Travel, Culture and Events

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at the Palace Theatre, Manchester

Sketch City at Contact Theatre

Each month the venue at Contact is turned into a giant canvas, with tables to draw on, walls to paint on and unique installations to interact with. The Critics witnessed live demos and DJs. Watch below to see what they thought.

Watch the first Critics review of Sketch City from way back in Feb 07below

Graffiti in Barcelona

The Graffiti in Spain is almost everywhere, especially in the city centers, but it isn’t an eye-sore and it doesn’t ruin the ambience of the place at all! In fact, I think it is beautiful art. It is so carefully planned and well constructed.

Whilst in Barcelona I had the pleasure of actually seeing graffiti artists going about their work in broad daylight. They have the freedom to do it there. The police do not stop them so their artistic juices are really allowed to flow. It’s such a creative and fun art form. It can also be quite political, permitting them to really express themselves. Graffiti there is so bold and colourful, it cheers up a boring brick wall no end!

Obviously the graffiti artists know their boundaries, but given such freedom they appreciate this and stick to areas they think will benefit from a bit of colour and good design. It’s so inspiring and enjoyable to go round taking pictures and studying this art. It’s interesting to note also that graffiti artists are becoming just as famous (or infamous) as traditional artists. Barcelona graffiti is possibly the best in the world!

By Alison Kennedy, Cornerhouse Education Intern Autumn 05

Dec 05

Alison’s Barcelona Trip blog

Day 1:

After various incidents at Liverpool airport, including Esther freaking out about loosing her boarding pass JUST before we were about to board, hunting for it everywhere and then discovering that the man at the desk had actually had it all along and Esther giving me some lip balm that made my lips feel like they were going to explode (very unpleasant!) Then after a quick pose for camera on steps up to aeroplane (ala Beatles going on their American tour) we were on our way to Barcelona!!!

We got a taxi from Barcelona Airport, and soon discovered that Spanish taxi drivers are in fact insane. Then after lugging our suitcases up about a million stairs we were welcomed into the apartment we had rented, and it was lovely! An old style apartment which was very tastefully decorated and well equipped! Think we were all quite pleased with it.

Then, since it felt like our stomachs were about to leap out of us and go in search of some food themselves, we decided it was best to go and find a restaurant.  We went into pretty much the first one we came across, which had good food and a cat that looked exactly like puss in boots from Shrek.

After, Rebecca got an apple flavoured (or was in vanilla?) tea from a vendor on the street, it was only when we got back to the apartment ,and she had drank it all, did she discover a black hair at the bottom from, she concluded,  the ‘Greasy ape like man’ who had made it for her. Mmmm tasty. : )

Then sleep, sleep, sleep.

Day 2:

Wednesday morning and I awoke to the sound of a massive thunder clap, and then I realised that it was in fact absolutely tipping it down outside. So much for escaping Manchester weather! But somehow the rain in Barcelona is so much more attractive than in England! We woke up too late for breakfast and too early for lunch, but we managed to find somewhere to eat. Calamari as the first thing you eat is possibly not the wisest idea.

The Museum of Contemporary Art is an interesting place. Very white and contemporary. I don’t think I will even go into the work of Günter Brus because it was just plain sick. But the rest of the exhibitions were very good, especially the visual art one by Robert Whitman which was just captivating.

We then went in search of the mysterious flea market, still in the pouring rain, and came to the conclusion that it didn’t really exist (that or it was closed as it was raining too much) but our adventure on the metro to this made up place was not entirely at a loss! We found some great graffiti on the way. It really is a big culture thing in Barcelona and it’s beautifully done, they actually make the walls look better with their graffiti.

The evening consisted of us going to the opening talk of the conference about marketing to young people that we were here to attend in Barcelona.

The opening talk took place in the Jean Miro Museum, and there was such a mixture of people from all around Europe (but no young people!!) and they had translators which made me feel very important, like I was part of the UN meetings or something. Then afterwards we all made our way to the National Art Museum where there was a champagne reception and canapés (is that what they’re called? Can you tell I don’t often have them?) This museum was HUGE, with the biggest hall I have ever seen. We decided that they must have bull fights in there. We also got a sneaky peek at the Caravaggio exhibition which was simply stunning.

In the taxi back I learnt two things, 1: Spanish people love Madonna and her new song (despite her chicken legs in the video) and 2: The taxi driver has an English version of his GPS system and it was called Jane.

Day 3:

The big conference day!! We had breakfast and discovered some Spanish men drink beer at 9am. We got our presentation together but before that we had to sit through 2 other talks, which from a teenagers perspective was very interesting, as they were about teenagers! And apparently young people have underdeveloped brains and that why it is hard to communicate with them, but put in a much more scientific and less patronising way. Then it was our time to shine. We tried to make our workshop a lot less informal and get more people discussing the issues at hand regarding marketing to young people using digital technologies. I felt like the group really got into it and hope that what me and Esther had to say did help them a little! It was nerve-wracking but we battled through and several people came up after and told us how much they enjoyed it. Felt very worthwhile.

The conference provided a buffet lunch, but I got there a bit too late and everyone had already eaten the croquettes : (

More talks in the afternoon, interesting people from Holland who seemed to really be reaching out to young people and making it work by really bringing culture and the arts into the 21st century. For example, doing a hip-hop themed ballet, some people thought this was cheating young people because it wasn’t really a traditional ballet, but I believe it was just development and bringing it up to date.

In the evening we were invited to a special private view of the new Picasso exhibition (not new Picasso paintings obviously, just a new exhibition.) I felt very privileged to be there and it was rammed, the exhibition showed his illustrations for books, we also got to look round the rest of the exhibitions and got some champagne again. Its fun living in the art world!

Then there was the search for food and specifically the search for the illustrious ‘Eats Beats’ which sounded great! In the taxi there, Esther convinced the taxi driver that we were a bunch of female graffiti artists off to meet more female graffiti artists, and he believed us. Unfortunately we couldn’t find Eats Beats, so we settled with the nice blue café with the English waitress.

Day 4:

Me and Esther had the morning off from the conference so she wanted to get up fairly early and do stuff! So to do that (as I am NOT a morning person) she lied to me, saying it was 10.30 when in fact it was 9.30. Grrr. But good as I did get up and we got to go and do stuff. We found a very, very cool vintage clothing shop and an even cooler CD shop which excited us a lot.

We decided to gate crash the conferences buffet even though we hadn’t been there in the morning! But we did go back in the afternoon for a talk on Guerrilla marketing, which was very funny due to translating difficulties and learning that guerrilla marketing techniques had included in the past…putting advertising flags in dog poo round the streets. Weird but wonderful.

Closing comments followed and no one had any comments! So me and Esther spoke up saying how we think it is so vital that arts organisations involve young people from the start and not be scared to bounce their ideas off them!

We couldn’t afford the posh expensive dinner that a lot went to so we got a group of people together and went to a local restaurant (re-named by us as the lantern restaurant) where the toilets were in the kitchen and they made lovely salads. Afterwards we caught the end of the Alternative Film Festival opening where a bunch of arty looking types were gathered in a huge room full of pillows and bean bags. But soon it was back to the apartment for us as we were to fly back in the morning!

I had a great time in Barcelona and at the conference. It was an eye-opening, educational and fun experience for me and I’m very happy I had the opportunity to go!

By Alison Kennedy, Cornerhouse Education Intern Autumn 05