a day in the life of a charity street worker

I must admit that I am one of those people who never stops when approached by a charity street worker. I usually smile, keep walking, headphones in and mumble something at an inaudible volume along the lines of "I'm late for work" or "I have no time, sorry".

However after my experience today I can honestly say (hand on heart) that unless I AM late for work or some other important event then I will stop and talk to them for a second. Even if I don't give any money, it's just a nice thing to do.

Today I spent approximately 3 hours stood just outside the gates of The British Museum with Will (right) and Myles (left) trying to get people to guess the value of a nice earthenware vase which we were given for our weekend project on Friday. Our brief said we were to take our objects and use our skills as graphic designers to try and increase their value in some way. My idea was to approach people and ask them to guess the value of the vase after being told a little of its history and after letting them hold it in their hands with whichever person is closest to the real estimated value being the winner. For each guess we asked for a small donation of around 50p which we are going to donate to a Haiti related Charity. It was a day of highs and lows, we almost jacked it in after 20 minutes because no-one wanted to know but eventually we talked to some very nice people and in total we collected £30.15 and 4 US cents.

The picture above is of Will, Myles and Walter, a country hopping Australian traveller who came out with easily the quote of the day and summed up our feelings perfectly.

"It's a sunday, of course I have time"

We were also impressed (but also slightly scared) by his beard.

Tomorrow we are going to try at Chelsea and see how much we get.....presenting at 2pm

I stand on the edge of escalator steps to feel like I'm pushing them back into the floor

Here are some photos from a recent trip to the V&A and it's current Decode exhibition. Quite easily the best £4 I've spent in a while, every single exhibit was either very interesting or amazing fun. Highly recommended if you have a spare afternoon.

2010 New Years Resolutions

1. Take more photographs

2. Read many more books

3. Play my guitar more

4. GET BUFF

On the 5th day of Christmas a colleague gave to me....

5 medical stitches

4 hand x-rays

3 different nurses

2 trapped fingers

1 interesting new years

17#

It's been almost exactly a month since I started this blog and have not paid it much attention since then. However with the new year coming up I have decided that one of my many resolutions should be to try and make at least one interesting post a week (I don't think I have enough interesting things to post something each day) throughout 2010.




Above is a short video piece made over my 2 week fine art rotation in response to a series of 3 zen haikus. This piece has been created from recording of two spontaneous and unrelated ideas/events from two separate entities. However when combined both elements start to relate and reflect each other encompassing the true concept of zen.

With Credit to Robert Brook who kindly wrote and performed a stream of consciousness for this piece without any knowledge of its purpose or inspiration beforehand. All video was shot by myself using my mobile phone. Also thanks to the woman in the pink hat who turned round at just the right time.

23# Review a ball of string

My first ball of string.

To be honest this is the first time I have ever needed to buy my own ball of string having previously had a communal ball in my family home back in Norwich. However now that I have moved away from home to London I felt that buying my own ball of string was an essential part in establishing myself as an independent and responsible "grown-up" person.

It is not that I needed the string for a specific purpose or use more so that I know, if presented with a situation when I do need string I will be ready and able to deal with it. Over the past 9 weeks of living here in London no such situation has occurred but I am confident one will soon. Perhaps I will need to dry some washing in my room? Or maybe one of my flatmates will insist on teaching me how to play cats cradle?

For the seventy five pence I paid at my local sainsburys I received an approx. 6 meter length piece of string arranged into a geometrically and aesthetically pleasing ball. I would have preferred a shorter length of string and lower price but there was a very limited range of strings to choose from forcing me to pay in the upper regions of what I consider to be a reasonable price for string.

The string itself seems to be of equal quality to others I have handled before. The string's colour is a light cream leaning towards a light parcel paper brown which when combined with the rough, abrasive feel against the skin gives it a very traditional and reliable feel. There are around 50 fibres that make up this one piece of string which are woven together very tightly to produce what seems to be a highly durable strand. The diameter of the string is approx. 4mm, a reasonable width allowing for a variety of applications whether you need to either tie tightly or thread through a small hole.

For me this particular ball of string ticks all the boxes and although it does not bring anything new to the table in terms of string technology that's alright, at the end of the day so long as I can still tie one end to a troublesome tooth and the other to a doorhandle then I'm happy.