Archives for posts with tag: Peripheral Vision

Power & Performance

19/10/2011 //
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Power & Performance

What is power? Who has it? Who wants it? How is power portrayed on the big screen and on the stage?

Our first Peripheral Vision course, called Power & Performance, focuses on creative writing with visits to cultural venues and group discussions in a cafe or bar.

The learners and WEA tutor decided collectively that they would like to visit Bury Met on 12 October for an evening of poetry, light and sound; the Cornerhouse for a screening of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia; and the Royal Exchange Theatre to see Good.

The group will discuss the notion of power before and after the performances and produce some creative writing linked to this theme. I’m hoping one or two of them will also make a short video to upload on the website.

The Will to Power

Power can corrupt, embolden or destroy an individual:

A psychological presupposition of Nietzsche’s is that humans are always attempting to inflict their wills upon others. Every action toward another individual stems from a deep-down desire to bring that person under one’s power in one way or another. Whether a person is giving gifts, claiming to be in love with someone, giving someone praise, or physically harming someone, the psychological motive is the same: to exert one’s will over others.

Travis J Denneson

Society and the Individual in Nietzsche’s The Will to Power

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Cornerhouse meet and mingle: thanks for coming

19/09/2011 //
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HwaYoung from Mad Lab

Hwa Young (above) talks geek and bio

Isn’t it great when a bunch of interesting, creative people get together in one room?

Friday’s event at the Cornerhouse was such an occasion. Community partners, WEA staff and tutors, prospective learners, film makers and cultural partners all gathered in the Cornerhouse annexe to meet and mingle and learn more about Peripheral Vision.

Apart from a slight glitch with my beloved MacBook (well it is four and a half years old), which decided, on a whim, to go mute. “What?” I said, “What?” staring in disbelief at its white, shiny loveliness. “Today, of all days,” I scolded. Thank goodness Hwa Young had brought hers along and I’d had the foresight to pop my presentation on a memory stick. Crisis averted we got on with the presentations:

Thank you

Thank you to everyone named above, and to Jenny from MCC, Niall from City South, Amanda from the Booth Centre, Zoe from Manchester City Council, Harriet from Manchester Camerata and the film-makers Barney and Liz for attending.

Also thank you to my colleagues, Fiona, Mandy, Andy, Susan D, Susan A, Karen and Catherine for being there too. Finally, thanks go to Pat at the Cornerhouse for organising the room (which everyone loved) and the teas and coffees.

Looking back, from my perspective the morning was a success. However, I sort of wish I hadn’t mentioned the pickled gherkin and plum tomato nibbles, while telling an anecdote about a male life-model…

We send our best wishes to Connie from Manchester Art Gallery who had a cycling tumble and couldn’t attend. Get well soon Connie x

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Inspirational Kate & Connie at Manchester Art Gallery

13/09/2011 //
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Manchester Art Gallery

Manchester Art Gallery

Oh I did enjoy yesterday’s meeting with Kate Day and Connie Withan at Manchester Art Gallery. I have worked with Kate over the past couple of years since the Just the Ticket project when a memorable group of learners enrolled on the Reel Surreal course. At the time, Manchester Art Gallery was host to the fabulous Angels of Anarchy exhibition, which became the inspiration for the Reel Surreal course content. The participants visited the exhibition and attended a screening of Bady Minck at the Cornerhouse and a performance of Pub in the Royal Exchange Studio.

Kate is the Lifelong Learning Manager (Volunteers) and Connie is the Performance Monitoring Officer for the gallery. They were both so enthusiastic about Peripheral Vision and the ways in which we could open up the galleries to the potential learners that our meeting ran over by about an hour. We discussed possible course themes such as the depiction of class in art or civic pride in our wonderful city. The main focus will be on the forthcoming Ford Madox-Brown: Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer exhibition which is on from 24 September 2011 until 29 January 2012.

They also mentioned that they had a ‘pop up darkroom’ which immediately grabbed my attention as I love film photography and would like others to experience the joys of the darkroom too.

I have decided to include the gallery’s English Corner into as many of WEA’s ESOL courses as possible, and promote their Art Bites initiative which takes place on the first Wednesday of every month from 12:30 – 13:00. These would work well with the ESOL programme at the Cornerhouse (the next ESOL Study Morning is The Kings’ Speech on 10 November).

The gallery runs Tutor Training sessions where staff can learn about the resources available for teaching such as the ‘Object Dialogue Box’ which contains weird surrealist objects to promote ideas and learning themes.

Gallery of Costume

Kate also works at the Gallery of Costume in Platt Hall and she suggested that we incorporate visits there during the project, especially as they will be housing a temporary Yves Saint Laurent exhibition from 14 Sept – 31 Dec 11. We thought we could maybe have a course that included a visit to the Gallery of Costume for inspiration followed by a practical ‘Fashion Hacking’ session at Mad Lab.

It was odd being in the building when it was closed to the public with no visitors or staff wandering about. This also meant I couldn’t buy anything in the shop with my 20% discount for being a Friend of the Gallery. I had planned to stock up on birthday cards and some of their lovely acrylic bangles as presents. I shall go back soon anyway to look at the works from the Victorian era for course design inspiration, and buy some postcards to use as teaching aids.

I’m delighted that Connie will give a short presentation on Manchester Art Gallery at the informal Peripheral Vision event at the Cornerhouse on Friday.

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Three heads are better than one

06/09/2011 //
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RNCM

Ardwick

Well that was an interesting meeting: Nick, Gurdeep and I met at Manchester Camerata to discuss their recent foray into Ardwick, where they met Jenny Wong at Manchester Chinese Centre (MCC) and Alison Kershaw who works for Pool Arts and St Luke’s Art Project. WEA already works with MCC, and after listening to Nick and Gurdeep describe the inspirational creativity in evidence at Pool Arts and St Luke’s, I will definitely get in touch with Alison and invite her along to the Cornerhouse event. Apparently, they have a project called Creative Conversation, whereby people are recorded talking about all sorts of things, with the resulting audio clips being stored in The North West Sound Archive.

By the way, The National Archives is a fascinating site which could be used as a great teaching resource.

Courage, adversity and identity

We also discussed Peripheral Vision further with Gurdeep suggesting I contact the staff at the Museum of Science and Industry to see if their project MOSI Along would fit in with this project. Gurdeep would like the exhibits at PHM to be used as a resource to examine participants’ notions of courage, adversity and identity. Rousing stuff.

Nick then told us about his fabulous idea for a separate project, which shall remain under wraps until it is written up as a new bid.

What I enjoyed most about our get together today was the table tennis tournament of ideas pinging and ponging across the table. We could have chatted some more, but Bob came in to remind Nick that he had another meeting. So Gurdeep and I walked down the stairs to the RNCM café and had soup and a roll for £2. Bargain.

To Do:

Nick:

  • email me his costings for the musical workshops
  • email me Manchester Camerata info for my presentation, as he can’t attend (13/09/11)

Gurdeep:

  • send me and Nick the details of the wellbeing workshop & discussion kit  (no need as already had email, but can’t attend training as I’ll be on leave. Sent email to Fiona Parr asking if anyone can go in my place 07/09/11)
  • send me and Nick info about Memories, The Cheetham Hill project (16/09/11)
  • email me Alison’s contact details (07/09/11)

Me:

  • send Gurdeep the online questionnaire with the well-being addition (07/09/11)
  • invite Alison to the PV event on 16 Sept (07/09/11)
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Peripheral Vision is now ‘out there’

01/09/2011 //
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Jaume Plensa: Irma-Nuria, 2010 (Yorkshire Sculpture Park, August 2011)

Spread the Word!

Today, Peripheral Vision officially went live. I sent an email to everyone at WEA in the North West, with the project PDF attached and a link to this blog.

I also finalised the arrangements for the Peripheral Vision presentations which will bring together the four main partners: Cornerhouse, Whitworth Art Gallery, Mad Lab and People’s History Museum. This will take place on Friday 16 September from 10:00 – 12:00, in the Cornerhouse annexe (thank you Pat). WEA staff, tutors, some learners and volunteers and community partners will also be invited to make up the audience.

Aims for the meeting:

  • to tell people about the project and how they can get involved
  • to showcase the four main cultural partners so that they can extol the virtues of their respective venues
  • to sign up interested parties to the project
  • to enlist new potential bloggers
  • to mingle, mix and mooch
To Do:
  1. Design invitation for community partners/volunteers (01/09/11) and send out (06/09/11)
  2. Draw up list of invitees (05/09/11)
  3. Contact Pat re: refreshments and/or lunch (02/09/11 out of office reply) (Pat emailed – only Cornerhouse caterers can provide refreshments 07/09/11)
  4. Do my Power Point Presentation (13 & 15/09/11)
  5. Do agenda and timings (14/09/11)
  6. Write press release
  7. email NIACE with blog link (02/09/11)
  8. Tweet blog link (02/09/11)
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People’s History Museum & Lunch at Samsi

17/08/2011 //
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Peripheral Vision Meeting at WEA

This morning I had a meeting with Fiona and Mandy to discuss Peripheral Vision. We decided it would be a good idea to get the four main partners along with WEA Learning Managers, community partners, tutors and some learners and volunteers, to tell them about the project and to give the cultural venues a chance to showcase their workshops. I also need to do the following:

  1. send out a PDF flyer to tutors (01/09/11) and community partners about PV (06/09/11)
  2. source suitable tutors for the courses
  3. ask CK to deliver training on embedding Citizenship into classes (05/09/11)
  4. find a good film-maker (19/08/11) plus Film Festival at Mad Lab (02/09/11)
  5. contact possible new partners (06/09/11)
  6. book the cinema for the film festival in March
  7. add questions to the NIACE online questionnaire I am designing, to capture soft outcomes (30/08/11)

People’s History Museum

I then had to dash off by taxi to the People’s History Museum (PHM) as I didn’t have time to walk (my preferred mode). Crikey, what a grumpy, old taxi driver. Absolutely no welcome, he just said “Huh waiting on the street,” because that’s what I’d said I’d do on the phone. Granted I did nip to the loo before heading down the stairs but I took no more than five minutes after putting the phone down.

Anyway, my meeting with Gurdeep at PHM was delightful. She and I chatted about educational things for almost two hours non-stop. She is full of ideas and likes to get out and about and meet people. I shall look forward to our working together on Peripheral Vision.

I had a walk around the museum just to refresh my memory of the exhibits etc. When I spotted the blown up pictures of the badges above, I made a mental note to include badge making on some of the courses. I’m sure the learners will come up with their own inspirational quotes such as the ones at PHM.

Samsi, Spinningfields

I met Mr W for lunch and we decided to go around the corner to Samsi. Good choice. Yummy food and we got chatting to the owner who’s a very interesting bloke. He’s now exporting Vimto to the Japanese! How enterprising.

Here’s a photo of the chef who also came over for a chat:

Samsi chef

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Whitworth Art Gallery

29/07/2011 //
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Whitworth Art Gallery

Whitworth Art Gallery

is one of my favourite cultural venues in Manchester. I love its park-side location and the way in which as soon as you enter the building and walk through the foyer you are in the galleries. I find this immediacy both stress free and calming. So, when Ed Watts, the Adult Programme Co-ordinator, suggested meeting up to talk about Peripheral Vision, it put a big smile on my face. Ed and I have worked together extensively over the past couple of years with excellent results. I first met Ed when he worked at Urbis. He put together a wonderful video making session for some of our adult learners who had learning disabilities. I clearly remember popping down to Urbis to take some photos of the group, opening the door to the creative studio and feeling touched by the happiness and warmth in the room. Everyone was having a great time and the learners were delighted with the videos they had shot and edited themselves. Apparently they all spoke about the experience for months afterwards.

Working in partnership with the Whitworth is an absolute joy: everything runs smoothly, and the workshop facilitators that Ed (and Wendy) have employed were all professional and inspirational, and I have received excellent feedback from the participants.

Examples of the workshops we have run at the Whitworth have included:

Printmaking with Alan Birch

Book-making with Lucy May Schofield

Fabric cup cakes with Andrea Lord

Just the Ticket

In March 2009, we held the celebratory event for our prior NIACE project, Just the Ticket, at the Whitworth. Wendy Gallagher, did an amazing job providing us with the fabulous South Gallery and various exciting workshops for over 90 adults who attended on the day. It truly was the highlight of a very successful project.

Levenshulme Inspire

Anyway, Ed and I discussed Peripheral Vision and how we could use the Whitworth’s iPads to make short films. We also thought we could run another photography and textiles course that we put on for Levenshulme Inspire a few months ago, in which the learners printed digital photographs in black and white onto cotton then embelished their pictures with embroidery, beads and sequins.

Photography & Textiles Levenshulme Inspire

You can see a short video of the learners’ work here (scroll down to the Whitworth & Inspire video).

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Peripheral Vision: celebration time, come on!

22/07/2011 //
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celebrations chocolates

Peripheral Vision: Successful IACL Fund Project

Wey hey, we have received email notification from NIACE that our bid was successful!

See, lying in the poppy field dreaming up Peripheral Vision has paid dividends.

Super duper! Now the real hard work begins…

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Peripheral Vision

03/06/2011 //
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Eye picture

Peripheral Vision: our IACL Fund Project Name

So I have decided on a name for the project: Peripheral Vision. I know it’s going to be about film making and photography and books. Now that I have the name and the concept I just need to write the narrative… that’s the best bit.

I think this photo is perfect for marketing the project. I shall use it on all Peripheral Vision publicity materials. I took it whilst on a book-making course at Hot Bed Press.

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