Here's a sneaky peak at just one of the birds who'll be at the show!

ALMOST SOLD OUT!

Phoenix is alomost SOLD OUT! tonight and tomorrow afternoon! But this is an appeal for some ambassadorial work please. Tell as many people how great the show will be tomorrow night and try and get people down for 8pm! Including yourselves - don't worry you won't miss a kick of the ball when England play - the game will be well over by then! So I hope to see lots of ya down at the Clocktower on Saturday night for Phoenix - I promise you won't be disappointed (which might be the case with the England team!)

Croydon

I think that Croydon is a truly spectacular place! i mean i lived in trowbridge (Bath) in the countryside for years and as much as i loved it there and had a massive house, i still love Croydon loads better. It has so much more to do and such a wide range of cultures! shirley (im biased, i know, but i do live there) is gorgeous and is home to some famous celebrities.. ie. ian wright, ronnie corbet and loads more and have you seen up shirley hills! the houses up there are gorgeous! Croydon has loads of things to do and it may be seen as "chav city" but wat really is soooo bad bout all chavs any way? and there are alot more places round that are more chavy than Croydon! I for one love Croydon - i mean its home to the clocktower - although some improvements couldn't go a miss, but its still good! lol

erm...

Phoenix

Ok guys! The last show of the season is upon us - next Friday at 8pm and Saturday at 2pm and 8pm. I had to recruit 12 adults with learning disabilities from Croydon to star in this show with a huge cast! They have never acted before but have always wanted to - it should be loads of fun and it's only 40 minutes long!!! Did I mention as part of the show, at the finale they're leading the audience out of the Clocktower and will burn a giant Phoenix on the street! So please do your audience development thing and tell all your mates and family about it (suitable for all ages and only a fiver!).

Treasure Hunt in Croydon

Is anyone up for a huge team building activity on Tuesday August 1st. It will be a treasure hunt in groups taking you all over Croydon (with a travelcard!). You'll work in your film groups of course and yes, there'll be a prize for the winning team!

The Bogus Woman

What a show last night! I know this blog is intended for the exhibition - a place to post ideas or like Maddie has demonstrated with aplomb (I'm reading the dictionary at the moment), just a place for thoughts - But I can't help breaking the rules and to let everyone know that The Bogus Woman was the best thing I've seen at the Clocktower this year (bar Bill Shannon's Sketchy). Does anyone not agree? And it was SOLD OUT......who can predict what Croydon audieces will be like?

The actress is from Croydon and did Drama at Selsdon High school I think! She was incredible - it takes much talent to change from one character to another in a split second and keep it believable.......it was so intense. I was sitting in the back row and sometimes struggled to hear because I'm almost deaf - but this just added to the intensity to concentrate.......like in an ambassador meeting.

Will try to work on shorter sentences next time.

Dear all Olly,

Well, I promised I'd write, but didn't really think about what. Emma condoned Big Brother discussion, but I haven't been watching it, so I don't have anything to say on the matter; I haven't been watching the football, either, although someone tells me that lots of men in different coloured shirts ran up and down a field for ninety minutes, occasionally knocking each other over and crying; and I know nothing about Eastenders, other than that some people with rasping voices wander about market places shouting "Peggy!", and that someone called Phil once got shot, but I think he's ok now.

So what can I talk about? I sat my RS GCSE on Mark's Gospel earlier today, and have spent the past few days feeling as though I know more about Jesus than I do about most of my immediate family--so I could probably go into some detail regarding the healing of Blind Bartimaeus, or the sending out of the Twelve, or the importance of the Last Supper to Christians today--but that's perhaps not the most interesting topic to pursue, and I expect I'll end up blaspheming every which way and insulting members of every religion going, so I'll leave that one.

As it happens, I have quite a talent for babbling--at considerable length--about nothing at all, as I am proving here, but at least I hope Olly has something to read now.

Perhaps I ought to say something of vague worth. Well, I enjoyed the meeting today, at which I suppose we proved that the more does not necessarily equal the merrier, and that much joy can be had with only eight inquiring minds (nine, counting Peter), silver foil, and the prospect of Clocktower bags. The upgraded refreshments, though delightful, were probably not intented to be taken along to the evening's performance, during which it was discovered that packets of crisps somehow become very, very loud in a small auditorium (although I sat smugly with my near-silent Jammie Dodgers).

'The Bogus Woman', which I think most of us went along to after the meeting, was a harrowing one-woman account of the atrocities experienced by asylum seekers, both in their home countries and in detention centres in the UK. Performer Sarah Niles played an impressive total of forty-eight characters in a ninety-minute show: very well-acted and written, and deeply shocking at times. Not 'uplifting', perhaps, but I don't expect that was the intention. I don't think I've attended any post-meeting performances which didn't involve any of the characters dying, actually--is this some kind of foreshadowing? Am I to die an early death, perhaps inflicted by spoon-wielding maniacs?* But then I suppose I missed the Bill Shannon thing, and unless it was quite a different affair to what I imagined, I don't think there was any death in that.


My God, I'm sorry, I've typed so very much yet said so very little. (Welcome to the inside of my head.) I'll leave you in peace.


[By the way, for whoever is in charge of this blog and can change all the settings (Emma?)--I think the time is set to US hours or something mad like that: I changed the time on this post manually, but it originally claimed to be about half five in the afternoon (which, if the pitch black view out of my window and my increased lethargy are anything to go by, is not quite right). We might need to re-set that... ]


*The Librarian's Joke is still one of the best things I have ever seen. I'd love to see it again; I wonder if they'll come back? Or maybe with a new show.

.......and some more

......some more pictures

Even more location scouting: These are views from the bridge overlooking Surrey St Market.

Boxes

Hello all

I promised I'd let you know how big the cabinets are, so here's a picture of the final case plan. Each box has a hand scrawled number on it and the list below tells you how big the case is on the inside and how many lights it has in the top.

1.
Wide 350mm High 350mm Deep 350mm Lights 1

2.
Wide 500mm High 700mm Deep 450mm Lights 2

3.
Wide 300mm High 300mm Deep 300mm Lights 1

4.
Wide 350mm High 350mm Deep 350mm Lights 1

5.
Wide 300mm High 300mm Deep 300mm Lights 1

6.
Wide 300mm High 300mm Deep 300mm Lights 1

7.
Wide 350mm High 350mm Deep 350mm Lights 1

8.
Wide 550mm High 950mm Deep 550mm Lights 2

9.
Wide 450mm High 1200mm Deep 500mm Lights 2

10.
Wide 100mm High 300mm Deep 250mm Lights 1

11.
Wide 500mm High 700mm Deep 450mm Lights 2

12.
Wide 1100mm High 500mm Deep 700mm Lights 4

13.
Wide 350mm High 350mm Deep 350mm Lights 1

14.
Wide 350mm High 350mm Deep 350mm Lights 1

15.
Wide 300mm High 300mm Deep 300mm Lights 1

16.
Wide 950mm High 550mm Deep 550mm Lights 3 / 4

17.
Wide 300mm High 300mm Deep 300mm Lights 1

18.
Wide 500mm High 700mm Deep 450mm Lights 2

19.
Wide 350mm High 350mm Deep 350mm Lights 1

20.
Wide 300mm High 300mm Deep 300mm Lights 1

21.
Wide 100mm High 250mm Deep 350mm Lights 1

22.
Wide 350mm High 1300mm Deep 500mm Lights 2

23.
Wide 550mm High 350mm Deep 350mm Lights 2

24.
Wide 300mm High 300mm Deep 300mm Lights 1

25.
Wide 900mm High 800mm Deep 600mm Lights 4

26.
Wide 950mm High 550mm Deep 550mm
Lights 3 / 4

27.
Wide 350mm High 350mm Deep 350mm Lights 1

28.
Wide 350mm High 350mm Deep 350mm Lights 1

29.
Wide 550mm High 950mm Deep 550mm Lights 2

Let me know which number(s) you want and your basic idea for what to put in it. If two people want the same cabinet we might need to do a bit of negotiating.

George

More pictures

(Narjis, Georgina and Olly) The first is a view from the bridge overlooking Surrey St Market. You can see the old pumping station in the background. The second picture is a rooftop view from the Car Park behind Surrey St Market.

Saturday 17th June

Saturday was our second proper Croydon Now workshop/meeting and we started the fun by playing a game with a ball of George's wool (see picture). We discussed our ideas and talked about how we could develop them (as artists). Maddie has written below a really good summary of what the film(s) are about and what we should be thinking about in preparation. On Saturday we did some location scouting and pre-production work. In 3 groups we set off around central Croydon in different directions. Maddie has already written about her Group. Me and Narjis and Georgina went via Surrey St to Grants and through Centrale shopping Centre. We photographed our favourite locations (see photos) - we liked the bridge overlooking Surrey St Market the best and the modern architecture and feel of the space in Centrale and the Grants complex. Didn't we.....(cue Georgina, Narjis!!! Did I miss anything?).

Video Treatment

I hope this is something along the lines of what you meant, Emma:

WHO?
- Young people in Croydon: people we stop on the street who are willing to take part, and also I think there was the idea of getting people we know to dance/sing/perform in some other way.
- People who act up to the camera; people who are natural; people who stand there and go "erm..." - all as important as each other

WHAT?
- Video - we'll be split up into three groups, but I now can't remember if the consensus was to edit everything together into one big film? Was that right? (Honestly, I don't know why I'm doing this, I clearly have no idea what I'm writing.)
- Around half an hour long, to be run on a loop
- Thinking about types of shot, where to shoot from, storyboarding shots

WHEN?
- Shot in the morning, in the afternoon and at night - different groups taking a different time of day, I think
- And possibly in July/August

WHERE?
- Routes and walks around Croydon: finding places to interview people, different backdrops, recognisably Croydon? Three different routes?
- Thinking about lighting, acoustics, background noise
- Some of us went to look at the Whitgift Centre today, which we agreed had potential - we liked the chequered floor and the big spaces - although background noise could be a problem during the day.
- However, I have no idea where Olly or Emma's groups went to - where did you go? I'll put those in as well if you tell me.

WHY?
- I assume to try to show the range of opinions, talents, and aspirations of young people in Croydon, and to give an idea of what it's like to live here




(Can you tell I've never written anything like this before?)

Maddie

Team Building

Is anyone up for a treasure hunt around Croydon? And I don't just mean central Croydon. I mean the whole borough! Want to know if you're interested and if so, when is a good time? I know I know...exams until mid-July!

Arts Awards

Arts Awards packs will be ready to pick up tomorrow. Enjoy the lovely weather and see you all in the morning.