College week 13, Pathway Assessment, 5th December

Today we had our first Pathway Project Assessment,  which I had been increasingly anxious about, and had done a lot of work in the pat week to take my project forward and have something to show which I felt reasonably happy with.
We were split into groups of 3 or 4 and had to take one person's project materials and look at ti all carefully and provide them with verbal and written feedback, against the assessment criteria (which are written in a very formal assessment geek style, hard to translate into real language).   I had some very positive comments about my map project, people seemed to like the stitched pieces particularly.  I felt I had done quite a lot in terms of documented research and experimentation, at least compared with some people who didn't have much of that to show.  Because we worked in groups, it wasn't possible to see very much of what other people had done, although there were one or two tremendous pieces,  people really pushing into adventurous approaches, materials, ideas.
This was just the right launch-pad for the second pathway project, which we have to complete by end January, with four full Monday's in college between now and then.  I have chosen the theme Writing/Word, and had a helpful tutorial with Abi.  I'm not yet very clear what I will produce, but we talked about the relationship between what I'm doing now, in art and more generally, and the old work and study life I used to lead, where the formal written word was king.  Lots of wild ideas about making a quilt out of words, or at least a series of quit led pockets into which words could be put, or making books with (or without) words,  Scale is an issue, still, but perhaps I will just decide that small is beautiful, and not strive to make a colossus when none is needed.
Anyway, overall, I had a good day, and came home enthusiastic about getting started on the next project.

Later, Lizzie and I went to listen to Terry Eagleton talking about Marxism at St Georges, part of the Bristol Festival of Ideas.  He is a good speaker, lively, relaxed, a few decent jokes, good at fielding questions. He pointed out that it is becoming increasingly ok for people to talk about the end of capitalism, or at least a radical change in the way capitalism works.  Also ideas about the shifting balance of economic power from the West towards China, India and Africa; the challenge of post-colonialism for western nations and multinationals, as well as for the (mainly) African states grappling with debt.