Newham Arts Development Foundation...

Recently I managed to get myself into a 'media consultancy' position, with the Newham Arts Development Foundation.

As the media guy my job description is 1) create a blog to showcase the results of this project, and the work of Newham based artists. 2) Manage / optimise the success of the NADF Twitter & Facebook 3) Bolster youth participation 4) Help enrich the NADF's summer program (specifically in terms of more urban art-forms such Music and Graffiti)

Their mission statement is: To bring all artists, arts organisations and professionals in Newham together. We support artists working across all art forms by creating a platform to help them develop their creative ideas and showcase their work.

The 1st thing I have to do is this blog. 

As a basic concept for the banner I thought...

of Using a map of London as the main focus. 

The idea is basically, to have the site based on a white colour scheme with coloured accents. Thus the banner will be white, with all of the other boroughs replaced with a montage and Newham and the Thames both being red. The idea being to imply that Newham is the heart of London.

Anyway, I'm mid doing it now - so you'll soon see what I mean.

He stumble's...

Unfortunately the power cable on the Laptop I use (to do everything) has snapped.

So I can't do alot of things, including uploading the Vlog I was supposed to upload yesterday.

It's Troublesome, but for the moment can't be helped...

Hopefully I should be able to do something by tomorrow, until then...

here's a reminder of why we're running for Barnado's on April 10th.

On your marks...

I have now set up both the donation sites for contributions towards both

 &

meaning everyone can start getting involved!

I'll be putting up the first of our training Vlog's in a little while, in the meantime please go to either http://www.fundraiseforbarnardos.org.uk/newham10k or http://www.justgiving.com/newham10k2011/

to give to either Barnardo's or Care Leavers Association.

It may not instantly change a life, but it'll will do it's part to help better somebodies chances, so...

Thanks for caring!

Long Distance...

In just over two weeks the 'Newham Classic 10k'

will commence for the 3rd time on April 10th, 

with the route this year including West Ham Park,

Stratford High Street and The new London 2012 Olympic Park. 

This time round three members of our organisation - Yanik, Rasa and Christina will be running to raise funds for two charities.

Care Leavers Association

&

Barnardo's

Today I will be uploading not only the the first training Vlog from Yanik, 

but also all the information on how to donate and get involved via facebook.

So until then...

Fine!?!? Fine then... but you didn't find an easy fine.

At around 8ish this morning I had a run in with an 'undercover enforcer' for Newham Council,who attempted to fine me

£50 for littering.

I must state at this point that I was not...

fly-tipping,

or throwing a half eaten panini at a Community Support Officer.

He caught me dropping a cigarette on the floor...

In my defense there's no 'fag-bin' on the wall, so I'd never really thought of an alternative.

Anyways,

the way the whole situation transpired was really quite surreal

(maybe because I had pretty much just woke up),

 he stopped me and pulled out his Council Badge 

which just happened to be official looking to an unnecessary extent, adorned with some coat of arms and i'm sure meant to intimidate as soon as revealed.

He explained that he was fining me for dropping my butt on the floor and emplored me to give him my details. I was in the process of creating false information to give him, when all of a sudden I felt this immense disdain towards the idea of having to invent some pseudo-persona and accompanying information to give this man.

I told him "... Actually, no..."

and he was a little taken aback, I think partly by my defiance and the contagiousness of my morning-stupidity but I had to ask him "Sorry... you're going to have to walk me through this again"

and he was like "I'm fining you because I just watched you walk up and throw down your cigarette butt"

so my response was "Why didn't you stop me!?!"

to which he said "Why didn't you put it in the bin!?!"

I was like "A lit fag in the bin? C'mon there's not even a cigarette bin here what do you expect?"

to which his implausible response was that firstly we're responsible for the localtion of cigarette bins and furthermore, that I should've dotted the butt out and "Put it in my cigarette box"

by this time I think communications had broke down because he reverted to asking for me details.

He certainly wasn't happy when I told him "You'll just have to phone the police",

 but the fact is his attempt to scare me by mentioning the magistrate didn't work, So we were at the kind of stalemate that can only be resolved with police intervention.

Still, It brought real Christmas cheer to my heart getting to tell him "No, and it's ok... I have a blog!"

the last time he asked "what's your date of birth" 

adding that I could "Complain after providing my details".

Eventually he let me go, as not only would it've been time consuming to detain me, but also'people like myself' clearly weren't the intended target of the 'mornings operation'.

These two council officials were there to try draw money out of the people on the way to work. Which is quite sad seeing as they'd've been better placed gritting the dangerous pavements so these same people could get to work and generate income for the local area.

I know the countries broke, but the local authorities could at least have some class to their money making exercises.

For me,

today was a remarkable

and frankly I'm disappointed!