Exhibition comes down atPenair School

Exhibition comes down at Penair School, Truro. Mike Matthews, volunteer extraordinaire, helps me pack it. Brian Andrew and Craig Williams (pictured) load it up and take it home to Praze.

A photogallery of work at Penair School

All the photos in one place - with captions.  Taking I Packed This Myself to Penair School, Truro.

A private view at Penair and a world premiere

A Private View of I Packed This Myself at Penair School, Truro. Some nervousness beforehand. How many people would come? But sumptuous food. Lots of people. Students who greeted guests and gave informed and engaging guided tours of the exhibition. A tremendous atmosphere even before a bus arrived from Leedstown with workers from Southern England Farms (SEF) who had made a film of their lives, The Hidden Life of a Cornish Farm.
Quite an emotional moment - it seemed such a breakthrough that they were able to come and see the first screening of the film.  Inga Riaukaité, Andrius Riauka, Domantus Plusciauskis and Valius Icontrimas pose here by photos by Tom Pilston of migrant workers in west Cornwall.

And viewing the photos...













An old friend - Ross Tibbles of University College Falmouth with work created for I Packed This Myself when it opened in Camborne, March 2009.

And work created by students at Penair, using the flat pack suitcases we have created to go alongside the exhibition.

This only happened due to the work of a large number of people - too many to mention, as always, but Carmel Henry and Tanya Davies at Penair really took the project to heart. As did Ruth Morecock, Head of Art and Joan Smith, ESOL teacher at Southern England Farms, Leedstown. The film could not have been made without the backing of SEF and Jane Richards.  And of course nothing at all would have been possible without funding for all the materials and workshops from the Migration Impacts Fund.

Final touches at Penair and daffodil pickers working later

To Penair School, Truro, to put the final touches to I Packed This Myself, the exhibition opening there tomorrow night. We will be screening a film by four Lithuanian workers alongside work by artists on the theme of migration - as well as work by students.  Ewa and Waldek Cimochowscy help set everything out with Carmel Henry and Tanya Davies, the teachers who have worked so hard on the project. Their efforts have really borne fruit. Fantastic art  by students and very thought-provoking suitcases.

 

Ewa, Waldek and I have a meeting afterwards to discuss bookings for next term. We are keen to target schools with greatest needs and plan different strategies for different age groups. 

It is nearly dark by the time I near home - but the daffodil pickers are only just finishing. Can hear voices calling across the fields as the bus gets ready to drive everyone back to base.

A trip to Leedstown and the new film

Down to Cornwall again for the start of the week - and a trip to Leedstown to see the Lithuanian workers at Southern England Farms (SEF) who have made a film of their lives. We plan to show it at the launch of I Packed This Myself at Penair School, Truro, on Tuesday. The filmmakers (Inga Riaukaité, Andrius Riauka, Domantus Plusciauskis and Valius Icontrimas)  have done a brilliant job. Jane Richards of SEF who has kindly given permission for the filming comes to see it too.
Everyone is happy.

Migration of the species

In my solicitor's waiting room find an article about the migration of species in a glossy magazine.
Lots of photos but it doesn't really talk about the interesting part - the mystery of it all. How do birds know the routes to take? Which part of the brain stores this knowledge? Is it the cerebellum? I can't remember.
There are photos of polar bears, who don't migrate (two children at workshops last week asked if polar bears come from Poland).
But two books, possibly, to add to our Journeys reading list - The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico and A Single Swallow by Horatio Clare, a producer and journalist. Clare followed the flight of swallows from South Africa to his childhood home in Wales, travelling 6,000 mile across two continents and 14 countries.
"It's quite something to live life as swallows do," he is quoted as saying, "on the wing, taking perpetual risk. It's not just how they live, it's the emotional way that they live: their fearlessness, their joie de vivre and their adventurousness that I love."
It would be nice to think that swallows are filled with joie de vivre, but I wonder whether they are in fact.

Perhaps I am not in the best of moods.

Behind the burger ...

"I'm not a slave, I just don't speak English" - life in the meat industry

A friend sends a link to an article in the Guardian on the appalling conditions in some sectors of the meat processing industry in the UK. It's based on a report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). One third of workers in the meat processing industry in this country from overseas. In Cornwall, a large proportion of the several thousand Portuguese migrant workers are employed in meat processing.
I stopped eating fast food burgers after watching Fast Food Nation by Richard Linklater.