November 12 Program – By Hand presented by Tim Brookes

By Hand: The Art of Writing and the Future of the Written Word

Presented by Tim Brookes

Wednesday, November 12, 2025

6:30pm MST on Zoom

Above
1. Calligraphy in the Kulitan script for the Kapampangan language of the Philippines, originally incised in bamboo.
2. That’s me, holding up a carving I’ve just finished in classical Mongolian script. It translates as “Mongolia my heart.”
3. Esther Mahlangu, an artist in the southern African Litema style, whose designs have been commissioned for a BMW concept car and a British Airways jumbo jet. This style of artwork was the inspiration for a new script for Bantu languages.
4. This says “Laan tulis” or “Write!” In Balinese (and the wood, for those who tried guessing, is goncalo alves).
5. An extraordinary thing, almost unthinkable yet fascinating: a newspaper written by hand, in Urdu, in the Nastaliq script.

Members: free, Non-members: $10

Members need not register. Non-members please register on our website below. A zoom link will be sent to current members and program registrants a few days before the program. This program will be recorded for future viewing. Please contact Jenny Allen with questions at ccgprograms@coloradocalligraphers.com.

Program Description

Late in 2024, writer/woodcarver/former NPR essayist Tim Brookes, author of the new book By Hand, made a strange and dismaying discovery. As the founder of the Endangered Alphabets Project, he was well aware that some cultures around the world are reviving their traditional forms of writing, and thereby supporting their sense of culture and identity, by teaching calligraphy. But at the same time, in the United States in particular, the so-called First World is abandoning handwriting in favor of the keyboard—but at what cost? And is this connected to the fact that a startling number of people are now ashamed of their own handwriting?

Consulting neuroscientists, graffiti and tattoo artists, calligraphers, even ink specialists, he took a deeper dive into the nature and value of handwriting than any other writer, even to the point of writing most of the book by hand in violet-blackberry-colored ink in a series of journals with his new calligraphy pen—and in the process discovered astonishing evidence of the value of keeping a journal. His talk will address some of the discoveries he made while writing By Hand by hand, and will ask the question “What is the calligrapher’s place in this time of change and turmoil?”

About Tim

Tim Brookes has absolutely no background in calligraphy. Nor, for that matter, in art or woodwork or linguistics. He is living proof that it is never too late to discover your life’s work.

He was educated at Oxford and has lived in the US since 1980, during which time he has been a writer, editor, guitarist, soccer coach and, most recently, wood carver and founder of the Endangered Alphabets Project. His work advocating for minority scripts from around the world has led to appearances at the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, and colleges and universities around the world.

His latest book, By Hand (due out in November) promotes the role of calligraphy as a means of uniting a culture with its history, traditions and identity, and argues for the importance of handwriting in the Age of AI.

Check out his new books An Atlas of Endangered Alphabets and Writing Beyond Writing on Amazon: The Endangered Alphabets Project www.endangeredalphabets.com and The Atlas of Endangered Alphabets at www.endangeredalphabets.net

Twitter: @EAlphabets

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1190077011746159

Instagram: @EndangeredAlphas