Blog: The Year Of Experimentation

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On Thursday I was booked on a THING at Central St Martins, "The Year of Experimentation", which was advertised as a festival of new writing SLASH series of masterclasses. Some of the masterclasses looked interesting and I wasn't doing anything ELSE that day so I signed up. This was all good until the night before when I got a text from a delightful PAL saying he'd be around in London town on Thursday, would I care for a delightful afternoon PINT or more? It HURT to say I couldn't, but I thought it was for the best.

Also for the best was the fact that I double checked where it was - Central St Martins has MOVED from its old home on Charring Cross Road to the Granary Building at Kings Cross. This was MUCH handier for me travel-wise (although it wouldn't have been if I'd not checked first!) and also a GRATE opportunity to wander round on Friday morning and have a LOOK at it. It's a GORGEOUS building - they've done some amazing things with the regeneration of Kings Cross, and I think this is one of the highlights, it's so LIGHT and AIRY and all-round ACE. I strode towards the back of the building where I found the Platform Theatre where the day was being held and ALSO Mr H Ali from off of my course, and ALSO Ms A Smith from the Stratford weekender. It felt like we were NETWORKING just hanging around together!

The actual masterclasses were a little bit of a let-down - to be fair, I have just spent two YEARS attending classes about THE WRITING and all that so there wasn't much new - but as the day went on it did feel like we were at a big open day for Central St Martins' own MA in Creative Writing. Most to the time was spent talking about what the speakers had done, rather than what WE could do, which was all right, but not quite what I was after. There was one REALLY interesting talk about the possibilities of dramatic writing in DIGITAL media which made the old BRANE fire up a bit, but it was a little bit spoiled by the advice given by the speaker on how to progress in this brave new world. "We all know 10 people who work in this area, ask them," she said. Hmmm... not sure we do! Then when asked "How do I get noticed/recruited into this area?" she advised "Be a really good writer." I think there might be a little more to it than that, like maybe applying?

The bits of discussion i got MOST out of was talking with Ali and Hakkim at lunchtime, so at about 3pm I thought "This is about enough for me" and said cheerio to my chums (who were also leaving) and BUNKED OFF to go to the PUB. It turned out that the aforementioned chum was still free, so we went and had a Wide Ranging Discussion covering SEVERAL Vital Areas, also SEVERAL vital pints, in the Parcel Yard at Kings Cross station. I staggered off back to the Javelin train safe in the knowledge that I might not have learnt much from the Formal Lectures, but had gained a GRATE deal from the Informal Seminars!

posted 4/7/2014 by MJ Hibbett

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