A Brief Spell invigilating the Bang! exhibition in Spode

Here's a picture of the camp we set up upstairs at Spode while invigilating the Bang! Art exhibition. Bang! was intended to showcase artwork by people who either lived in or studied at Stoke-On-Trent. Most of the work was paper-based 2D artwork, with photography and painting although there were some exceptions. 

The work was creatively exhibited in the ever-decaying Spode Factory Site, often using the large space available well. As a notoriously decaying city, the location is perhaps meant to inspire a sense of innovation and restoration through creativity.

Publicizing needs improvement, as a lot of people I have spoken to have no idea that there is an exhibition on at all. Posters throughout the city or a wider distribution of the Zines created would have at least encouraged some curiosity as contacting local media such as radio stations and newspapers. I can't even say exactly how long it will be on for or what days, but last I heard, there were plans in the making of opening the exhibition at weekends when people would be available to invigilate it.

However, I think that the project is a positive, inventive and ambitious outreach and an impressive feat to organise something of this size unaided by any larger sponsoring bodies as of yet. Funding for Bang! is crowd-sourced on the internet through Sponsume, which will hopefully continue to have a bright future in the post-industrialised towns throughout England.

Donate your scrap wood for a great cause!

No time for fannying about, I have a massive backlog of photos and writing I wanted to post but have not had the time or energy to go ahead with so I'll start with something simple but important and hopefully be able to catch up on the rest of it over the next few days now all my deadlines are out of sight.

Here is a plant pot my dad made from recycled shipping pallets, that also functions as a wheelbarrow should one desire. My dad often has pallets donated to his workshop in his garage which he then re-fashions into wooden plant pots and furniture and sells on to raise money for the Neuro Muscular Centre at Winsford.

My dad has a rare genetic disease called late-onset FSH Muscular Dystrophy which means that his muscle tissue painfully depletes itself, starting at the top of his body and working its way down so that eventually he won't be able to make these things anymore.

The NMC provides specialist physiotherapy which dramatically improves my dad's quality of life and makes it easier for him to move while reducing the number of spasms that cause muscle depletion. I think it is beautiful how he has managed to creatively re-purpose his life and so I would like to ask if anybody has any scrap wood lying around, please get in touch and send it in this direction.

European Social Fund Community Grants

Recently as part of my work placement, I attended a brief workshop about applying for grants from the European Union for community projects and I think the information ought to be more readily available, so I'm going to post slides from the presentation and a couple of notes I made, and hide the rest of the post behind a page break in case you are super not interested because even though it's useful knowledge to have as an artist, it's not particularly exciting or even attractively designed.

Anti-Stigma print workshop

 As part of the anti-stigma health consultation, where the Health Improvement Team in Stoke Council have commissioned The Cultural Sisters to find out about what the good people of Stoke-on-Trent think will be the best way to reduce stigma against mental health.

In the first session, we discussed what participants thought about what mental health means to them, how they defined stigma and what were the best ways of approaching these issues.

In the second session, we focussed ideas and made individual printing plates of the messages they wanted to spread out about mental health stigma.

Springtime at the National Memorial Arboretum

Some gorgeous masking-tape resist fabric wall hangings as part of a drop-in workshop at the National Memorial Arboretum. Feel like my workshop-helping skills have improved massively since I first started. I'm a lot more confident in knowing where people need assistance and stepping back when people need space to do their own thing. The bee in the middle is one of my favourites <3

How to get your university student office to listen to you

I'm not sure if that's legible enough, but it appears that my university has finally accepted that I was unable to complete my assignments or apply for mitigating circumstances two years ago.

I still can't get my head around the idea of a bureaucratic system working in my favour. It has been a bit like pounding my face against a brick wall getting my university to accept that you don't have to be in hospital to be ill. Pretty sure this would have never happened without the support from my lecturers and counsellors and I can't believe how lucky I am.

Seems a bit of a none-event but it basically means that my grades won't be penalised by University of Wolverhampton due to mental health problems, which has been a lot harder to establish than what one would initially suspect.


Support ranged from:

• being laughed at in my face for suggesting this was unfair and trying to fight against it (student union, you guys needed to step up there) 
• my lecturers telling me that it was totally unfair and that I needed to fight against it
• the student office telling me that my lecturers were greatly misinformed and needed to be re-educated on this topic
• counsellors and doctors both looking very doubtful as to whether or not I would succeed but assisting me regardless (still had to pay Doctors £25 though)
• my lecturers telling me that the student office was incorrect on this matter and that I would need to talk to a specific person in the student office who seemed to acknowledge that it was indeed unfair
• finally being able to hand in my evidence to the correct person in the student office
• ten minutes later, recieving the above email stating "Hi Jessica your mitigation has been accepted for 2011/12. So the modules you are now taking will be classed as a first sit."

Because succeeding in this avenue appears to be quite unusual, I have taken the time here to provide some brief pointers as to how I did it:

1. Getting proof.

I needed a letter from a doctor to testify that I did have mental health problems between 2011/2012. Therefore it is important to seek out help for any suspected mental health problems, if nothing else to get somebody else to believe that you have them. I also needed a letter from a university counsellor to testify that I was unable to navigate the mitigating circumstances policy system at my university, so even if you don't find it helpful, counselling is also useful for providing official documentation that you are having problems.

2. Improving health

I had to take a year out to improve my health, and without it and the support of family and friends, I would have never been able to work as hard as I have this year had I not. Because of this, I was able to regularly establish my presence within the studio for my course, and this meant that my lecturers could acknowledge that my circumstances were now radically different and being penalised for this was unfair.

3. Getting lecturers on your side.

I was fortunate to hit upon a really good research topic for an assignment which received a very high grade which made the university policy of giving me an automatic D for re-sitting seem extra silly. This gave a higher profile among staff in my department, who went on to give me really great support which led to me being able to speak to the right people in the student office who would be able to listen to my account and see that the standard university policy wasn't adequate for covering my circumstances.

If all of this seems very convoluted and circumstantial, that's because it is.

On the one hand, I am thrilled that sense has finally prevailed, but on the other, I think about the students who won't have the fortune or support I recieved. There are people in subjects with bigger class sizes who won't get noticed, people who have yet to be diagnosed, people who don't get as good grades, people who don't have the resources to take leaves of absences to get better and all of this greatly bothers me.

Winning a battle is not the same as winning a war. I don't know how else I can change things.

CADRE Lecture with Warren Niedich.

Merry April Fools Day dear world.

Next week's Cadre lecture at Wolverhampton is Warren Niedich. Decided to forego using the advertising from the university since it turned out to be kinda misleading last time so I thought I'd go in with an open mind. They did provide a link to this pdf which looks like pretty heavy-going stuff, so I think lecture might be some good brain-exercise.

Hopefully I can provide a better written account this time.