Research...

This past week has been filled with classes, a trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum, a visit to a Christmas market with my friend Pauline, and my last volunteering session at the Sunday Spot (look at the SLG website!) at the South London Gallery (until the workshops hopefully resume in February). I went out with the two workshop facilitators after Sunday Spot and enjoyed being able to talk about community arts/life in London with them. Now, I am focusing my attentions on my future experiences in London. While I am here doing my masters I want to be able to get the most out of this experience as possible, especially when it comes to work experience. I have a meeting with the head of education at the Dulwich Picture Gallery (historically, the first public art gallery in the UK) on Thursday to talk about getting involved with their education/community outreach department (they have a lot of programming- check it out online!). Even though I am done with Sunday Spot right now, I am planning on meeting with the head of the education department again to talk about future involvement at the South London Gallery as I am really interested in the gallery's community outreach work. At the end of my course I will have to create either a special project or dissertation, and I am hoping to create a special project (potentially through one of these partnerships with galleries) that creates meaningful programming. So I have had a very productive evening researching potential galleries/institutions in London to get involved with next semester/summer, but this research has led me to some new, unexpected discoveries.

I was researching the local community around the gallery I've been volunteering at, and then decided to use good ol' Wikipedia to check out my local area I'm living in. I knew that Goldsmiths was the university of Damien Hirst (considered to be the world's richest living artist) and that Princess Beatrice attends here now (though definitely does not live in the area)... but what I didn't know is that little old Brockley is home to some semi-famous people as well. Here are my wikipedia findings (yes I know, reliability is questionable... and you will have to look these names up as you've probably never heard of most of them)

Kate Bush, the singer, lived on Wickham Road... (my road!)
John Cale (Musician) with the Velvet Underground was a student at Goldsmiths College and lived on Wickham Rd in the student halls of residence (my dorm)
David Haig, the actor and writer, resides in Brockley (he was in Four Weddings and a Funeral and Two Weeks Notice as Hugh Grant's brother.. )
Matt Hales, singer, songwriter of Aqualung
Bernard Hill, actor lived in Wickam Gardens in the 1980s
(Captain Edward John Smith in Titanic, King Théoden in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy)
Lily Langtry, the actress and mistress of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, lived at 42, Wickham Road (very close to me!)
Edgar Wallace, author and original screenwriter of King Kong, lived at 6 Tresillian Crescent (next street over from me)
Emily Dean.... just saying :)

So there's your trivia for the day!