Manchester Musings…

We’re just back from the annual Design Your Futures event at Manchester’s MCCC. This is a specialist Art & Design related careers event.

So, what’s a specialist Art & Design careers event all about you ask?..

Pens, mostly… …and badges… …and bags, lots of bags. There’s also a plentiful supply of sweets, rubbers, pencils and last (but not least) prospectuses.

Underlying the plethora of ‘free crap’ are the nation’s Universities attempting to sell themselves and their courses to prospective students.

We had an incredibly busy two days, running out of prospectuses on the first day. It was ‘full on’ from start to finish but we met many, many lovely people (some of whom we’d met before when we’ve visited their college).

Here are some photos to give you a flavour…


UK Recruitment’s very own Eleanor ‘The Human Dynamo’ Missen and Fine Art’s one and only Professor Robert ‘The Prof’ Williams pictured psyched up and ready to roll.



The MCCC, yup it sure is big!


Busy, busy, busy… It was like this all the time.
 
Here’s former Grillust™ operative, Danny Aldred (33 - he looks younger) who now teaches at Winchester School of Art in far away Hampshire (somewhere to the South of Manchester he assures us – probably Didsbury way…) His course has a lovely blog here (although sadly, it doesn’t seem to poke fun at its own students and staff as relentlessly and mercilessly as we do).


The University of Brighton forced a pair of their students to paint a mural over the two days. Cruelly treated by the Brighton staff, denied sleep, and told they weren’t going home “if it isn’t finished”; the resourceful pair gained sustenance by cadging Haribo off the visitors.


The University of Wales provided the ‘elephant in the room’.


Both Professor Robert Williams (33) and Grillust™ operative Tony Peart (33) have offspring who love ‘free crap’. As they had no time to go on a ‘swag raid’ a solution had to be quickly improvised. Pictured above are William and Elle, visitors from Lancaster and Morecambe College. Both were happy to accept orders to find as much free swag as possible and “return within the hour!”


Here’s what William and Elle managed to snaffle. You see, it is all about pens, badges and bags!.. Thank you both.