1st Years in London
this year as every year we headed off to London (the Big Smoke!)
We had spent a lot of time writing up a full itinerary for the students to make sure they got their moneys worth and it was definitely action packed!
Arriving in the city and booking ourselves into the Royal National Hotel, we quickly headed off to the British Museum. Here we encouraged the students to look at sequential art through the ages and also launched our new brief about students discovering Myths and Legends of the Big City. This could potentially include something from the Egyptian artefacts or any of the other collected in the place.
After that we met up and headed off on a tour of the comics outlets and heading down to China Town for a meal.
first port of call was Forbidden Planet just off the Shaftsbury Avenue. After a fire alarm disrupted the visit we lost vital time getting to the other places we wanted to visit.
This included Orbital Comics
And GOSH Comics where we arrived just as they were closing up, so making this the second year on the trot we got turfed out!
The meal in china town was good, then we headed off to The Champion Pub to meet up with ex student Rob Cureton from Orful Comics. Rob has worked on many animation productions and that is what his full time job is and he does comics in the evening and sells them at conventions up and down the UK
Day 2 Cartoon and Comic Museum
Going to the Cartoon and Comic Museum is one of the high lights of the visit to London. This year Steve Marchant, the man now in charge of the Museums lottery collection was a very busy man. But he gave up his time to have a talk to the students about the new comics the museum had brought and potential areas in which the collection was looking to buy.
After this we had a drawing challenge for the students in Covent Garden... Where was the garden?
We then headed up the road to Trafalgar Square and gave the Students a challenge to enter the National Gallery, and find a selection of images.
Day 3 MCM London Expo
Heading off early to London docklands this was going be a challenge but fun day. Once we got into the event it was murder to find anyone again till we met up at the location
what was good, a couple of our members of staff are also independent artist and they had stands at the event selling their work. Awkwardbex - Becci Such and Talburt Comics is our own Claire Smith.
It all ended up with a mad dash for the train and a long ride home, which seems to be a reoccurring thing now on these trips!
