Off to Goldsmiths College, which is located in East London and was heavily bombed during the war in London. The morning was basically a recruitment session followed by a tour of Goldsmith’s amazing facilities/studio and campus. They showed us that they still use darkrooms in the school which is quite remarkable; I believe this still is the best mechanism for print photography. They have studios to conduct live radio shows and create television broadcasts.
These are the tv broadcast rooms/studio and the darkroom (bottom)
During the lecture we were able to get a brief overview of the programs offered. The major take-away from this was that their programs are theory and practice oriented (similar to Guelph-Humber, cooool!). They offer Masters degrees as well which is interesting because our school doesn't and it would be an amazing opportunity to pursue a Master’s degree after graduating from GH… Plus it’s in another country: amazing.
One impressive outcome that Goldsmith has, is their creation of an online, all-student-run 24 hour, news website. The title of this outlet is: East London Lines .co.uk. It features local news for the east end of London. It is not used as a mouth piece for university; many locals rely on it. This is very beneficial to the students because they are able gain genuine experience for themselves and it allows for mistakes to be made (not encouraged, but it is a learning process for them). This could be a concept used at GH in the future to aid the students in our country, brilliant idea! This is the website check it out! http://www.eastlondonlines.co.uk/
We made our way to the underground and took a walk down the
Thames river and saw some really interesting buildings; cultural experience for
sure. Many bridges, many pubs, Shakespeare Globe Theatre and more! We then went to Borough
street market: a cute outdoor market mostly containing fresh foods, and BBQ style take-away foods. Here I had a Boston sausage from a street vender which was not very good! I don't think it was fully cooked and the mustard was so spicy I could barely finish it :( Along our walk I bought some beer nuts, and shared them with the group. These were pretty tasty but you can't eat too many or it becomes to overwhelming.
<< Beer Nuts - Something I have never tried until now..MMMMM
We walked for what felt like miles to get to our last destination which was BBC for 5:00 pm. We went to three different BBC buildings before finally arriving at the correct location which seemed unorganized and confusing to me; walking got very tiresome! Exhausted, we met Andy Griffee, and as soon as we stepped into the BBC all was forgiven and forgotten as we were blown away by the spectacular glass-everything and open concept BBC building.
Walking into BBC we saw the open concept style of office/work environment.
Andy Griffee gave us an amazing in depth but quick tour. The HUGE newly built building – was a practice tour for him because he is showing the Queen the same tour in about a week’s time. The tour showed us the amazing 8 levels of the building from the radio studios at the top and all through the glass walls, open concept offices, multiple television studios for broadcasting, multiple radio studios, and the live lounge where artists can actually perform and record songs for the radio and whatnot. We had a brief lecture from Griffee after the tour and he gave us the history of the BBC learning that they are a public broadcaster and if they used advertising other broadcasters wouldn't stand a chance to compete any longer. Their licence fee is subject to change every 5 years, but doesn't always change. Every ten years the Queen (her government) must decide if the BBC continues or not, hence her tour in one week, we shall see what she thinks! Stay tuned to the media for that!!Two significant pieces of art were shown to us during our tour that Griffee really wanted us to know about. One was the vase located on top of the BBC building; it represented respect for all the journalists who have died on the job, or for the job. The other was “the world” representing the range of the BBC and all those who have worked for BBC and represent/find stories across the globe.
Overall the day was day was busy and splendidly enjoyable, I am not sure still, how I feel about public broadcast but I do think working at BBC would be an amazing job and keep me immensely busy! The radio shows seemed very appealing to me! Hope the others had different feelings, and gained a bit more than I did!
Good Day to be in London (Second Post/Different Day)
This morning was a bit easier, we had some spare time before our first activity. Steph and I walked in the streets near our hotel and went souvenir shopping. We bought a few items, and then made our way back to meet up with our group and departed for the tube. We had a lunch scheduled with Paul Waldie from the Globe and Mail, but first we were able to see platform 9 and ¾.
I love Harry Potter but did not pose with the cart going through the wall. It was cool to see that it was almost like a real platform where all the other trains departed from. I snapped photos for the rest of the group though and that was enough. There was a gift shop in case anyone wanted to buy a picture but it was insanely overpriced in there!
This is platform 9 3/4, childhood memories came flooding back at this moment.
We had lunch scheduled at the amazing Parcel Pub which is a listed building in London. This means no one can touch, tear down, or be changed at all. They basically built the subway system around this two story pub. Here I was able to indulge in traditional English style FISH & CHIPS: yum! BUT not before waiting for roughly an hour for Waldie to arrive, his train was running late.
This is the history of the building, beside my delicious cider!
My first real fish and chips in London England very good, and filling, and also free thanks GH :)
The talk we actually had was really insightful from Paul, who used to work with Kimberly (connections!). He was very interesting and has had a long and extensive career as a journalist. He was from Toronto but has been working and living in London. He says he still feels like an outsider being from Canada.
The most interesting thing about Paul was that he does not have a beat like many journalists. This means that he doesn't have a specific section or area of emphasis to write about. He said that it has made him a better journalists and allows him to be very worldly in the sense that he can pitch story ideas that interest him and allow him to gain knowledge on a broad range of topics. This is intriguing because he started out at the Financial Post, doing nothing that he actually wanted to do or was interested but he said he got his foot in the door and would never regret that. He now covers Europe and it is basically up to him to decide which part he wants to cover and which stories are the best. Sometimes he will be asked to cover certain stories but mostly he decides. Pretty sweet gig if you ask me!! During the talk a question along the lines of "does the Globe and Mail ask you to take a specific spin on the stories?" He replied that with an example saying that its a business/information paper, and when the Manchester United manager (soccer team) quit he did a story looking at the business side. Where some places they would look strictly at the sports aspect of it.
Speaking about public and private funding he said that Canada (what he is used to) is private and in the UK it is public, making it "more active" as he described it. This means that the stories stray more towards the government interests. He said he personally prefers the private sectors. We also touched a bit on the future of print and he suggested that he stills believes in print but that he can see it changing and becoming a magazine in the possible future. Holding longer coverage stories and being a weekly or bi-weekly medium. He also said that as long as journalists can appeal to the larger portions of population (the youth/future) that they must be simple, funny, intriguing and different. A quote I wrote down that Paul said was "media tends to follow not lead". That means (to me) that media will continue and it will follow the desires of the audience and change when the audience changes. Although he thinks many people use and rely on twitter, if they really want the facts they won't just look at the twitter feed, they will go the places like the Globe and Mail for real factual information.
I left this lunch lingering on the words Paul had left us with and decided then that journalism was a pretty interesting field and has become much more then a print career.
After lunch we were invited to hear Jose van Dyke speak to us about her newest book (The Culture of Connectivity, 2012) at Goldsmiths. She talked about the Eco system of media. I was truly inspired by her talk, she was engaging and brilliant and I must admit I would love to read her book. Her talk lasted about 45 minutes and she touched mainly on Facebook. She talked about how Facebook has evolved aesthetically over the years, and the language used on Facebook. Discussing the use of Facebook by companies was a huge topic. How companies appeal to customers through Facebook because it allows the interactive aspect of consumer appeal to be reached in the customers homes. It also allows people to feel more appreciated when you can "friend" a company or commodity on Facebook. This makes it feel like real friendship when you are actually just buying into the whole marketing scheme produced by the company to encourage you (the consumer) to SPEND SPEND SPEND. Jose was a very well educated and convincing speaker (she almost made ME feel dumb for using Facebook). This was not a talk that was scheduled in the itinerary but I'm really glad I decided to go enjoy this.
After the talk a group of student had wanted to pursue the nightlife around the college. After Steph and I made a few acquaintances with Goldsmith students they advised otherwise. So we retreated to the hotel got ready, and had a few pre-bar drinks.
Just the girls getting excited and being silly!
With Julie Jen Steph and I we went to the tube and managed to find another club promoter who took us to a club called Sway. It was a pretty fun place with a light up dance floor (Saturday Night Fever anyone??) and we stayed there while a few of our classmates came and left.
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