Biography of Jack Adams author
This biography of Jack Adams author reveals that as a writer, Jack has been producing material for more than 20 years. Most of his output has been a web-based, academic, reference or project-based deliveries. As of 2018, Jack is developing his own voice as an author.
That voice is based on a range of experiences in life which do not speak of the ordinary. Jack has been involved with indigenous communities, been homeless, been walking long distances and travelling through landscapes and cultures. In this journey, he has used the ideas of Comparative Mythology as his compass and has navigated his way through a life of strange contradictions.
He studied at Ruskin College, Oxford and Girton College, Cambridge. He is a Churchill Fellow and has worked with academics in Universities in the UK and beyond. Jack founded and ran the original HumanRightsTV, a project much copied by others, and in that work addressed a range of subjects in which he had the fortune to be mentored by leading experts in their fields. He has been an invited guest speaker at a conference sponsored by the United Nations in Mexico, the opening speaker at a conference in Tunisia and, after speaking at the Queensland University of Technology, was added on the preferred speaker list.
However, for Jack, such things are of much smaller importance than the well-being of the people around him. Jack’s own personal happiness is to be found in his gardens, his library and in the kitchen, where he cooks for his wife and his friends. In his world, life is about eating good food, being with friends and family and working on tasks you love.
Jack does not own a television.
2022
2021
March 2021 Collaboration with Simon Roper on name places; toponymy.
Research and writing texts for the next Akane Takayama project Setting The World Alight.
Production of memorial film “Mariko Takayama” is available on Mythologies YouTube channel.
January 2021 – sees the launch of my Mediacast page on this website.
Toes Curling Crumbly Edge published March 2020. A collection of stories, poems, ideas and insights revolving around approaches to life.
Covid necessitated isolation and for the duration of 2020.
Work commenced on the marketing texts and project management of the sculpture “Setting The World Alight” by Akane Takayama.
Construction of a brewery within which research and production of home brewed beers, organic apple cyder and countryside wines recorded on a private blog for members of Abelard Brewery.
Establishment of a mediacast platform entitled ‘Mythologies by Jack Adams’ to produce media output. Mythologies 01 podcast published in December. Video production of ‘The History of the World, What’s Mything.’, ‘Mythologies by Jack Adams’, ‘The Mythology of the Stars’ and ‘The Mythology of Proto Fascism.’for the Mythologies on the YouTube and Vimeo Mythologies channels.
2020
2019
Working on ‘Bones or Remains’ the third volume in the trilogy The MANual.
‘Working-class discrimination is the weed in Plato’s garden’ published in Times Higher Education
DOG by Akane Takayama, a brochure about the artist published in June 2019.
Published “The Old Scrapbook” A Pub History Mystery centred around a scrapbook from about 1956 and the search to identify the identity of the collector in August 2019.
Gave a talk on The cutlural History of Public Houses to the South West Hertfordshire CAMRA branch meeting in June.
Website launched
The launch of the jackadamsauthor.com Website in conjunction with Simplink Communications.
- First in the series of books ‘The Rules‘ published.
- Second in the series of books ‘The Grail Quest‘ published.
2018
2016-17
DOGTokyo2017
Project management for the artist Akane Takayama with her DOG ART installation in Ueno Park, Tokyo, Japan.
Project management
Project managed a Cross-Cultural Exchange programme between English and Japanese schools.
2015
2014
Tunisia
Plenary speaker at Mythology Conference in Jendouba University, Tunisia.
Antique books
Continued projects and started building a library collection of antique books.
2012-13
2011
Mexico
Guest Speaker at the Public Broadcasting Conference held by the United Nations in Mexico.
DOG Sculpture Installation, London
Jack was a project assistant on Akane Takayama’s groundbreaking award-winning art installation, “DOG”.
Made a film about the miscarriage of justice in Japan which was then a centrepiece story of the first Innocence Network UK (INUK) magazine.
One of the guest speakers for The Pub History Society at the National Archives at Kew, London.
2010
2009
No Place Like Home
Working with the late Professor Peter Ambrose, HumanRightsTV started producing films on issues around UK housing provision.
‘Sold Down the River’ – another HumanRightsTV film with Professor Peter Ambrose.
Published an article on Cultural perceptions of North Africa in the Tunisian journal “Maghreb”.
LawWorks
As a result of the IAC HumanRightsTV started covering LawWorks conferences. Attorney General Pro Bono Awards. As a result of working with LawWorks HumanRightsTV also started covering the AGPB Awards. INUK.
HumanRightsTV started also working with issues around miscarriage of justice and the work of Dr Michael Naughton. Z2K Zacchaeus 2000 Trust.
HumanRightsTV started working on issues of UK poverty with Z2K.
Started visiting Japan and studying Japanese culture.
2008
2007
Independent Asylum Commission
HumanRightsTV was asked to cover the Independent Asylum Commission (IAC) as it constructed a quasi-judicial report on Asylum in the UK.
HumanRightsTV
The first and original HumanRightsTV was conceived and founded by Jack in September. The development of this project was partnered with Mike Smith. Jack ran and still runs the operation though in recent years it has become an archive resource.
2006
2004
Project managed the delivery of the “Car and Amonnite” solo exhibition for Akane Takayama.
When Things Go Bad
Recovering from a bad relationship…
2003
2002
A Kinda Loneliness You Don’t Forget
Living in between Oxford and Stourbridge, Jack worked on a project with young offenders and made a film about a local musician, Ben Smith.
Oxford
During 2001 Jack was living in a canal-side barge shed in Oxford. He had wooden palettes for a bed and used a small wood burning stove to keep warm.
2001
2000
Ruskin College, Oxford
In 2000 Jack completed his
Ruskin College, Oxford
In May he was awarded his Post-Graduate Studies Certificate with three distinctions. He returned to Queensland in November for his last three-month research trip.
1999
1998
Ruskin College, Oxford
Having left Cambridge in the summer of 1997 Jack was accepted onto the history M.A. course at Ruskin College. In order to pay his way, he took a job in a residential home for young profoundly disabled adults. In June he returned to Queensland for another 3-month research trip.
Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship
In January 1997 Jack was awarded the Churchill Fellowship to research the relationships between indigenous elders and their youth. He spent three months from November 1997 in Queensland, Australia.
Girton College, Cambridge
After having attained a Ruskin Diploma with a 1st and Distinction, Jack was accepted to read Sumerian at Cambridge. During the summer of the year, he worked as a porter at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital in London. He worked in the theatre and pre/post-operative areas of the abortion service run by the hospital.
1997
1996
Girton College, Cambridge
After having attained a Ruskin Diploma with a 1st and Distinction, Jack was accepted to read Sumerian at Cambridge. During the summer of that year, he worked as a porter at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital in London. He worked in the theatre and pre/post-operative areas of the abortion service run by the hospital.
Ruskin College, Oxford
Jack started the one-year residential course “Social and Economic History of 19th and 20th Century Britain”. Tutors were Raph Samuel and Hilda Kean.
1995
1993
Sweat Lodge with indigenous Americans near Woodstock
NYS. Having returned to England, Jack found himself in a new relationship which took him to New York for three weeks. Staying on the Lower East Side next to the area known as ‘The Projects’ he found New York extremely overbearing. Taking the first bus they could out of the coach station, he and his partner got off in the early evening at a town called Kingston. After staying the night in a Ramada Inn, the couple left the next morning and started to walk up the highway. They were picked up by a gentleman who took them into the next village which was the famous Woodstock. Neither had any idea they were anywhere near this historic site and what made it even more fascinating for Jack was that Joseph Campbell had rented a shack in the woods at Woodstock from 1929 to 1934. From that cabin, he began researching and formulating the basis for his ideas on mythology.
In the main street in Woodstock Jack and his partner began talking to an indigenous American man, a member of the Lakota tribe. This led to an invitation to join a group of young indigenous men in a house out in the woods. The original moment of entering was tense and a vigorous discussion broke out about why he had brought white people into the house. Time and calmness healed the doubts and from that situation, there came an invitation to go to the mountains and join a sweat lodge.
Sometime later they left Woodstock, returned to New York to collect bags and flew back to London.
Madrid and Andalucia
In 1991, whilst passing the winter sleeping on the floor of a friend’s lounge, the renown Alan Hammans, Jack started writing poetry and won first prize in The Independent Newspaper poetry competition sometime in the summer of that year.!* In late 1991 Alan moved to Madrid to become an English teacher. He invited Jack to join him. Flying out to Madrid on a one-way ticket with only £50 as funds, Jack stayed at Alan’s for six months before then moving down to Andalucia. In Andalucia, he met Pierrette, Baroness Vreko,* and stayed at her villa where he started painting and a long relationship with the diminutive French diva. During the whole of this period, the reading and research into Comparative Mythology continued.
1991-92
1990
Homeless in London
Jack lived on the streets of London and sofa surfing after the breakup of his marriage. He took to spending time in libraries and reading extensively about Comparative Mythology. This was the start of Jack’s engagement with the works of Joseph Campbell. After reading The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, the idea presented by Campbell on his final page that “…Mythology; and therefore civilisation…” appeared to be a statement that the human engagement with reality was powered by the ability to mythologise. Nowhere before had Jack come across a suggestion that civilisation and mythology were equivalent or even synonymous. This presented a radical departure from a traditional reading of history and inspired further investigation.
This year was notable because Jack was paid £5 every Wednesday afternoon to drink a whisky for Sir Henry Moore at his home in Perry Green, Hertfordshire.