CSM presentation - 'A Week in the Life of Kevin Flude'

I was asked to present my work to students on the Creative Practice for Narrative Environments on Wednesday. I decided that I should attempt the presentation in the spirit of the Course and not do a straight Powerpoint presentation. I wanted the presentation to be non-linear, interactive and perhaps not entirely authored by me. I began with the idea of the order being random - I wanted a spinning wheel to choose the order the components appeared in but due to lack of our 'Twister' set choose a chatterbox instead (see here for how to fold). I decided to use the idea of 'A Week in the Life of' and decided not to cheat and use the current week. The first 4 components of the chatterbox would be the 4 aspects of my life:

1. Home and Life
2. The Old Operating Theatre Museum
3. University Lecturing
4. 'And Did Those Feet' Elderhostel and the history and archaeology of London

The 8 inner folds would be the 7 days of the week plus one for summer in order to include my elderhostel lecturing. So a member of the audience choose a colour, then one of the 8 items, this lead to a particular day. I meant to give the students a page from my diary and when that day was choosen to describe my day but in the end I decided that my diary was too enigmatic so I wrote a summary of the day for the student to read out. I also attached 4 set pieces to 4 of the days these were: 1. Summer - a slide show of a lecture I gave - I choose the Abdication of Edward VIII with a sound track of 'When a Man Loves a Woman' because the pictures were good, the story poignant and understandable as a narrative without me having to explain it. I choose to do the slide show as it was for the Elderhostel lecture except that I created a 3 close ups of previous slides to emphasis the story. These were 1. picture of grim Edward in taxi after abdication. 2. picture of Edward with Hitler 3. Wallis in window of Buckingham Palace on the day of the funeral of Edward. I think it worked really well as a narrative 2. Muvee film of the Old Operating Theatre Museum with Avenger's Sound Track made by me as a bit of fun when we were in the Crypt of the Church. I should not have over enlarged it as the resolution was not good enough and was I showing off a little that I could do this bit of editing? And did this work with such a technically gifted group - might it have seemed naive? Oh well 3. Slideshow of Bike ride around the Docks - this did not work for some reasons and rather than fiddle I abandoned. 4. A short presentation of my theories of Museums being divided into The Museum Inside the Museum The Museum Outside the Museum The Virtual Museum The rest of the presentation was my diary entries. I wish I had allowed the students to interpret them rather than feeding them my precis- problem was the readings were not very clear and I'm not sure everyone understand what they meant. The diary entries were as follows:

Monday

Working at home AM. Lunch at greasy spoon with Martha and Simon.

To CSM for tutorials with Gilly, Kimmy, Lucia and Suzanne – all goes well – major projects progressing.

Take Connie to Gym. Watch Relief of Belsen with incredulous kids

Tuesday

Woke, up, Got out of Bed, dragged a comb across my head.....

Working on CSM debrief.

11a, meet Beliz of the Hackney Historic Buildings Trust with view to seeing if I could held with St Augustine's Tower and the Round Chapel for them.

Good meeting – I'm to meet the Trustees next month with proposals

Pick Connie up from her old school in order to bring her fantastic arts works home.

Car breaks down!

Wednesday

Organise Disabled Access Lecture – then to CSM for excellent Pairs Project! Good year ahead.

Evening

Lose 8 -6 at football through 2 defensive lapses but I score my best goal ever – dribbling past the entire opposition, swivel past Rob (age 40) and blast shot home past Trev (age 57)

Thursday

To UCL to finalise Course book with Crispin and Suzanne.

On way am witness to wages heist in Green Lanes. Call police – it takes 999 about 10 minutes before asking me where the robbery took place.

To CSM Course Committee – a bit flustered and somewhere today I lose my wallet

Friday

Go to Old Operating Theatre Museum – give a Southwark – public health walk and talk to the St Albans University of the third age.

Man the front desk while staff have training session with June Brotherton – access consultant

Saturday

Organise fabulous Regeneration London Cycle Ride -

Regents Canal to Victoria Park and Olympics site, Greenway to Beckton Alps, round Prince Albert Docks, across Woolwich Ferry, around 02, and millenium penisular. To Greenwich under foot tunnel, through Isle of Dogs to Canary Wharf

Through Limehouse Basin, to Canal to Broadway market and home.

Amazing how many empty brown field sites there are in London

Sunday

Lunch in Wapping with Ruth and Derek – Derek tells of getting very drunk the night before.