Welcome back!!

Today saw my first time back at the University Of Wolves to prepare for the year to come. This time I’m on level 5, I’ve completed two years already and as a part time student those two years add up to the first year of a full time degree course. Another four years to go, where I can continue to use the facilities and the expertise of the tutors and staff at the university.

Upon arriving at the MK Building I entered the foyer and found Noah waiting for the day ahead. Catching up with him about the events of the summer and grabbing a cup of coffee we waited for some of our fellow coursemates to arrive. Shellie, Brian, Emma and Ieva arrived ahead of the 10 ‘o’clock session where Euripides talked to us about the contents of the modules for the year to come.

Time Trouble

Somehow during the enrollment tasks I’ve been enrolled into the wrong course, the Fine Art course, so my timetable was all messed up meaning that I might be in uni on a Tuesday afternoon and a Thursday morning. With my new job and the extra responsibilities I was nervous that this strange timetabling might cause me issues at work. Talking to Euripides this is a mistake in the enrollment process and I should in fact be timetabled for two sessions both on the Tuesday or the Monday, depending on which module of the two I choose to pick for the year 2023/2024.

With a Monday being. a busy day for me in the new job, I selected the Tuesday and will have the conversation with my new boss at work about how I can make up the time and cause as little disruption as possible.

Once we had looked at the timetable, we talked about what we might be doing in the modules. As part of the Level 5 course too we will have access to Live Briefs where we can take part in shoots, led by Level 6 students. There are some shoots that could be possible with some arrangements and relationships with local organisations that can lead to some serious professional opportunities. I’m excited to see where this could lead too.

Drone Dereliction

At lunch time I went out with my drone into the city centre, accompanied by Noah to take some photos of the old Beatties building, which currently sits there derelict and looking very sad for itself. The reason I did this was after having a chat with Tom, our resident art librarian expert. Tom had been out taking some photos of the Beatties building from the Eagle Studios and noticed that there seemed to be daylight entering the building as though the roof was missing. Old and derelict buildings needing care and attention to bring them back up to spec and looking nice are a target for unscrupulous developers that “accidentally” catch fire, clearing the way for a more modern development. This alleged practice has made headlines recently int he West Midlands with the Crooked House at Himley, as well as The Harlescott Inn and the London Apprentice in my hometown of Shrewsbury so I think it’s rife. As a result of this concern Tom thought it might be a good time to capture some images of the building before any mishap were to befall this recognisable part of the city centre. In fact as I was describing this to my in-laws tonight at a family birthday meal, I found out that my mother-in-law used to attend shorthand and secretarial college in the city centre, and visited Beatties at lunch time to listen to records in the booths they had. I never knew this before, but she is from Albrighton, close by to Wolves and it makes sense.

I flew the drone over the building and around it to find that the roof seems ot have gone from the rear part of the structure, leaving exposed steel beams and wooden floors open to the elements. The floors of the building we can see from the main street through the windows are completely open on the back side so that rain, wind and all manner of British weather can make it’s way in and exacerbate the damage it’s already suffered.

It’s a sad old sight to see this once thriving department store in such a run down state, especially after it was bought by a developer in early 2020 for £3 million. It sits awaiting it’s fate, whatever that may be. In this article on the BBC news, it states that the University Of Wolverhampton also considered purchasing it which would have been great if it could have been restored economically but this was apparently not possible.

Google Maps shows this image of the overhead view of the store with it’s flat roof still place, but since then it’s been removed and stripped back. I’ve some photos of the windows from May this year and it looks like the inside was in darkness, hence a roof must have still ben on then, so the peeling back of this must have taken place in the recent few months.

You can see from the above small collection of images what’s happened to the site so far.

Afternoon Induction

Back at the MK Building in the afternoon we were in the lecture theatre for a course induction and reminders about the code of conduct, attendance, support, and academic skills from the Deputy Head of School, Pritpal Sembi. This concluded and ran into a brief chat from Tom the librarian, about the resources available to us both online and in the printed form in the library too.

One of the tutors from the Illustration course, Amy, explained about the trip to Paris, due to take place in March ’24. Sounds like a good experience but I already have my heart set on a solo trip to Tokyo in the early part of next year so I’m looking at finding out when a non-teaching week will be occurring in a half-term so I can fly out to take some Blade Runner style photos.

Reading through some of the curriculum contents I can see that there will be an exhibition at the end of this year, with an essay about one word running to 2500 words too as well as a body of work for the entire year. I’m getting excited to see what is coming up in our first lecture of the new academic year, this Tuesday.

Sounds Fair

Also, I revisited Wolverhampton at the weekend after this Welcome Week and spent a couple of hours at the camera fair in Dunstall Park Racecourse. I didn’t spend much, there were items there that did tickle my fancy such as a Titanium M6 but thought better of dropping that much money.

Instead I bought a £2 Kodak 4000 Disc Camera as an oddity, £35 worth of film in the form of Ilford PANF and Kentmere. The other item I spent £10 on was some CDVs, or Carte De Visite as they are widely known. They are individual photos stuck on card in what is probably one of the earliest forms of card collecting. I don’t know why exactly I bought these, or why I selected the few I did. My only reasoning behind this is that I’ve found many old photos whilst going through my late Father’s belongings and I can’t bear to cut them up or deface them, whereas with someone else’s cards it doesn’t have any emotional link. I say that but the people in the photographs are still real human beings, people who sat or stood for their portrait in the early days of photography, then used them as visiting cards for their friends or business associates.

Maybe they’ll come in handy at some point this year or beyond.

Let’s see where this year takes me!!