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Same As It Ever Was exhibition

Arts London News

An exhibition will be held this month to celebrate the History of Painting at Chelsea College of Art and Design.

‘Same As It Ever Was’ will exhibit the work of 45 artists associated with the college from 1990 to 2007, demonstrating the importance of painting at Chelsea.

Artists include former Turner Prize winner Martin Creed, Peter Doig and Dexter Dalwood, as well as recent graduates Claire Pestaille and Lucy Moore.

The exhibition was curated by Professor Clyde Hopkins, former Head of Painting at Chelsea.

Hopkins said: “The idea for the exhibition came about a year and a half ago. I retired on January 1 2007 and thought it would be nice to mark my time spent as Head of Painting by putting together a show that included staff and students. The show gives a fair picture of the staff at Chelsea and what students can go on to do.”

He added: “I hope the exhibition will give light to the wide range of work and make more students want to be associated with the college.”

The Arts Gallery will primarily feature works by alumni. Works displayed at the Triangle Space and Chelsea Futurespace will focus on the practice of tutors that teach painting at Chelsea.

Works will be exhibited simultaneously across three Arts London galleries, promising to be an intellectual and visual treat.

RAG shambles

Arts London News

Arts London News headed on Tuesday evening to the Babyshambles gig at Wembley Arena to help the SU RAG team raise money for the Meningitis Research Fund.

However, the night did not turn out as expected. As rain poured, I circled Wembley Arena searching for Arts London students, but all I found were Pete Doherty wannabes.

After ten minutes I came across someone carrying a purple Meningitis Research Fund bucket. He told me that only two or three others from Arts London were here.

Despite the lack of support from Arts London students, SU RAG President Jake Wiseman braved the hoardes of Doherty-worshippers and persuaded fans to donate money.

Katy Cushen, volunteering co-ordinator said: “I don’t think it was a disaster. People haven’t been able to take part because of assessments. A lot of the people involved are in their first year. There will be a Re-freshers Week at the start of term so people who missed Pathfinding Week can join in.”

Old school uniform day helps raise RAG cash

Arts London News

Arts London’s RAG team held a Back 2 Skool event last week to raise money for the Peckham Help Centre.

Students wore their old school uniforms and paid £2 each to help reach the £1.6 million required to develop a new, fully-equipped youth centre.

Katy Cushen, volunteering co-ordinator said: “There weren’t as many in uniform as we’d hoped, but there were a dedicated few. It went well.”

Jake Wiseman, President of Arts London RAG said: “Some of the students at London College of Communication and Camberwell have used the Help Centre themselves. Now they’re trying to give something back.”

LCC student George Boateng organised the Back 2 Skool event with the help of the RAG team.

The SU is holding a Christmas Market at LCC from November 29 to December 3. All of the money raised will go to HIV-related charities.

RAG team asks students to dig deep

Arts London News

Arts London’s RAG committee raised £1,500 for various charities this term and is urging students to take part and help generate at least another £8,000 this academic year.

Jake Wiseman, SU RAG President said: “If everyone donated just £1 to any RAG event, we could easily raise £20,000.”

Wiseman said: “RAG has the potential to be amazing. What we’d love to do is hold events that people want to go to anyway, but at discounted prices, and have all of the money go to charity. They don’t have to donate hours of time to charity. Instead they can go and do something they want to anyway.”

The Dead Famous Halloween Carnival raised £700, of which £500 went to Chicken Shed. Jessica Coopers, culture and diversity officer, recently shaved her head, raising £500 for Food Chain.

RAG raids are also a popular way of raising money. Wiseman said: “A RAG raid is when you go out and shake buckets. The theme of the raid would depend on what it was for. If we were raising money for an arts centre, we might dress up as Crayola crayons.”

Katy Cushen, volunteering co-ordinator said: “There is a RAG calendar on the website, so people can opt to do anything. If you want to do a bit of bucketing, come to the Babyshambles Wembley Arena gig on November 27 at 5pm and help us fundraise there for the Meningitis Research Fund.”

Friday sees the Back 2 Skool event, where all Arts London students can pay £2 to wear school uniform to college. The mastermind behind the event is an LCC student who wants to raise money for the Peckham Help Centre.

RAG needs someone to handle the media and communication aspect, such as maintaining the website and Facebook group.

“If RAG gets as big as we want it to, we would need site volunteers to make sure RAG is common in each college.”

Staff and students left in chaos as intranet crashes

Arts London News

Staff and students were left in limbo after the Arts London website crashed for five days.

A hardware failure occurred on Friday during upgrade work. Students and staff did not have access to the intranet or the Arts London email system. However there was full access to all other services such as Blackboard and other websites.

Nick Atkins, Head of IT said: “It was completely unexpected. You can’t predict which light bulbs in your house go out. Similarly you can’t predict technological failures. A temporary web page was put up on Tuesday. We take that kind of advice from the communication and marketing department and they were not accessible at the weekend. We couldn’t predict the outage.”

Prospective Arts London students may also have been affected by the website problems. At this time of year they need access to the website to research courses and enquire about open days.

Richard Smith, administrator at London College of Communication’s School of Media said: “It wasn’t a great time for the website to be down, but I don’t think it would affect Arts London students too much. I couldn’t log on to my email on Friday. Our emails only started working on Monday at 4.30pm. It was very annoying.”

Davies Street was also affected by the crash. Ronan Haughton, Campaigns and Communication Officer said: “We didn’t have access to our shared drive which has all of our data on it. We did our best to get work done without the access to data. We were able to check emails on other sites and did whatever we could in terms of our day-to-day duties.”

An outside contractor was needed to help resolve the upgrade problem. Atkins said: “It has been good because we have learnt from it. It was technically and extremely complex getting the site up. A lot of money was spent on correcting it. The internet is a vigilant medium, moving constantly, and we are trying to keep vigilant with it.”

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