I'm off to to my frist Museums Association conference all the way up in Edinburgh, to listen, learn and play counter-tourism, which is my new "thing" in which i often find myself in a busy museum bare foot, with pockets full of plastic animals, talking to paintings and eyeballing statues...anyway...

I'm also going to collect my AMA certificate which i have worked very hard for, over the last three years

I'm excited as this is a great oppurtunity to network and talk to museum people about the role costume and artwork does and could play in a wide range of heritage sites

As per normal i will have a couple of hats on and will also be representing IMTAL Europe (The International Museum Theatre Alliance) for whom i am a director and as part of this role I edit the IMTAL Europe Insights Journal three times a year

This is a very diffrent role (hat) from that of "Artist" and i am always interested in how the two worlds meet

expect more on what i got up to when i'm back at the weekend, including lashings of Iron brew...

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is a busy time of the year for costume designers, so far this week i have been working out how to package and post wings, fighting though armys of Zombies doing their make up and fiting up blood drips which dispence strawberry jelly...

What i love about halloween is that everyone dresses up, because is is ok to do so and more now than ever, because it is expected

clothes projects what we want to be and fancy dress gives us an excuse to play with who we would like to be, "dress up" allow us all to be performers and play a role even if only for one night

i love to see how people dress when they think anything goes, it tells you a lot about people

My costumes are never quite a good as i plan them to be, as i always end up making so many things for other people, this years costume...to fit with my AA2A project and as its John keats 217th birthday...a consumptive...

following on from my fawning over the smell of the print room, i can confirm my screenprinting induction induced a sensory overload...

it has been a few years since i have had "proper" screen printing access and being back in the print room takes me back to my frist degree, quite a few years ago

This time it was the sounds which were most memomic, blasting the screen clean, scraping the Squeegee accross the mesh, it was all about the sound

the ideas have started flowing, it must be time to get started...

And so it begins, my head is full of ideas, the university is full of exciting possibilities and my diary is full of inductions

I am feeling very inspired, I will be working in the same rooms that my granddad did for 35 years, from 1955 to 1990, then engineering now fashion

And next door, in the print room, the smell of which is wonderful, all oil-based ink and ideas, my fingers itch to get started

But the basics must be covered, plans must be made and lots of small steps must be taken before the real creative play can start

I am giving myself a gold star for not getting lost…so far