....a Visit To The Famous Katz Deli...

A visit to the Highline Park

Quite a long entry - only read if you are a glutton for punishment!

Time is pressing on and I am aware of a slight fear of what I will get done before my course deadline. I have been through my initial essay stress and relaxed again (to some extent). However, before today I was realising that even with having had a bit of interest shown and people saying that they would take part - that I had no proper confirmations and/or set times to record people. I have the feeling that creating a full park community trail is truly something that takes a lot of time planning and then creating. Perhaps this is even more so because I want this to be a community trail, with ‘real’ community voices as opposed to an audio trail written by me and with one narrator. I want to have a large section of the community represented and inevitably it takes time for the word to spread and to get to know people. I have already decided that I will make a small initial trail, perhaps about the top site for the purposes of my coursework - with the plan of completing the rest of the park in my own time. A short trail will nevertheless also require careful thought and planning!

  The nature of the work so far is that as expected I am learning day by day. I had the suggestion of creating a Facebook event stating when I plan to be in the park and available to record people, which I will put into action. I could advertise more, but have to remember my limits. At the Crystal Palace Overground Festival today, I met a whole variety of very interesting and helpful people. I feel confirmed that it is a good idea to create an audio trail – however, as already mentioned, it is in theory a vast and far reaching project if truly carried out to the max! One suggestion of something that I hadn’t thought of was that I seek sponsorship – something to consider for the future?

  I also learned that the more I talk about the project the (hopefully) better I get at explaining it to people. I am aware it sometimes sounded a bit floury when trying to explain it to people for the first time. I know that this comes from a desire to be open to what comes up in the creative process, as well as it being the first time that I have developed this kind of project. However, I feel that I don’t need to sound so unsure because I clear of my aim – which is that I would like to record people talking in the park, about the park – as a record of current stories, feelings and actions about and in the park – and these will include stories that reflect back to the park’s interesting past.

  This journal entry will now cover both Saturday and Sunday of the festival. Sunday was again a day of fantastic spoke word and music (and more that I didn’t see). If there is one thing that this weekend has made clear for me, it is that I am keener than ever to include as much creativity into this trail as possible. I would love to have spoken word and music by local artists as part of the audio soundtrack because I believe it has the potential of engaging listeners all the more.

  The experience of further trying out the recording equipment and interview questions on my friend’s daughter reveals that being open and having a relaxed conversational nature (with at the most semi-structured interviews) is a good method. My friend’s daughter was much more natural when put in a position of control and left to herself as such. It also worked to ask fresh, new questions and questions that connected with her feelings. We even had an interesting discussion about what makes a good audio trail. The main feeling was that it shouldn’t be boring and that it should contain humour! 

Today's NYC outing was a visit to the Tenement Museum - a guided tour and a self guided walking tour

July 2016

Some filter some no filter needed #redadmiral

Cutty Sark to Greenwich North - listening to 'Dockers' audio trail - part two

Unicorn tapestries & plants at The cloisters

Me in the World

October 2016

Hello there :)

Testing out writing a bit more regularly about what I do in my tutoring, music and storytelling sessions. I would be interested to hear if any of it is useful to anyone reading this.

So the first activity that I am going to talk about is a one I found through a search of Montessori blogs. It is called a 'Me on the Map' or 'Me in the world' activity. It is an activity I didn't come across when I was Montessori teaching a few years back. However, when searching for activities about the world I really liked the idea of this. An important part of Montessori philosophy for me is the area of cultural education. Montessori was very much dedicated to peace and the activities in this area really develop this through helping children to understand more about the world, their place in it and how everything is connected.

I tried this activity out with two brothers I tutor. The idea is that you have coloured circles of ascending sizes. You start by asking the child to draw a picture of themselves and then their house and gradually progress to their continent and the world.

The youngest started accordng to the plan. He wasn't too keen on drawing his houseso drew the entry gate to his house. We only did about three last week and completed this week because the activity did not captivate him as much as others. The eldest decided that he would do it in his own way and started with a mean looking character who ended up living on the moon. He gave areas of the moon different number codes that got more complex as they went along and really got into it. I had intended that he did it about himself, however, I loved his creativity. Below are the results. And here is a link to the page I found the best for describing this activity and variations:  Here

Bye for now....

I liked this from #brooklynmuseum too

Excited to be part of the community choir for this! Great to have something so interesting and promoting accessibility and the arts so close to home :)