On the first day of Events Academy, we met Jess who works at BOST

Bankside Open Spaces Trust, also known as BOST, is a charity that is run not only by the staff at BOST, but with the help of local people too who they work closely with. They exist to make sure that ideas for improvement are meaningful and meet local needs effectively, they consult the people who live in the area before any changes are made in their projects.

BOST inspires many people of local communities and organisations, including Tate Modern community garden, to improve, create and enjoy the local parks, gardens, green spaces.

Unlike other charities that are mainly for specific things, BOST is very open to what they can do to help local communities. They're making and helping people to create more spaces around Southwark for people of all ages. Meaning they can, and I'm sure they have, potentially made a difference to the area in many significant ways e.g. Redcross Garden and their latest project Crossbones Garden.

They also run volunteering workshops, not just for the charity but for the actual spaces and areas they're supporting. This creates good job experiences for many people and also gets people to know more things that they may have never known about!

What strikes me is that more people need to know about the great work that BOST do and I'm looking forward to using our Events Academy event on 26th August to help promote their latest project!

Written by Rachel Adu-Dankwa
Find out more about me on my student profile
http://eventsacademy.co.uk/student/rachel-adu-dankwa

The first day of the events Academy project ,Tuesday 21st July, was more of an introduction day, getting to know ourselves and to do so, we played an exciting game. The game was more of a truth or lie game. The game was based on one truth and two lies about yourself. We wrote our names on the board with the scores each individual had on what others believe is a lie or the true about you. This had to do with their own personal view.

Later on we went to visit Cross Bones garden which use to be a graveyard many years ago but now a very welcoming and serene garden. Although I don’t vividly remember what happened before we went to cross Bones garden, I remember whilst at Better Bankside, we were given folders with leaflets, schedules on where we’ll be going, when and where.

As we arrived to Cross Bones garden we were being introduced to John who looks after the garden, he was very friendly as he welcomed us to the garden while we were on the outside of the garden. It seemed quite fascinating him telling us one or two things about the cross Bones garden though we weren’t inside yet. He welcomed us in the garden, read and showed us the written rhymes on the entrance of the gate, and we could see it just as soon as we went inside the garden. As john read the rhymes out loud to us, kit sounded pretty sad. As soon as John was reading the rhymes, I quickly had a hint and a feeling that those rhymes were memories of people who died before their time ‘ YOUR MISS YOU MUMS’- was one of the rhymes that was written on the gate. The rhyme ‘YOUR MISS YOU MUM’S’ made me quiet for a few moments, as few moments to reflect and to figure out what is to be said next. Although I’ve never been to the garden before, however the garden seemed serene and welcoming in its silence.

When we settled down comfortably, John asked us to get into pairs with someone we don’t know who we’re not friends with amongst us and find out one or two things about one each other including what the atmosphere of Cross Bones garden makes us feel like. Although I didn’t have much to say than just observe, analysing because at times all you need to do is just observe in your curiosity. I paired up with Malaika we go to know a few things about each other, such as: what she’s into, subject wise and in the future what she’s looking forward to, vice-versa. Malaika also added that cross Bones garden made her feel like she wasn’t in London and I couldn’t agree less.
In addition getting to know John more when we settle down was quite interesting because there were some quite interesting things about him, meeting him one wouldn’t have known he’s a poet, a playwright and a performer, that’s why it’s said don’t judge a book by its cover.

In my curiosity, about the Cross Bones garden, I found out quite a lot of shocking facts, such as: prostitutes and young kids were being buried there, this was very unfortunate to know. It was very sad to know that those unfortunate to know that they were being buried there because to society they were not fit enough for their bodies to be buried alongside those who were more wealthier than them, kids who weren’t bastards or born out of wedlock, now I viewed this as a huge level of discrimination and cruelty to another human being like ourselves just because they didn’t possess what others did.

It was quite shocking to know that in the year 1800 most women/ young women that were once prostitutes, were buried at Cross Bones garden many years back. Some were prostitutes on their will and some had no choice to become prostitutes (might have been the only way they could cater for themselves). However, even at that it was still not enough reason for them to be buried in such a crucial way, they were not respected, honoured or accepted even in their death, if they were, they would have been buried the proper way with others who mattered in the society, others who had decent graves for their resting place. John feels like “he’s a calling hear, something is calling him to honour the dead.”

In 2007, the garden was made and it took 5- to 6 years to make it to what it’s today. “Remembering the dead.” Not just to do it for the dead but also for the living.

The most message I took from the day is to paraphrase John “The 21st century is full of obsessed people who only care about money and possessions rather than people.” In my opinion I couldn’t agree less, that’s just the world we live in today.

Written by Naomi Blin. Visit my student profile here http://eventsacademy.co.uk/student/naomi-blin

On Friday, Flo and Lisa from Fourth Day came in and carried out workshop on what PR is and why it is important when putting on an event. They also helped edit our press release to include things that journalists listen for when they are being invited to an event. To help us with this they put us in pairs where one of us was a journalist and one of us was a PR. The PR had to try and sell the event to the journalist and the journalist had to write down the important parts of what they heard within a 3 minute time period. for this exercise i found it easier to be a journalist as all u had to do was listen and write down what someone else was saying. however, the second time round we had to do it within a 30 second time limit and this time being a journalist was harder because it was such a short time to write a lot of information down. We then had practice talking to journalists over the phone as we were the PR and Lisa and Flo imitated being journalists from various media companies. From this we were able to see how hard it is to successfully grab a journalists attention over the phone. Lastly they showed us about tweeting and how important it is to keep people up to date leading up to the event and getting more people retweeting ur tweets means that more people will be made aware of the event. Overall it was a great workshop and I learned a lot of useful things abour promoting ur event and communicating with the media.

Amari Charles

On Friday we visited Barclays bank in London Bridge and spoke with Jacqueline who manages 6 different branches within the local community. Originally the pupose of the visit was to help us on how to best handle the budget we were allocated, as time went on we found ourselves gaining useful information on to from Jacqueline on possible venues that had not originally considered and also gave us a great insight into apprenticesihps and what it involves. The time we spent with Jacqueline was invaluble and we recieved some really great advice.

Tiegan Jeffrey