of support for 7 Wonders in 7 Days.

I’m looking forward to involving Alzheimer’s Research Trust and the other charities I am fundraising for in the events I’ve got planned for the rest of the year.

As far as events go, in the first instance, I’m working with uber-cool Manchester music promoters, Friends of Mine to perform and film their monthly event at one of the city’s best new music venues, The Deaf Institute.

The plan is to put together a ‘7 Songs in The Key of Life’ video podcast from live footage of each gig, starting next month hopefully!

Friends of Mine have been responsible for putting on some of the best Manchester acts in recent years on their gig nights and secret parties.  I’m really looking forward to getting involved with their events.

More details as they come.

In the mean time, here’s a video of a performance of mine from May’s Hungry Pigeon festival.  I have a clutch of new videos I’ve been meaning to upload from this.  Will get those done before next month’s gig.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdKJCfYB2NI 345 264 ]

Over to you!

What are you up to?  Having a nice August?  Wondering what’s up with 7 Wonders  and my plans for the rest of the year?

Shout out in the comments.

Many thanks to top graphic designer Hwa Young Jung (@hwayoung on Twitter) for the design work that’s gone into the 7 Wonders in 7 Days t-shirt.  It’s going to look amazing.

Those of you following the 7 Wonders in 7 Days Twitter Stream (@7wondersin7days) will know that I’m concentrating efforts over the next month in establishing the foundation my parents are starting in memory of my late gran whose death from Alzheimer’s inspired the whole trip.

I really should have started working on the Jessie Ekweozor Memorial Foundation a while ago but got sidetracked with fundraising plans.

The plan is to make sure that now I have postponed the 7 Wonders in 7 Days travel date, from 9/09/09 to 10/10/10, to give some breathing room for fundraising, I can ensure that all the 7 charities I am supporting have accounts on the online donations platform being used to accept donations during the trip, Just Giving.com.

The 7 charities I am supporting are:

• Alzheimer’s Research Trust
• Diabetes UK
• Open Doors
• British Red Cross
• Young Minds
• Feed The Minds
• Jessie Ekweozor Memorial Foundation

The two that don’t have accounts on JustGiving are Feed The Minds and the yet to be established Jessie Ekweozor Memorial Foundation.

I’m also planning a new monthly event for 7 Wonders in 7 Days in Manchester.

Styled along the lines of a live music night, the plan is to feature a handful of Manchester’s best up-and-coming singer songwriters and acoustic acts in a regular fundraising night for 7 Wonders in 7 Days.

I’ll also be profiling the work done by the charities I’ve chosen to support, raising funds and support as appropriate, working with each as much as I can.

I’ve got a couple of other events planned in the run-up to Christmas but I’d rather keep those under my hat for now )

I’ll keep you posted!

What do you think?  Do you know any singer/songwriters, acoustic acts that would like to perform in the upcoming 7 Wonders in 7 Days monthly night?

Let me know in the comments.