End of Year, Fly Festival and Debs Newbold

We're so close to finishing this school year now and our Year 11s are preparing to move on. We're also welcoming a group of new younger students to Red Balloon and starting to get a feel for what our learning community will be like come the autumn.

Last year we marked the end of the summer term by spending almost a full week at the University of East Anglia's excellent Fly festival. Though we haven't made it to as many events at this year's Fly, we have managed to take in a few of them.

One of the standout sessions this year was Debs Newbold's amazing one woman performance of Shakespeare's King Lear. I was particularly impressed by her expressive energy and dynamic movement - not to mention the almost conversational manner in which she re-told Shakespeare's story. As I had my sketchbook to hand, I made a few scribbly drawings as she performed.

New Art Books!

Our Learner Centre recently received a generous donation, which has allowed us to develop our library facilities. This means we now have a far wider range of books than previously, and were also able to purchase some Kindles for the English department. Most excitingly (for me, anyway!) I was given a budget to order some new reference books for the Art room.

Though I've only had them for a few days, some of them have already been useful. For example, Barney Saltzberg's classic Beautiful Oops! has provided delight to students and staff alike. People have also been enamoured with Bimba Landmann's exquisite use of unconventional materials in I am Marc Chagall,

I also ordered a number of books from Taschen, some on specific artists (Kahlo, Ofili, Miro) and some on particular styles (Pop Art, Portrait Illustration).

My next project is to further build up my Art room bookshelves with a mini version of the Brooklyn Art Library. I've already got a number of creative friends working on this project. Expect a blog post soon!