Lunch in the canteen was a total bargain at around £2.50 each - I had ricotta tortellini and it was lovely. Highly recommended for cheapness and tastiness, plus ambience - there was a jazz quartet playing in the marquee in the courtyard :)
The shows were great as always - I feel so proud to live in a city with such an amazing art college. Here are a few tasters, from architecture to ceramics:
The textiles were as wonderful as always (sadly no pix as visitors are understandably forbidden from taking photos), but my favourite this year was these wood cuts:
I just love the jolly pussycats' faces :)Well done and thank you to all the students whose work I enjoyed - sorry I can't credit you (I will try and remember to make a note of people's names next year - it was all a bit whistle-stop this time unfortunately).
The quality and abundance of all this beautiful work made me realise how important it is to keep campaigning for more affordable creative workspace in Brighton & Hove, especially for young artists and makers who are just starting their careers.
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Afterwards, en route to the local party office to stuff some envelopes for the Goldsmid by-election, I passed through the 'Walking Woods', a temporary 700-tree mini-forest in Victoria Gardens, just outside the Sallis Benney building.
Ben Duncan wrote an excellent post about this installation, which was designed by architecture student Lucy Palmer, and partly funded by SEEDA as part of the 'Places from Spaces' project.
‘Places from Spaces’ aims to encourage new design thinking for urban public spaces. By working with students from local universities to create temporary landscaping installatons, the theory is that communities can "test" creative schemes for transforming public spaces, asking "what if?" – what might be possible in reinvigorating our shared places?
What a pleasure for the senses. I was sorry I didn't have more time to just hang out in this wonderful temporary arboretum and enjoy it - but it started to rain and duty was calling.As I left the Gardens and began to make my way up North Road, I couldn't help pondering the vast ideological chasm between SEEDA's laudable intentions and the local Tories' plans (or lack of) for Victoria Gardens, and the green spaces to the south and north of the site (known collectively as Valley Gardens).
Praise where it's deserved: under the last Labour administration, officers had begun work on radical plans to transform Valley Gardens, reducing car traffic and making pedestrianisation a priority. The car-obsessed Tories have now dropped this like a ton of hot bricks.
More recently, in our response to the Core Strategy for the emerging Local Development Framework, Greens criticised the lack of provision for local food growing within the inner-city, and suggested that parts of Valley Gardens could be used for community food projects. Again, this went down like a cup of cold sick with our Conservative chums.
I wonder if David Cameron knows how short-sighted and blinkered his colleagues are in Brighton & Hove? Vote Blue Get Green my derrière.
Thanks nevertheless to Lucy for a beautiful if temporary glimpse of what the future might hold. What if, indeed?
PS The brown grass in the forefront of this picture is not part of the installation. It's the annual post-Ladyboys of Bangkok witherment... (hmm)
