New Arts Centre at University of Bath

When I joined the University of Bath as an undergraduate in 2007, the demands for a new arts centre had already been bubbling away for some time. Over my four years there, reporting on the arts for the student radio station, and later attending regular student representative meetings, the fabled arts centre - supposedly 'in progress' - began to feel increasingly utopic. So it was with delight that on my most recent visit to Bath this Tuesday I visited The Edge, which houses not only a theatre and rehearsal space, but arts studios, music practice rooms and a dance studio. The most pleasant surprise for me, though, were the three galleries run by the ICIA (Institute of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts), ensuring that free contemporary art would be a permanent feature of the new student experience.

Passage - Miranda Whall

A perfect fit for the inaugural exhibition at the ICIA, interdisciplinary artist Miranda Whall has created a multi-screen and surround-sound installation, charting her physical passage through Europe, Mexico and Thailand and the simultaneous artistic passage through her recent projects developed in each place. A Turkish dancer twirls from screen to screen, later a solitary goldfish swims the same path. Vibrant flashes of fruit flying through the jungle and smashing against a tree juxtapose the stillness of an old woman at rest. Singing in French and Spanish, bird calls, music, and muddled underwater whispers combine with the images to create an immersive and hypnotic experience.

http://www.mirandawhall.com/projects/passage/


0º00 Navigation (Part II) - Simon Faithfull

Equally interdisciplinary artist Simon Faithfull brings together a video, a slide show, a globe, and a range of postcards reproducing line drawings and diary extracts, to represent his 'obsessive and deranged journey exactly along the Greenwich Meridian'. Part I charted his journey through England, while in this second part, we travel from the top of France to the bottom of Africa. The slide show is particularly striking: rapidly progressing from verdant French countryside to barren Burkina Faso, with the coordinates at which each photograph was taken in the bottom left corner, it forces the viewer to confront the common usage of 'West'. The written extracts, meanwhile, predominantly from the African leg of the journey, give fascinating glimpses of a part of the world rarely present in travel literature.

www.icia.org.uk/whats-on/visual-arts/0o00-navigation/

Find out more about the new centre and what's on at www.icia.org.uk

Back to reality...

(Originally posted 12 September 2013)

Every summer, I leave normal life behind for a few months and enter a parallel universe, or at least that’s how it feels working in the Social Programme Office at the English Language Centre at the University of Bath. Having always taken every opportunity to meet people from other countries and learn about their cultures, when a job first came up at the SPO, just as I was finishing my undergraduate degree in Bath, I jumped at the chance to spend all day every day looking after a large and diverse group of international students. I loved it so much that I kept going back every year, and this summer I wasn’t going to let a little thing like my PhD get in the way!

Life in the SPO is exciting, although sometimes exhausting, because it’s constantly changing. One day you’re making information packs for 250 new arrivals or dragging their suitcases through the rain to their new dorms, the next you’re leading a giant crowd around Stonehenge. As well as a different social activity every day and a coach trip every Saturday, we were the people for students to turn to when they were worried, lonely, homesick, confused by English customs, or just anxious to practice their English. All of this means we really get to know so many wonderful people from all across the world and learn a lot about how what we take for granted varies so greatly from other people’s experiences.

Leaving Bath at the end of the summer always makes me sad, because I miss all these new friends and the constant challenges that the work throws up, but I’m excited to be back in London now entering the second year of my PhD. Although I managed to grab a few hours in the library here and there over the summer to keep my PhD ticking over, I’m really looking forward to intense studying again and making headway with my first few chapters. There’s also a lot to keep me occupied over the next few months, including the upcoming Arts and Humanities Festival and running our departmental seminars. I also found out this morning that I’ll be teaching in Spring semester, which has been my dream for years now. I can’t wait to get on with it all, and of course blog about it all here!

Theatre Royal Bath Summer Season - Candida and King Lear

It was another exciting summer in the Social Programme Office at the University of Bath's English Language Centre - so much so that I feel like I'm only just recovering from it now! Like last year, I was lucky enough to meet some wonderful people from all over the world and enjoy sharing British culture and landmarks with them. One particular highlight for me was being able to take my students to the beautiful Theatre Royal twice this summer, even if I was underwhelmed by the two very different plays themselves: George Bernard Shaw's Candida and Shakespeare's King Lear.

Candida

Although in recent years it has been eclipsed by Shaw's triumph Pygmalion, Candida (1898) was quite the hit in its day, questioning Victorian ideas about love and marriage with a side order of socialism. The play centres around a love triangle: popular priest and orator, Reverend James Mavor Morell (Jamie Parker), whose seemingly perfect live unravels when a young poet who he had taken pity on (Eugene Marchbanks, played by Frank Dillane) arrives and announces that he is in love with James' beautiful young wife Candida (Charity Wakefield). While considerations of the practicalities of socialism rumble in the background, most of the action is the conflict between the two males, making it clear that neither affords Candida any agency in her own love life. The most interesting part of the play for me, therefore, was how Candida deals with this situation, eventually resisting the Victorian ideal of female passivity that both men unwittingly force upon her.

I expressed concerns about Jamie Parker in my review of Henry V and his performance in Candida left me with similar doubts. I can't work out if he's just a boring actor, or whether he is intentionally accentuating the staid nature of the character, making it clear why Candida might seek entertainment elsewhere. By contrast, Dillane (famous for playing Tom Riddle in Harry Potter), was very full on, to the point of being highly irritating at times, but it worked for the nervous, conflicted young poet. Of the main cast, I was most impressed with Charity Wakefield's (Land Fothergill from Any Human Heart) sensitive portrayal of the title character. Overall, Candida was at turns funny and thought provoking, but lacking the spark that makes Pygmalion such an enduring hit.

King Lear

Regular readers will know that I'm quite familiar with King Lear after following Cardiff University's Act One as they took their adaptation to Edinburgh. However, my students were happy to learn that even I struggled to follow every word of this incredibly dense tragedy. The main attraction for this particular adaptation was David Haig (Four Weddings and a Funeral) in the title role. The dramatic weight of the role was quite a departure from Haig's usual comedic roles, and at times he seemed to struggle with it - just one of the many let-downs of this production. A particular strength of King Lear is how the universal themes of greed and ambition can be adapted to an enormous range of settings, but for me the 1960s East End gangsters premise which had seemed so promising just didn't pay off. There were some strong performances and the notoriously difficult eye-gouging scene was impressively depraved and gory, but at a certain point the production just seemed to lose its way. Rather than the emotional punch the end is supposed to provide, this Lear's eventual denouement left us feeling only relief.

Find out more about the Theatre Royal and their upcoming attractions here.

English Language Centre - Social Programme Comes To An End

Time has flown by and the Summer Social Programme has come to an end. My attempt to write weekly updates failed, mainly due to having to complete and hand in my dissertation, and then being so busy with the students that there was no time for anything else. Here's a potted version of our last few weeks.

Relief!

Live Jazz @ Green Park Brasserie
We like to take the students to a range of music through the summer. We had folk earlier in the summer, so it was time for some jazz, courtesy of local singer James Lambeth. I loved his jazz version of The Smiths' Bigmouth Strikes Again. As the rest of the Green Park Brasserie was taken over by a Swedish birthday party, we also learnt their birthday song. It's a lot longer than ours (this video is a shortened version).

Ja má hon leva! means 'Yes, long may she live' - change the hon to han for a man. It was nice to see that unlike the French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and apparently even Chinese (according to the students with us), they haven't taken the same tune.

Dinner @ Brasserie Blanc
The next day, I was paid to go for a three course meal at Raymond Blanc's new chain restaurant. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it! Although one student expressed her disappointment that Raymond himself wasn't cooking for us (I tried to explain that one would have to pay hundreds for that privilege), the food was very tasty, and I maintain that eating is an important part of British social life that they need to get involved with.

Last Night of the Proms
As the summer drew to a close, it was time for a final burst of excessive patriotism, with the Last Night of the Proms. We waved flags and taught the students to link arms to Auld Lang Syne. It's a good job none of our students are from former colonies though, as singing about the glorious expansion of Britain as other countries fall to our might probably wouldn't have gone down so well!

Day Trips
First there was Stonehenge and Salisbury. Once again I wished there weren't so many tourists at Stonehenge, so I could pretend to be Tess. Then there was A Taste of Wales, which was the best day trip of the summer and therefore deserves its own blog post. Finally, we rounded the summer off with a trip to Oxford, where the students' literary fantasies were all focused on Harry Potter, while fellow Student Helper Kerrianne was far more excited about Alice in Wonderland.

At Christchurch

Harry's dining room

Final party
It all ended with a huge party, combining just about everything from the summer: music, food, party games (Giant Jenga went down well ;-] ), and lots of Union Jacks. A wonderful way to end an amazing summer :D

Thanks to our brilliant photographer, Louis Lai!

Thanks to all the students and of course the other Student Helpers for making it such an unforgettable summer!

English Language Centre Social Programme: Week 4

This week was full of goodbyes and plenty of tears, as many of our students left us to go back home. Apparently university in China and Japan starts again this week - unlike us lazy British who are off for almost a month more still!

To end on a real British stereotype, we had a tea-party. There were no cucumber sandwiches or scones, and the setting was nowhere near formal enough, but it still felt like a fitting ending.

Talking of tea, this week I've been busy learning about the cultures and traditions of some of our students, starting with Turkish tea. One of the students sent us a video about the importance of tea in Turkish culture, which is also a nice introduction to many facets of Turkey.

He also taught us about a lovely Turkish custom as one of the students left. When someone goes on a journey, you pour water behind them, because water always knows how to find its way home.

Students leaving also means lots of gifts. Most of them are very nice things like fans, bookmarks, drawings and origami paper.

Some, however, are a little more unusual. One of them was a fan featuring Hannya, a grotesque demon representing a woman driven to rage by jealously. While freaking us out, this did at least give us an opportunity to learn more about Noh theatre. Apparently the mask can be either frightening or sorrowful depending on the angle. A white mask, like the one on the fan, represents an aristocratic woman while a red mask is a lower class woman. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the fan before someone snaffled it, but the image on it was a bit like this:

A wide array of edible goods have also appeared in the office, from chocolates and cookies to rice crackers, meaning we are constantly snacking at the moment. One of our favourite finds has been the self-proclaimed Strange Taste Horse Beans. We're not sure if they would taste any better if we didn't know what they're called, but they're a great example of the mis-use English in Chinese marketing.

If any students are reading this, please do bring us more artefacts or foods from your home countries, we love learning about them!

Bath Folk Festival

With a rare evening away from the SPO, we decided to catch the last of the Bath Folk Festival. The festival is renowned for the diversity of talent it presents and our evening was no exception.

Gypsy Folk Session @ The Royal Oak (Lower Bristol Road)

We started the evening with a laid-back session of gypsy folk, with musicians coming and going. A Russian lady appeared and sang a few of her traditional folk songs. Many instruments were passed around and the gentleman in the middle even plaid the spoons at one point.

Elephant Talk @ Green Park Tavern

That relaxing session helped us to recharge our batteries after a long day in Windsor ready for the main event: world-folk-electro mash-up Elephant Talk. We had been promised a band that made us dance and they did not disappoint - our calf muscles still didn't work several days later! Singer Sarah Joy has an incredibly powerful voice, while Mat Tarling and Jon Maybey fiddled and guitared us into a frenzy. The whole room got involved in mini-Ceilidhs creating an electric atmosphere (although we would have loved a window or two in the room!)

You can listen to their music at elephanttalk.co.uk.

The Bath Folk Festival is now over, sadly, but look out this time next year for more musical joy.

English Language Centre Social Programme: Week 2

Well we're now nearing the end of Week three and I still haven't written up Week 2 yet :s Week 2 was bittersweet as many of the students I had gotten close to left on Friday. A large amount of the week was also spent preparing for the new arrivals - about 200 of them - with endless reams of photocopying, but I still managed to partake in a few interesting activities.

Pubs
A lot of our time this week was spent in the pub - it's a tough job, but someone's got to do it ;-) On Wednesday night, we took the students out for a quiet drink in town before heading to Opa for Spanish Way (a Spanish pop themed club night). Then on Thursday, we were back again, but this time we had party games (see below). Finally on Sunday, we invited the new arrivals down to the pub with us as a way for everyone to get to know each other. We insist that meeting friends for a chat in the pub is a key part of British culture; it's not that we are all alcoholics, I can't even drink!

Party games
On Thursday night, we all regressed back to infancy with an evening full of the games we used to play at birthday parties when we were five, including Pass the Parcel (a very difficult phrase for non-native speakers to understand), balloon races and Pin the Tail on the Donkey (played with a trunk and an elephant in China, apparently). I nearly scorched my Eeyore by leaving him too close to the disco lights and learnt a valuable lesson in fire safety.

Windsor
Our Saturday trip this week was to Windsor. The spectacular castle is of course the main attraction, but as I got to visit it last year, this time I had to stay with the students who were not interested in going inside. Instead, we went to Eton, which is incredibly picturesque. I loved how the street is so fragrant because every building has flowers hanging outside. We didn't take a tour of the college, but snooped around whatever was open. I think we were most impressed with the cakes at The Foxy Cake Co.

English Language Centre Social Programme: Week 1

I've now been working at the Social Programme at the University of Bath's English Language Centre for a week and a half. As the complete lack of posts this week proves, the job has been keeping me very busy. I have actually started writing several posts in this time, but haven't had a chance to finish any of them! I hope to rectify this now, starting with weekly updates of our activities and what aspects of British culture we have been sharing with the students.

This week is a bit of a strange one, though. The weekend was one of the busiest of the summer, with many groups either leaving or arriving. Consequently, much of our time over the last week has been spent preparing for arrivals, loading people onto coaches, settling people in and dealing with any issues along the way, meaning that we have had less time for other activities. In addition, as one of the more experienced people in the office (returning for my second year in the Social Programme) I tend to stay on campus doing admin (I am a bit of a photocopying addict now) while others are out on the trips. So, there are only two activities for this week's round-up (plus a Saturday trip coming up in the next post).

Skittles @ Widcombe Social Club

We describe skittles to our students as a traditional British pass-time, but I imagine it's not the most popular activity these days. The other student helpers and I had certainly never played before this job. It's a shame though as it's actually really fun - like bowling, only more difficult. Part of the fun is certainly the competitive element though - I was the leader of 'Team Katie' and desperately cheering on my team throughout the night. We came second :(

Live Music @ The Bell - Count Bobo and The Bullion
Live music obviously isn't limited to Britain, but going to a local pub for a free gig is certainly something that lots of locals enjoy. The Bell, especially, is a spot well-loved by Bath residents, so our students got to chat to  many people as well as enjoying the ska-jazz fusion of Count Bobo and The Bullion (photographed by fellow student helper Bethany Squire). You can listen to their music here.

We had a great time dancing along to some of the more energetic tunes, and my new Turkish friends (on the ends, with me and a Czech girl) even tried to teach me how to belly-dance. I failed!

All Change Please

Over the last few days I've been very busy packing, cleaning and unpacking again as I move from Cardiff to Bath. I've had a wonderful year in Cardiff, as this blog will attest, especially thanks to the local institutions like Sherman Cymru and Chapter which welcomed me so warmly. Now, though, it's time for a new adventure.

For the next two months, I will be working at the English Language Centre at the University of Bath. Having completed my degree here, Bath feels like home, so I am very happy to be back, and even more so as I have lucked into a room with spectacular views of the Abbey, spa and surrounding countryside. Part of my job involves introducing international students to British culture, so expect many entries over the next few weeks about our events, from Shakespeare in a field to folk music, as well as the usual rants about what I'm reading or watching. I'll miss Cardiff and it's vibrant cultural scene, but I'm sure Bath will have plenty to keep me busy!