Artcrimes

….maybe not quite what Cheryl Cole thought last week but I packed a lot in and am now finding a bit of time to reflect on a busy few days. I enjoyed the Miro exhibition at Tate Modern last Saturday, beautifully curated and laid out to give maximum impact. The triptych rooms were stunning. Tate Modern

The journey home was a nightmare with East Coast trains avoiding any sensible contact with customers and giving out mixed messages about the state of their “broken” line. Thank god for twitter which kept me on track more effectively than the railway company.

Last week I ran two sessions for the Centre for Creativity and Learning (Sunderland ) and really enjoyed them.Centre for Creativity and Learning

Two interesting locations were used, Tyneside Cinema and The Sage. These were network sessions for teachers in schools which have been supported by and involved in Creative Partnership projects. We had a lively mix of teachers, managers and educationalists.

One event was to encourage them to take leadership of their own network and the other was to share some amazing stories from their schools about creative projects and developments. I found some of the stories, shared on day two, quite moving and powerful. This just underlines for me the need to keep creativity at the very heart of education.

Another speaker I met and enjoyed listening to was Mark Robinson, his website is well worth a visit too: Thinking Practice
Mark gave me a name check on his blog: Mark’s blog

These events were organised by Amanda Ritson and Sally Lockey, two very creative people with plenty of enthusiasm and drive.

Then the climax to recent activities was a live link up to an art class at the Waiariki Institute of Technology in New Zealand.Waiariki Institute of Technology to talk about my work as an artist and in the world of education. The students were attentive and interested and asked some good thought provoking questions. It was useful to tell them about the situation with the Arts in the UK, in the current economical and political climate. None of them had ever been to the UK so I think some news was a surprise to them. This live link up was set up by myself and the course leader Don Overbeay. Thanks to all of you, it really was a pleasure to share my work, ideas and beliefs with you all.

Although it was early morning for them, it was midnight here when I finally signed off. We are going to keep the links going because I have invited them to be involved in The Big Draw (October 2011) and they were really up for that.

So, I have been busy meeting many “new” people, which is always enjoyable, and starting new connections. They don’t call me the Network Queen for nothing !