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Day: 17 October 2013

Sex attack near student accommodation

Written by Pippa Allen-Kinross on . Posted in News.

A 19 year old girl has been the victim of a sex attack close to student accommodation.

Students woke to her screams at around 5.30 a.m. on 13th October.

 It is thought that the victim had been to a party at Trinity Court Halls, which contains a mixture of students from University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University and RNCM, as well as young professionals.

Her attacker is described as an Asian male in his 30s or 40s.

Police sealed off the area of Upper Cambridge Street in Hulme following the attack, and are continuing with their enquiries.

A Greater Manchester Police spokesman has urged anyone with information about the incident to contact them on 101 or Crimestoppers, anonymously on 0800 555 111.

Manchester and Peking form international health centre

Written by Sean Doherty on . Posted in News, Science & Tech.

The University of Manchester and Peking University have joined to form an international health centre, declared Chancellor George Osborne at a speech to Chinese students on Monday 18th October.

The Peking-Manchester Centre for Genomic Medicine is a partnership between Peking University, one of China’s oldest and most prestigious universities, and the University of Manchester’s Manchester Academic Health Science Centre (MAHSC).

The new centre will be made up of three separate but interdependent research facilities – the International Centre for Rare Diseases, the Centre for Cancer Genetics and the Joint Clinical Trials Facility. Manchester’s work in the project shall be led by the Manchester Centre for Genomic Research, itself a partnership between the University of Manchester and Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Trust. The group consists of over 250 researchers, doctors, genetic counsellors, nurses and scientists, which launched last May.

The joint venture will see six senior geneticists from the Manchester Centre for Genomic Research delivering a training course at Peking University Health Sciences Centre to over 300 scientists and health professionals.

The Chancellor, in his speech at Peking University, spoke of his delight at the formation of the centre.

‘Here in the oldest and most prestigious medical school in China, let’s work together on the medicines of tomorrow.

‘This partnership will – I hope – give even more of you the chance to come to Britain and study there.’

The Centre is a sign of what George Osborne hopes to be an increasing closeness between Chinese and British academic establishments and, by extension, a tightening of the economic and cultural relationship between the two counties. He stated that there would be no cap placed upon the amount of Chinese students who would be allowed to study in Britain.

‘I want more of you to come. And more Chinese visitors too.’ He said. ‘(There will be) no limit to the number of Chinese tourists who can visit. No limit on the amount of business we can do together. For in the end what is a true dialogue? Not just a meeting between governments. Not just a conference of politicians. A real dialogue is where people get together, and talk, and learn, and understand and embrace the future together.’

Zhen Zhang, first year Economics and Finance student, came to Manchester from China for his degree after finishing a foundation year at Warwick. He said that he came to Manchester as he wanted to study in a well-known big city with a top-class international reputation.  ‘I feel that I would be more accepted here than in America’, he stated, telling us the idea of studying in USA seemed more daunting. ‘I enjoy it here, it’s a good city’.

However, not all students are happy about the Chancellor’s desire to draw more Chinese students to British universities. Chris Payne, Business Studies student, said, ‘I feel the university has been trying to accommodate Chinese students over UK ones. Some of my tutorials have been led by Chinese post grads whose English hasn’t been great and I feel like my learning has suffered as a result.’

Nick Brown, third year history student, sees the influx of Chinese students as a necessity.

‘On the one hand it seems that UK students are being backtracked in favour of international students. On the other hand, with a significant deficit, the government isn’t going to continue to subsidise higher education. It’s either a case of letting in more international students or UK students having to face another price hike and no one wants to pay more than £9,000.’

‘Emergency2013’

Written by Matilda Roberts on . Posted in Arts, Freshers' Guide.

Live art is not a genre of art that I can pretend to know anything about. I also cannot deny that I hold some of the negative and common preconceptions often associated with live or performance art. However after reading Jasper Lewellen’s ‘What is Live Art?’ article last week I realised that it was not something that I had ever really given a chance or paid any real attention to.

Last Saturday’s ‘Emergency’ festival, I decided, would be the perfect place to broaden my mind and immerse myself in live art. Held over one day at the ‘art spaces’, Z-arts and Blankspace, this festival describes itself as an ‘eclectic performance lucky-dip’- and that it was. All free, meaning you could dip in and out as you wish, there was no way of knowing what it was you might stumble upon. And besides from Frances-Kay’s ‘Scaffold’ in which the artist lay on scaffold wrapped in bandages and writhed around for 3 hours, there was none of the clichés that are so often associated with this art form.

Zimmermann and Singh in their video and sound collaboration perfectly combined poetic imagery with an amazing soundtrack. Beatboxer and vocal sculptor Singh created the sound using his breath, voice and loop pedals in order to recreate sounds of instruments and nature.

Other pieces I saw included Chloe Smith’s ‘I’ve been dreaming of this…’ in which she retold the story of her time at Occupy St. Pauls while occupying the space she inhabited. At times it was difficult to grasp the point or the relevance of the point that she was making but, on the whole, the piece was interesting and entertaining to observe.

Lucy Hutson’s monologue, ‘Britney Spears custody battle vs…’ drew the biggest laughs of the day. Opening with chat up lines in order to ‘woo’ the crowd while pulling the heads off My Little Ponies™ and ending with getting naked and offering Macdonald’s burgers and Starbucks coffee to the audience, Hutson’s piece appeared to sporadically jump between her thoughts. Making jokes about Megabus, her charity shop aesthetic and lack of concern for factory shop workers, she managed to capture the audience’s attention using her dry irony and strange sense of humour. She was a great example of live art that was accessible, relevant and did not leave the audience feeling that something had just happened that they were meant to ‘get’ but weren’t quite ‘in the know’ enough. I’m already looking forward to Manchester’s next live art festival ‘Domestic’ this November.

Before You’re 30

Written by Mancunion on . Posted in Arts, Freshers' Guide.

Before You’re 30 (BY30) is back for the new academic year! Come along to Manchester’s most unique and free art, architecture and design lecture evenings, sponsored by BDP. BY30 holds monthly evening events in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, the home of the city’s most creative industries. Our home is at ‘2022nq’, a basement bar just off Dale Street.

 

Attracting students and professionals alike, our events have become a way of networking and meeting new people and are all centered around three great talks. What do they talk about? Architecture, art, music, design, social issues, the future, the past, the present… whatever they deem to be inspirational. We’ve had a DJ talk about Manchester’s significant musical heritage, an architecture student turned award winning film producer as well as the only Architect to appear on the BBC’s ‘Apprentice’.

 

On Tuesday 1st October we had our first event of the year, with three excellent speakers. Our first speaker was Dave Sedgwick, a graphic designer based up North. He founded ‘BCN:MCR’, an event celebrating Barcelona’s design scene here in Manchester. Growing up near Southport and studying at MMU, Dave mentioned how during his youth there was little way of checking out local graphic designers – there was no way of spotting the competition. Nowadays we have various forms of social media that are used by designers to communicate and reach out to their audiences. Whilst showing some of his projects, he stated that “logo design is a lost art” and that his first graphic design task from a client involved designing a logo. Dave is currently involved with the new and innovative initiative ‘PrintandPaste’, which is a curated outdoor art space located on Chester Street just off Oxford Road. Find out more about Dave at www.designbydave.co.uk.

 

Second up was Vincent Taylor, who has set up ‘The Enchanted Brave’, a health food company with a difference. He started his company when he was 17 years old, and was not satisfied with some of the consumer products in the market and whether they contained exactly what they stated on the packaging. After considerable research, Vincent created and started selling a pack that contained nutritional information and a step-by-step guide to improving overall health and wellbeing. Whilst speaking, he emphasised the importance of doing what you love and displayed samples brought from his company, distributing them amongst the audience. Find out more about the company at www.enchantedbrave.co.uk.

 

Our third and final speaker was Javier Castanon, an architect and tutor at the Architectural Association, who spoke about his architectural journey from Madrid to Manchester and then on to London. He spoke about the importance of light in architecture with particular reference to his work on the conservation of St Patrick’s Church in Soho Square, London. Renovation and alteration work involved creating a basement under the existing Roman Catholic Church. An essential component of this basement was to allow natural light to enter using subtle manoeuvres. This would make the space feel less like it was underground. Currently, schools and local community groups use the new multipurpose space. Find out more about Javier at www.castanon.co.uk.

 

‘Great variety of speakers, looking forward to the next one.’

Rick Raby (Graphic design student)

 

With a fantastic line-up of speakers for this academic year, keep updated by liking us on facebook (facebook.com/beforeyourethirty) and following us on twitter (twitter.com/beforeyoure30). Get there BY30!

 

What Is Live Art?

Written by Jasper Llewellyn on . Posted in Arts.

To be honest, it is quite hard to pinpoint exactly what ‘Live Art’ is. The term was first used in the mid-80s to describe the work of artists that just wouldn’t quite sit comfortably in the pre-existing categories; they made pieces that weren’t quite dance, weren’t quite theatre and weren’t quite stand-up comedy. However, their work all shared one universal attribute – it was live or had live elements. Whether that is the artist using their own body, such as Written In Skin, the tattoo art piece by performance artist Stefanie Elrick and tattooist Loren Fetterman performed at The Cornerhouse earlier this year. This artwork involved the tattooist using a tattoo technique called ‘bloodlining’ to inscribe the confessions of audience members on the performance artist’s body! Live art can also include pieces which simply involve the artist’s presence in the space, for example – Maurice Carlin’s Performance Publishing piece that is currently running at Islington Mill in Salford where Carlin has spent 3 months lining the floor of a huge warehouse with ink prints, all under the watchful eyes of 2 webcams with live 24 hour feeds to the his website. Whichever way you approach it, the form aims to physically engage and excite their audience through live performance – I mean, why stand and stare at a static painting when you can have it talking back to you? Well, obviously thinking about it like that isn’t going to get you very far but for someone like me, a drama student who sometimes finds it difficult to engage with framed paintings, live art is very appealing and offers up a world of new possibilities.

So anyway, the term was coined and has since slowly increased in popularity, in particular in the last 4-5 years with more work performed than ever. Tate describes it as the term used to describe “mainly Performance art and Action art” and for me Live Art is an umbrella term for a huge variety of different performance practices including elements of drag, stand-up comedy, live music, cabaret and more traditional visual art. The only unanimous feature is the live element.

If you are interested in exploring this exciting and ever changing form, you couldn’t be in a better place to do it. In Manchester, we are surrounded by a buzzing and vibrant art scene and specifically, a live art one. Venues such as Islington Mill, the Cornerhouse, the Contact Theatre and Blankspace have pieces of performance, body and live art littered throughout their programmes and it simply requires a bit of time spent on Google to track these pieces down. All of these venues also offer huge amounts of theatre, dance, music and art and are all pretty much in walking distance from University Place! In terms of Live Art, coming up there is the ‘Domestic’ festival, a collection of pieces performed in a block of flats off Oxford road from 8-17th November, the one-day ‘Emergency’ festival on October 5th at the Blankspace gallery and the cabaret duo Rashdash performing their new piece ‘The Ugly Sisters’ at the Contact Theatre to name a few.

Since I first came across performance, live and body art, I have seen pieces that made me want to cry, pieces that made me feel physically sick and pieces that just simply made me think. It is a scene still in its fledgling stages, so take advantage and see as much as possible and strike while the iron’s hot.