I hope everyone has had a great start to the year, it has already been an eventful year in terms of world events as I am sure many of you would agree.
Sitting a difficult mock synoptic exam testing everything we had covered since starting the course wasn't the best way to start 2017 but this month has been positive on the whole though, here's why...
Success after #MincePieFriday
Following the Let Us Learn Scholarship campaign we have had some major successes off the back of #MincePieFriday. Meetings with Exeter, Imperial and Birkbeck University have proved to be positive and we are hopeful the ground has been laid for some good news in the near future regarding scholarships.
We will also be meeting with UWL, LSE and City University to discuss opening their existing scholarship schemes to legal migrants with no access to student finance and/or opening up new scholarships in general.
We will also be meeting with UWL, LSE and City University to discuss opening their existing scholarship schemes to legal migrants with no access to student finance and/or opening up new scholarships in general.
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| Let Us Learners on the morning of #MincePieFriday |
The Against Borders for Children (ABC) Conference
Spending time at SOAS for the ABC conference (what it stands for) was a very insightful day. To say this was an eye-opener would be an understatement. A host of different organisations were present and it was refreshing to see so many people actively working to change the law for the better. The main agenda for the day was to spread the news about the release of identifiable data on pupils collected from the school cencus forms by the government to companies with no questions asked.
The most shocking revelations came when one of the panelists spoke of how data collected was being used in a discriminant fashion by the Home Office and the mention of cases where teachers have been told to guess the nationalities of pupils when that part of the form was left blank.
The Let us Learn campaign was represented on the panel by Sharon who shared her personal experience with the law and how she overcame the challenged she faced as a result. We also used the opportunity to stand in solidarity with the Dreamers in the US (similar campaign to LuL) in light of the harsher laws Donald Trump is due to implement in the US.
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| Standing in solidarity to support the Dreamers in the US |
⚡️⚡️ The Spark Salon ⚡️⚡️
I was lucky enough to be invited to the second instalment of the Spark Salon. The Spark Salon builds on the concept of the salon, which originated in
the 17th century, with the aim of sparking conversations and the sharing of new ideas.
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| The Spark Salon |
The session was titled: “The New Muses: Artists' Visions of a Sustainable Future”. Five artists were tasked with presented their vision of the future 30 years from now. This was a very interesting topic of conversation ranging from the discussion of a potential colony on Mars to an age where "the gut brain" will be fine tuned to help us in making every day decision based on instinct and gut feeling.
Becci Louise, a spoken word artist, shared a piece centralised around a world where parents had the ability to pick, choose and buy a specific set of genes for their children. Much of society also worked off this premise with jobs pretty much being allocated based on your genetic make-up. It was quite interesting as it doesn't seem like too dissimilar from what is achievable today. Food for thought!
Becci Louise is a former Ted X speaker, which reminds me... I've got to get on with practising for my talk on the 25th of Feb. Wish me luck!!!
Becci Louise, a spoken word artist, shared a piece centralised around a world where parents had the ability to pick, choose and buy a specific set of genes for their children. Much of society also worked off this premise with jobs pretty much being allocated based on your genetic make-up. It was quite interesting as it doesn't seem like too dissimilar from what is achievable today. Food for thought!
Becci Louise is a former Ted X speaker, which reminds me... I've got to get on with practising for my talk on the 25th of Feb. Wish me luck!!!
I hope you have all had a good start to 2017!!!
