Yes! Trip number 2 amazing!

Final day of activities week and it was an exhausting success. A few hiccups (like the museum exhibit being closed because something fell off the ceiling!) but the weather was fine and the kids were fab. Here is some photos from the Royal Academy show (I'll add more detail about this later). Too tired to write anymore - I'm off to have a well deserved glass of wine....almost the HOLIDAYS!

Success! Trip number 1 goes well

Check out this amazing thing that happened in Millennium square and turn the sound up on your computer! Year 9 students were casually having their lunch and milling around after being in the audience of the Sharp Shotz /Aardman animation awards ceremony at the Watershed and this amazing man came out with these space invader like boards and when you faced them to the huge TV screen noise and colour exploded to live! Wow. I would really like to find out the name of this person ( I know they work at @Bristol and are linked to the Pervasive Media Studio) as the kids were electrified by this amazing moment. It really made my day. What with this and all the sunny weather, the trip was a great success. Isn't Bristol an amazing city?! Feeling really positive about the end of term and about the fact another great year at Fairfield is coming to a close...

(Just a quick pic I took - amusingly it looks like a weird scene out of Jaws...)

Am I mad? I probably will be by the end of Activities Week...

Only 1 week to go until the summer hols but the monolith of Fairfield's Activities Week presents a challenging end to the term. Now, I am certainly not cynical but I have somehow ended up being the trip leader for 2 events for next week (actually it is my own fault/initiative - I'll amend when I know how the day went...); 1, a Media 'taster' day where I am taking 50 year 9s to the Aardman Animation / Sharp Shotz award ceremony (oh lordie!) and 2, Thursday during which I naively organised a 'cultural' day out. Fingers crossed all will go well (and generally our students are great out and about) but I am so aware that taking over NINETY students to public art galleries may be somewhat stressful. I took a quick peep at Bristol Museum's current exhibition Art from the New World today and I lurrrrrved it! Amusing, a bit saucy but totally engaging. Check out some pics I snapped today ( on gorgeous new Olympus PEN camera!). Hopefully I wont end up looking like these little sprites above ( Cerburus by Elizabeth McGrath)...

Up North and Back Again

I recently attended an Edexcel BTEC Media event in Manchester. Sometimes these things can be a real bore or cause a slight panic but this time I felt totally reassured and confident about this particular qualification. A lot of teachers approach teaching the BTEC with unease. Often this is the fault of the school that sees this amazing course as a dumping ground / sink group for students that may struggle with the more traditional GCSEs. I however, have come to LOVE teaching the BTEC - there is sooo much scope for creativity and there isn't the strain of the ominous looming day of the exam to bookend the course. Yes, the paperwork is a hefty maze to negotiate but once you get your head round it, this is a liberating bit of education for both teachers and students!*

There have been some significant changes to the Media spec but I think they are great. I am currently reshaping and amending assignments with some pretty exciting industry links that are coming into form. I have been meeting recently with the dynamic Melissa Thom from Heart FM and 'Radio In Schools' and we have generated some potentially compelling ideas that we are going to trial at Fairfield. And of course Electric December will have a starring role! What a way to start a course. This year we have enrolled over 80 students on the Media BTEC course - from 8 to over 80, September 2010 is going to be interesting...

After leaving the BTEC event I went to stay with my sister in her lovely pad in Liverpool. I took this opportunity to visit the local arthouse cinema and art gallery FACT which stated it was the 'UK's leading organisation for the support & exhibition of film, art and new media'. I have to admit, though very much the kindred cousin of the Watershed, I was so impressed with this space - could the Watershed replicate this? There was an amazing exhibition called 'Persistance of Vision':

What really stayed with me was the moving video installation It has to be this way Part 1  which traced the story of Seers’ stepsister, Christine Parkes, who lost her memory after a moped accident. This was spookily narrated by the step sister's ex boyfriend who presented the tragic tale of a young women who loses her sense of identity and begins to seek meaning in historical figures such as Queen Christina of Sweden (a good start though...). The images were communicated through a goggle like gaze that left you feeling voyeuristic yet also compelled to stay and hear the rambling like narrative.

*Edexcel aren't paying me to say this...