Jamie Jauncey is a writer, journalist and publisher specialising in the use of communication in business.
Jamie believes passionately in the power of stories and simple, human language as a force for good in the business world. He works with businesses and organisations of all kinds, in the private and public sectors, as a writer, coach, trainer and facilitator. His aim is always to help people make better, stronger connections when they communicate, no matter what the subject or audience; and in the process to understand more about their own personal values, and how they bring those to bear on the jobs they do. In thirty years he has worked for household name organisations in many different sectors of the economy and government including Aviva, BT, Barclays, Lloyds TSB, Logica, National Museums Scotland, RBS, the Scottish Arts Council, the Scottish Government, Standard Life, the Universities of Aberdeen and St Andrews, and visitscotland. He is one of the three founders of Dark Angels, the acclaimed programme of residential creative writing courses for people in business. He is also one of the Scottish founders and a board member of 26, the national organisation that champions a better use of language at work. As a member of 26 he has contributed to a number of books and projects including: 26 Letters, 26 Malts, Common Ground, The Bard & Co and 26 Treasures. He has also written articles and lectured about the language of business. He writes a weekly blog about language, A Few Kind Words. Room 121 will be his first non-fiction book.
Jamie has published short stories and novels for adults, young adults and children. His most recent, The Witness and The Reckoning, both for young adults, were shortlisted for the 2008 and 2009 Scottish Childrens’ Book of the Year Award respectively. As a young adult novelist, his work has taken him into secondary schools all round Scotland. He is also well known on Scotland’s adult literary circuit, both as a one-time fiction reviewer for The Scotsman and as a veteran interviewer and chair of author events (most notably his ongoing double-act with Alexander McCall Smith). Jamie has been chairman of the Society of Authors in Scotland (1995-1998) and a member of the Scottish Arts Council’s Literature Committee (1998-2001). Since 2002 he has been on the board of the Edinburgh International Book Festival (the world’s largest) and, in addition to his board duties, hosts many events each summer in Charlotte Square. 1990 The Albatross Conspiracy (Andre Deutsch)1994 The Mapmaker (Andre Deutsch/Hodder Headline) 1996 The Crystal Keeper (Scholastic) 2008 The Witness (Macmillan) 2009 The Reckoning (Macmillan).
Jamie's musical allegiances are many and varied. He grew up playing in Scottish country dance bands, moved on to rock 'n' roll, thence to a stint as a singer-songwriter and from there, via a long detour into blues and jazz, back eventually to his traditional roots. Over the years he has released singles in his own name, toured and recorded with 60s legend Peter (Where Do You Go To My Lovely) Sarstedt, run The Jauncey Brothers Band with his brother Simon for a dozen years, and played in ceilidh outfits with increasingly ridiculous names such as Ceilidh Minogue and the Incredible Jimi Shandrix Experience.
Today he plays piano with Shooglenifty frontmen Angus R Grant and Luke Plumb in both The Funky String Band (with singer/guitarist Peter Daffy) and The Birnam Quartet (with fiddlers Anna-Wendy Stevenson and Sarah Hoy). He also plays piano in Telford’s Crossing, a new seven-piece ensemble led by Birnam fiddler Pete Clark and veteran guitarist Jack Evans.
www.afewkindwords.blogspot.com
Jamie was born in Comrie, Perthshire, in 1949, and raised first in Edinburgh, then in Perthshire. He was educated partly in Scotland, partly in England, and then at Aberdeen University where he read law, graduating LLB in 1971. He lived and worked in London as a journalist, publisher and freelance writer from 1971 to 1990, when he returned to Scotland. Today he earns his living principally as a writer and language coach in the business world. He is married with three daughters, one son and a granddaughter.
Until 2003 John Simmons was a Director of leading brand consultancy Interbrand. He is now he is an independent writer and consultant working on brands as diverse as Diageo, Unilever and 3. He is director of training and brand language at The Writer (www.thewriter.co.uk).
John has a degree in English Literature from Oxford University. He worked extensively in publishing as a copywriter and as communications manager at the National Economic Development Office before joining Newell and Sorrell in 1984. There he headed a design team on many major identity and communication programmes, including those for Royal Mail and Waterstone's, leading the strategic consultancy. He has advised clients particularly on the use of language to express the distinctiveness of a brand, including Marks & Spencer, Guinness and Air Products. He is currently working with AkzoNobel, Grant Thornton and ESPA. For Orange he ran a series of nine residential writing workshops that included readings by poets such as Andrew Motion, Maura Dooley and Simon Armitage.
John is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and has four times been a judge in the 'writing for design' category at the D&AD awards, twice as Foreman of the jury. He runs “Writing for design” workshops for D&AD. At The Writer he runs open and tailored workshops helping individuals and organisations to communicate more effectively and creatively through words. These workshops are based around his books. He runs “Dark Angels” workshops, week-long residential courses in remote retreats in Scotland, England and Spain, which aim to promote more creative writing in communication by organisations of all kinds.
John has written a number of books on the subject of the relationship between language and identity. We, me, them & it: the power of words in business was published by Texere in November 2000 and became a business books bestseller on Amazon. The invisible grail: in search of the true language of brands was published in 2003. Profile Books published the Economist Guide to Brands and Branding, jointly edited with Rita Clifton. John’s book My sister’s a barista: How they made Starbucks a home from home was published in 2004, and Winning together: the story of the Arsenal brand in 2006. He was the series editor for Cyan’s Great Brand Stories. The third part of his ‘The Writer’s Materials trilogy’, Dark Angels: How writing releases creativity at work, was published by Cyan in 2005. His books have been translated into many languages into Dutch, Chinese and Japanese. His latest book is Great Brand Stories: Innocent. A new book 26 Ways of Looking at a Blackberry was published by A&C Black in spring 2009.
John is a founder director of 26, the not-for-profit group that champions the cause of more creative language in business. He was the driving force behind “26 letters”, the exhibition at the British Library that was a highlight of the 2004 London Design Festival. In the 2005 Festival he was the initiator and leading participant in “From here to here”, a collaborative programme with London Underground’s Circle Line staff and the London College of Communications. This led to him becoming writer-in-residence at King’s Cross tube station for the following year. “26 Exchanges” was a recent initiative – an exhibition and a book that is part of the London Design Festival 2009, in collaboration with International PEN.
John has led 26 Treasures, 26’s most far-reaching project so far. Last year it was a collaboration at the Victoria & Albert Museum in which 26 objects from the British Galleries were paired with writers (including former poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion). This year 26 treasures (see www.26treasures.com) has gone national with projects in the National Museum of Scotland, National Library of Wales and the Ulster Museum. The leading poets of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are involved.
John’s work on the website for the Ministry of Stories was shortlisted this year for a D&AD award. www.ministryofstories.org.
John’s most recent venture is to set up Dark Angels Press, a small publisher dedicated to fiction arising from the Dark Angels programme. In June the Press www.darkangelspress.com will publish John’s novella The angel of the stories with 21 special illustrations by the artist Anita Klein.
