2010... Its been a pleasure, but bring on 2011

As so many people seem to be doing the same and to also make myself realise how busy this year has been I am going to blog about 2010. The more I think about it the more I realise just how busy this last year has been and I feel very proud about everything I have achieved.

January feels like a million years away and I'm glad I have my blog archive to help remind me what actually happened. It was January that I began my Major Personal Project for my Theatre, Performance and Event design degree. It is so interesting to look back on my old blog posts and see how my original idea didn’t change as much as I thought it would. My aim was to create an exhibition that shown another side to Liverpool, my home town and that is what I achieved.

February – April consisted of planning and organising my 21^st and lots and lots and lots and lots of research and designing for my Major Personal Project.

I was also lucky enough to be involved in the St Marys Hospice Charity Window Dressing Event in Birmingham. With my team coming in second place. This is where my passion for volunteering came about and I really enjoyed it. Click here for more info about this event.

I also had work experience within World Liverpool Museum which was a great experience. They even let me design and paint a mural on a wall within one of the temporary exhibitions. To see more of this click here. It was also in April that I really started to become confident in Sketchup and my love hate relationship with the programme began.

May had to be one of the hardest, most stressful, yet rewarding months of my life. It was this month that I was in University from 7 in the morning, until we got kicked out and working until 3/4/5 in the morning every single day. My life revolved around making scale bricks, pavements, white cards models and praying my huge sketchup model wouldn’t crash.

It was June that I could finally say I HAVE A DEGREE. It was the most amazing feeling in the world handing all of my work in and seeing it all displayed in our amazing degree show. One of the amazing things about being on a course with only 15 other people is 1, how unbelievably close you all become and 2, how quickly you get your results. Within 2 weeks of handing in my work and also being chosen to be marked by the external examiner, I got given my results. I will never forget the moment Paul told me I got a first. University was the best experience I have ever gone through and when I look back at how hard I worked, I feel so proud at my results and don’t regret anything from University.

My exhibition shows the journey an emigrant would go on during the 19th Century and the problems they would face along the way. As I also enjoy theatre design, I wanted to combine a sense of theatre within my exhibition and wanted the exhibition to become an experience. Allowing the visitor to feel as if they had stepped back in time and actually become an 19th Century emigrant. I chose to do this by creating a fully dressed space using actors in each area to interact with the visitors and make the whole concept feel real. To see my final major project click here.

July – Present ;

Since leaving University I have been lucky enough to get involved in a lot. Volunteering is something I am passionate about and I have been able to get stuck into a lot of this. Since June I have been Volunteer Event and Exhibition Co-Ordinator for Halewood Arts Association. This has been an excellent opportunity for me and I have learnt so much from Carole who runs all of HAA. I assist with the organising of trips, events and exhibitions, aswell as assist in the weekly Junior Artists Club art classes. This is with a group of 7-12 year olds who all love art and it is so rewarding volunteering there. They even let me design the Christmas Grotto for the children, which is something I enjoyed so much! Carole has introduced me to so many lovely artists and volunteers and I cannot wait to get more involved in the next year. To see more of what I have done with HAA look at the Big Draw and Grotto tab to the left of my website. Or browse through my blog.

2010 has reconfirmed my love for working within the Event and Exhibition industry and after spending a week working at The BBC Good Food Show, Borough Market and the Real Food Festival, I have been lucky enough to combine work with my passion for food and cooking. This also allowed me to meet some lovely producers and people who now have the pleasure of putting up with me on twitter :)

I am really looking forward to what 2011 brings. I am to start a design internship in Liverpool Museum on the 10^th January which I can’t wait for and thanks to twitter have even managed to get some work on a huge wedding in May, assisting with an amazing wedding design company 'Sweet days and Roses' on making the wedding look beautiful.

If you are still reading thank you, I seem to have written more than I originally planned, but I forgot how much I have done. Hopefully 2011 will be a million times more busy and this time next year I hope to be writing about living in London, with a great job doing what I love.

I know everyone says it but 2011 is really going to be my year!

Habits and Habitats - The Big Draw 2010

This blog post has been a long time coming. If you regularly read you will know that I volunteer at Halewood Arts Association each Wednesday and here I help to organise and plan events. All summer me and Carole planned a Big Draw event, funded by the Big Lottery Fund (THANK YOU) for the local Halewood area. It took place in October and I have been waiting for the photos Ian Edwards took (Karens husband, his are a lot better than mine and thank you for them!) before I updated here.

Me and Carole wanted to include the Junior Artists Club as much as possible in the process and asked them what they would like the theme to be. After Carole spoke with the children who attend, we decided to come up with the theme of habits and habitats for the event. This also allowed us to take full advantage of the environment centre and the Halewood Triangle.

In the run up to the event we arranged a number of workshops for the Junior Artists Club, all around the theme and with the help of some local artists, Anthony Smith, Karen Edwards and Becky Bryson created artwork to be displayed within our event.

On the day we where a little worried at first, as the weather was awful. The night before had been torrential rain and as a majority of our event was outdoors, it made us worry that people would be put off. We couldn't have been more wrong. Over 200 people came to our event and took part in everything.

There was so much to get involved in. Indoors Anthony drew out a huge mural, showing the journey bees go on when they go out looking for honey. The visitors where invited to help fill in the mural and take part in a huge collaborative piece. It was great to see people aged 5 standing beside people aged 80 all getting involved in the same image. With a great final outcome.

One of our main aims with the event was to get local people to use Halewood Park and Triangle more. It is an underused resource and we wanted to include it as much as possible within our event. There was lots to do outside and using artwork the children had made in previous sessions, we decorated the park area to draw more people in.

As we wanted to ensure as many people where involved in the event as possible, The Halewood Walkers Group also got involved. They assisted Karen Edwards in making honeycomb to adorn the park area. This was a great idea and everyone loved exploring the park and breaking open the honeycomb to discover what was inside.

Outside there was so much to get involved in. Becky Bryson from the Liverpool Lantern Company was helping the visitors to make 2D fish. This was very popular as the visitors loved being able to make something and then take it away with them. With some visitors returning a few times, to make a Mummy, Daddy and Baby fish.

Barry Worrall was also there to assist visitors with drawing and collage. We wanted the visitors to take in their surroundings and create some images of the area we where in. This was really successful and the final images we got where so successful they are now showing in an exhibition in Halewood.

To keep with the theme of bees, Karen Edwards (the lovely artist who gave us a tour of The Bridewell... see previous blog post) came up with a 3D beehive that everybody could get involved with. The visitors where asked to get involved and decorate the individual panels of the beehive. It was really enjoyable and we had people from 2 up to 85 getting involved. The pieces where then put together the week after in the Junior Artists Club.

Overall the day was a huge success! It was great being able to get involved in the whole process from start to finish. Working alongside Carole and all of the artists has taught me so much about how to plan events and being able to do something within the local community was great. The feedback forms for the day where great, and we got 100% positive feedback. I'm looking forward to the Big Draw 2011 next!

Huge post so thank you if you are still reading and thank you so much to Ian Edwards who provided amazing photos from the day, I was going to take some myself but got that into all the activities didn't get the chance.