College tours

Myself and Joe have been doing promotional tours of the college now for a good couple of months and now we are coming to the end. The basic gist of the work to try and make as many students want to come to our college as possible. However today we were called in to give a talk/ tour about the Design course. To be honest you could say that we blagged it, and you wouldn't be wrong. We also managed to completely miss half of the tours by getting back to the lecture theatre too late after fueling up on coffee. Not a good morning. I think it was our main objective during the talk to get a couple of laughs (Just so we seemed human) this may not have worked due to the fact that only the librarian laughed at us and in turn this may have become detrimental to the intake of design students next year. Oh well, one more left, hopefully next week we wont be so daunting.

Age Exchange- Stage manager take 2

I just received a message from Malcolm to ask if i would like to stage manage the next age exchange production- of course, i said yes straight away. I'm really happy that he decided to contact me again, even if my nan was name dropping when he spoke to her about the play, "You thought about getting Nat back Malcolm? Everyone loved her last time..."nothing like your nan getting you a job in the arts. Still, not to put myself down too much, he didn't say no, so i must have done a good job last time.

Christmas Face Painting at HWPS

It is officially the Christmas season. My sisters primary school had their Christmas fayre earlier today and despite most of the children being off school this week with some sort of flu or illness, there was a decent turn out. We didn't make as much money as in the summer fayre but we were only there for half of the time.
I can't say that i have actually ever done Christmas themed face painting before, its not really the the right season; but i think the school makes so much money from me and my mum doing it that they can't afford not to bring us in. Still, my mum came up with some very good designs- a snowman which was very popular and a reindeer that looked good- although my sister hated it when my mum practised on her. Charlotte was actually one of the children that had been ill that week- she was deceptively quiet and green looking- yet as a reindeer she seemed absolutely fine. My favourite of the designs that i came up with was a roast dinner (a bit of a cult favourite i think, as only my sisters friends dared to have it).
There was one boy who had his face painted as a snowman- which wasn't unusual, however his dad filmed the whole thing- it was very sweet, but I'm now waiting to find myself on YouTube "Terrible face painter attempts snowman, lol!" I think that it was more of the case of being new to the country- his dads English wasn't great and they both seemed to be far too fascinated with the fayre and what was happening- as the rest of the crowd (mainly cash losing parents) were huffing through predictability of tin tombolas and Santa's grotto's. I thoroughly enjoyed the fayre... minus Charlotte spilling my newly bought cup of tea.

I'm looking forward to the Chelsea Christmas Fayre next week!

Protest!

The protest today in London against the student fee rise i must say, turned out to be massive. I didn't realise what the extent of the turnout would be- but London was totally jam packed. I actually watched the unfolding of the protest at work in the Estate agent on BBC news- i did have the intention to go to the march at my lunchtime, but it got cut short by me being late to work in the morning so the 20 min walk to trafalger square from mayfair seemed a bit pointless, I don't think i would have even got close because of the crowds.  Of course, our uni being very close to Millbank tower meant that our college pretty much closed for the protest and everyone attended. It also hosted the port-a-loos for the protest. My boss thought the protest being at my college was hillarious and made up a very ellaborate story about how i had crept into the Millbank tower in the morning and had let down the security there so my fellow commrades could go and destroy and burn down the place... thats why i was late that morning, and also why i was at work- to give myself an alibi.
I did run back to college this evening after work and there were police everywhere, half the roads were taped off too, it made my journey home on the bus horrendous. 
We were watching newsnight earlier- i cant say that us students were very well repesented. We'll have to see what effect the protest will have on the unfolding political desicions before i make a calculated opinion on what has happend.

Catalogue out!

Nick finally got the catalogue out to the printers yesterday and fabulously managed to half the price of the batch with a one day turn around. I don't know how he does it- but i was very impressed. The catalogue is also being sent to him at work so i don't have to worry about collecting them. Again fingers crossed that they will all be delivered in time for the PV on Wednesday! Another thing i managed to get done today for Hitachi was the finalised guest list- that is all back and sorted. So we are on course for a fabulous night.

The Map from the central page of the catalogue
(It is better quality than this)

It was our first tour of the college today after our training last week, unfortunately it was a group of potential design students, so i don't think i answered their questions too well on the tours but the presentation in the lecture theatre went quite well beforehand. I'm off to another studio meeting now, to discuss the plans for tearing the walls down...

Fundraising, Training, House Finding and Thesis

Things are slowly coming together to suggest how packed to the brim this year will be. It is only the first Monday of the working term and i haven't stopped today. We have 2,000 words to hand in on Wednesday for our thesis (A little pressure reminded to us in our third year meeting today). Something i should have taken more time on over the summer- I underestimated how busy i would be with work- not a valid excuse really, but something that i can possibly resolve by good time management now.
 On the upside though, we have found somewhere to live- I received the call during a training course on Friday morning to confirm- hopefully we will be able to move in this week- although i will probably have to leave it until the weekend now.
 The training course that i was in on Friday continued today as well. It was a course to aid public speaking and presentation skills- It was really useful, as we are just about to commence a year of prospective student presentations in the lecture theatre, which will most likely be daunting and full of in-answerable questions. The main aspect of the course that i thought was really great was that the two people that were giving the advice were graduates of our college that had started their own business doing these workshops. It did give me a bit of hope for when i leave college that i might be able to get a job or even work for myself- here's to hoping!
There is still this year to get through though- and there is lots of work to be involved with. After the stage 3 meeting we got together to talk about fundraising for the degree show. We need to raise £10-15,000 to fund everything including catalogues, drink and extras. We did have a very productive meeting though, where we spoke about positions we would like to take within the fundraising team- and lots of people were keen to put in ideas of what they could do to help. I think our first bake sale is in a week or so to start off the fundraising. So good luck bakers with that.
Better get off and continue writing my Thesis...

A very full day of working at college

Yesterday we started work at 7am. The MA Show breakfast. I don't think i have ever been so tired in my life- yet to be honest it wasn't that early. We were hanging around for a while though before things got going, which probably resulted in the tiredness. The main purpose we were there was to give tours to collectors if they wanted them, there was one person and i missed them because i went to the toilet, good timing. It was a little pointless me being there- but i did get to see  Lucien Freud, he had come to look specifically at one piece of work (I think)- We didn't get a chance to give him a name badge though because it had been stolen by one of the MA students messing about. An ambassador was ushered over to try and take his picture but being polite, he asked and was declined. I am envious of the interaction though. I wish i could have been turned away by Lucian Freud! We had work again that evening, this time for the MA private view- we did a superb job giving out maps and even had a little chat with the Mayor of Kensington and Chelsea as he entered- well, i offered him a map and a sticker, he did laugh... By this time it had been a long day and my mind was frazzled. Truthfully though, we were highly complemented on our map giving out skills, we got into it.
One person ruined that evening for me, which was a shame because i had a fun time working. As we were ushering people out at around 5 minutes past closing time (baring in mind that we had already told people that they had ten minutes) a man came over to me and said that i was being really obnoxious- in his words he said "You have told me at least three times to leave in different rooms of the exhibition and i think it is very rude" - how do you reply to that without saying "Perhaps you should have left the first time?" hmmm?

On a different note: I went to the Havering museum today- a first for heritage in Havering. It has recently been placed inside the old brewery- which coincidentally is the theme of a whole exhibition room about the local pubs in Romford. I'm not going to challenge the relevance and cultural richness of the museum, however, one of the exhibits was a print of Ian Dury because he is a local boy and there was an exhibit about the second world war in Epping.

Portfolio Day

Back in Chelsea today, to work on a portfolio day- Slightly demoralising when A-level students don't understand any of your work. Fair enough they are not really taught performance art in A-level/ GCSE, but they seemed somewhat disappointed that i didn't do painting anymore. It was also quite hard to explain why working in a collaboration is valid work and not just copying. Which meant that the response to our work from Norway was mainly laughing, with in between choices such as "Is that you?" and "What are you doing!?"
To be honest, apparently we had pretty much the same response from our exhibition piece in Norway- Ellie explained it as being the Norwegian art scene only liking paintings, so in some ways the spirit of our vacation lived on throughout the exhibition, I think it did go well over all though- Ellie was pleased with the outcome and curation, so i wont argue with that.