Latest / The Downing Arts Podcast / ET26.1 The Launch of the Leaves

Transcript

ET26.1 The Launch of the Leaves · The Downing Arts Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to the downing arts podcast.
• 0:07
  It's a new term, the sun is shining and yesterday saw the launch of
• 0:11
  this year's Leaves publication with readings from some of the contributors and performances
• 0:15
  from the Dramatic Society and the debut of the Fellows Recorder Ensemble.
• 0:19
  The winners of the Twining Egginton Prize for Fine Arts were also announced.
• 0:23
  Congratulations to Imogen Knight, Cassidy Gattano and
• 0:26
  Safi Welsh Dunn. It was a lovely celebration of all things creative arts and
• 0:31
  huge thanks to everyone who took part. Elsewhere in college, the chapel choir
• 0:35
  have begun rehearsals with a very enjoyable workshop with the fantastic Susie Van Gogh on
• 0:39
  Wednesday evening. There's lots of creative stuff to enjoy this term. Stay tuned to
• 0:43
  find out more.
• 0:49
  I'm delighted to have with me in the studio Lola Peskin,
• 0:53
  who's a second year English student and also president of the English Society
• 0:56
  and also one of the editors of this year's Leaves. Welcome Lola.
• 1:01
  Hi. It's lovely to be here talking to the listeners
• 1:05
  of the Downing Arts. Yes, it's great to
• 1:08
  have you. Great to have you back on the show. Firstly, congratulations on
• 1:13
  a magnificent journal. Are you pleased with how it's turned out?
• 1:16
  Yes, I'm really proud of all of the work that everyone put into it,
• 1:20
  including the other editors and all of the many submissions
• 1:24
  which we received, which were wonderful and of such a high quality
• 1:28
  and more than the the magazine has ever received before.
• 1:33
  Yeah, I know from talking to Bonnie that there were just a huge number
• 1:37
  of submissions. So how on earth do you sort through them all? I mean it
• 1:40
  must take a long time. Yes, it does take a long time and it was
• 1:44
  over the summer really. That is kind of getting
• 1:48
  all the emails in. I think it's
• 1:51
  often about how the distribution of the work fits together more
• 1:57
  than you might expect because for example, this year we
• 2:01
  received a high number of prose pieces. Very long.
• 2:04
  A lot of thought had gone into them and they were all actually
• 2:08
  really good. But there's a limit to how many you can kind of put
• 2:12
  together in a magazine which is kind of more designed for a
• 2:16
  casual reading process to an extent where people can just open it
• 2:20
  and start reading. And I think having a mix of poetry and
• 2:24
  prose and yeah, like different kinds of visual
• 2:28
  information is quite important. And so do you have in mind
• 2:32
  a certain distribution of like photographs and poems and prose or do
• 2:36
  you just see what turns up and then work it out from there? I think
• 2:40
  it's definitely important to be open minded and flexible and I
• 2:44
  definitely learned this through the editing process that you can't enter
• 2:48
  into it as an editor thinking what would I do
• 2:52
  if I was writing this? You have to think, what does this person feel
• 2:56
  this piece is about? What are they trying to express? And then it's
• 3:00
  a very. And it's also very different to analyzing a
• 3:04
  text in, like, in an essay because. Yeah. You're kind of more on
• 3:08
  the side of the writer. Okay. Wow. So do you.
• 3:12
  I mean, obviously you're studying English. Obviously. There must
• 3:16
  be a huge overlap between being editor of the Leaves and studying English.
• 3:20
  Do you find that you're sort of consciously using what you're learning in your degree
• 3:23
  to edit the Leaves? I think one of the things that you learn as
• 3:27
  an English student is also how. Just how to write clearly.
• 3:32
  Often the main thing that you're editing is syntax
• 3:36
  or feeling like an image doesn't really hang together or,
• 3:41
  I don't know, pointing out a mixed metaphor for someone and
• 3:46
  things that are easier to pinpoint if you also just read a lot and you
• 3:50
  write a lot. I think it's almost the more basic components of
• 3:55
  the degree which are most useful, in a way, for that process. Wow.
• 3:59
  And so, I mean, you mentioned there are other editors. I mean, how many of
• 4:01
  you are there all together? Well, there's actually five of us, and that's everyone in
• 4:06
  our year, so. Which is really nice to have everyone be involved in it.
• 4:10
  Yeah, it'll be interesting to see. I think it is.
• 4:14
  Normally it's run by the English Society, but I'm sure if somebody wanted
• 4:18
  to get involved with editing who wasn't an English student, if they had a bit
• 4:21
  of experience, it'll be really interesting to see how they might approach it
• 4:25
  differently as well. Wow. And I mean, I imagine the five of you probably know
• 4:29
  each other reasonably well, but has this brought you together or has this opened rifts
• 4:33
  or. I mean,
• 4:36
  there's. You know, there's a fair amount to do, but I don't think it is.
• 4:39
  It's not a kind of intense, arduous process,
• 4:43
  really. Like, there's just a few crunch points, like getting them all together
• 4:48
  in one document, kind of replying to all the emails.
• 4:51
  But it actually isn't. It isn't so much
• 4:55
  that it actually creates pressure, really, for us, I don't
• 4:59
  think. Which is nice. Yeah. I suppose it's not necessarily like a
• 5:03
  newspaper when you've got a sort of a day to turn something around or whatever.
• 5:06
  No. And it's also. We have a really good
• 5:10
  graphic designer who helps us put
• 5:14
  it together and design it, called Andy. So some of
• 5:18
  the process is also handed over to him, which Makes
• 5:22
  it easier because it. Yeah, because we're kind of editing the pieces and putting them
• 5:25
  together, but we don't have to kind of format them into the finished
• 5:30
  product, which I think, you know, is obviously a massive part of it.
• 5:34
  Wow. And how do you decide what goes on the front cover,
• 5:37
  other than the fact that it leaves 26? Yeah,
• 5:41
  it depends on what's sent in. So we get visual art and photography.
• 5:45
  This year. We actually have a wraparound cover
• 5:49
  that goes. It's like this flower, slightly surrealist
• 5:53
  image that the center of it is on the spine of the issue,
• 5:57
  which is fun, which is new. Wow.
• 6:01
  Yeah. How did you decide on that? I mean, were there lots of different things?
• 6:04
  There was actually conflict. Oh, no. Everyone wanted a different
• 6:07
  thing, and everyone. There were actually strong opinions
• 6:11
  about the COVID So how did you. How did you make a decision? In the
• 6:14
  end, it was just kind of public. It was just sort of the sway.
• 6:18
  It was kind of three versus two at the end.
• 6:22
  And I think. I think everyone's. I think everyone's accepted
• 6:26
  it now. Yeah. Well, I mean, it looks amazing, so. Yeah.
• 6:29
  Great. And Bonnie's your doss.
• 6:33
  Yeah. How involved is she in this whole process?
• 6:35
  Well, she's really helpful with the whole. The whole process. She's very
• 6:40
  engaged with it. And she kind of introduced us to Andy
• 6:44
  in her lovely office, which is.
• 6:48
  It's a very beautiful office. She's got lovely sofas and, like,
• 6:52
  art everywhere. And she's got pink walls. It's fabulous.
• 6:58
  And she would always ask us, kind of after a
• 7:02
  group supervision, you know, how's it going? Like, do you need any help? And helped
• 7:06
  us decide, actually, a little bit about what. What should go in and.
• 7:09
  Yeah. Yeah, she was really helpful. Made it a lot easier to have
• 7:13
  her support. Yeah. Great. And I know from. Gosh,
• 7:17
  I can't believe it's a year since. Since the launch of the podcast
• 7:21
  and the launch of the leaves. 25 and so on. Yeah. I remember
• 7:24
  talking to the. To the editors from last year's Leaves, and they were saying that
• 7:28
  the people who'd done it the year before were very helpful and so
• 7:32
  on. And have they passed it on. I think there's a good
• 7:35
  English student kind of friendship links
• 7:39
  that everyone gets on. I think the thing
• 7:43
  that was most helpful was just the fact that their issue was so
• 7:47
  good, because I could look at the introduction that
• 7:51
  they wrote. So I wrote the, you know, those first pages of
• 7:55
  thanks to everyone, and that would have been difficult without having those, like,
• 8:00
  existing issues. And. Yeah. That they're, like,
• 8:03
  very Beautifully organized. Yeah.
• 8:07
  Pages. Yeah. And do you think any of you might go on
• 8:10
  to do sort of this. This kind of journalism? Is it something that interests you?
• 8:14
  I think one of the lovely things about being in Cambridge and
• 8:19
  probably just being a student in general is you can tap into
• 8:24
  quite a lot of different, especially creative pathways.
• 8:28
  And I like that I don't have to kind of decide at
• 8:32
  this moment which one I should pursue.
• 8:35
  Yeah. Because I'm also very involved with film and then the band,
• 8:39
  which you, like, interviewed and like the.
• 8:43
  Yeah, yeah. And I like having that, like, freedom at the
• 8:47
  moment. I don't know quite what will. Yeah. It probably
• 8:51
  depends what opportunities present themselves. Yeah. Well, I think a lot of
• 8:55
  it is luck as well as anything else. Great. Well, again,
• 8:58
  I mean, it was a fantastic event last night, and we were really lucky with
• 9:01
  the weather and all of that sort of stuff, so, yeah, really, really lovely celebration.
• 9:04
  Yeah. And thanks for that little snapshot into the process.
• 9:07
  Thank you so much for having me.
• 9:13
  So I'm here with Immy Knight at the launch of the leave, and Imi has
• 9:18
  won a prize for her artwork. Congratulations, Imi. Thank you so much. Could you
• 9:21
  just tell us a little bit about your artwork? Yes. So this
• 9:25
  is for a photograph I took. It's called Bella Retreating. Bella is the name of
• 9:30
  the girl who is the sister of the photo. And I
• 9:34
  took it quite a few years ago now, and I was experimenting with different
• 9:39
  techniques of using the zoom lens on my camera. So I put the
• 9:43
  exposure on the longest setting it can be, and I tried
• 9:47
  changing the zoom during taking the photo, which made this quite
• 9:52
  interesting effect of the girl's face becoming
• 9:55
  stretched as if. And it captures the movement within the photo.
• 10:00
  Fantastic. Great. Well, congratulations again. Thank you so
• 10:04
  much. And another winner of
• 10:08
  the Twining Eggington Fine Arts Prize is Safi Welsh. Done. Hello, Safi.
• 10:12
  Hello. How do you feel? Congratulations. I feel so,
• 10:16
  so excited. It was totally unexpected and just, like, got a massive, massive smile on
• 10:20
  my face. Yeah, I can see that. It's brilliant. So do you want to just
• 10:24
  tell us a little bit about your artwork? Yes. So I submitted
• 10:28
  two vases that I got from the garden center. I didn't do them
• 10:32
  myself, but I painted them. And, yeah, there was the Vessel of
• 10:37
  Humility and the Vessel of Liberty. It was just all about the roles
• 10:41
  of women. And then the second one was about protests and had some
• 10:44
  statistics about sexual assault. And,
• 10:47
  yeah, it was nice to have the two together
• 10:51
  in dialogue with each other. There's one that's, like, got women without faces and One
• 10:55
  with a lot of open mouths and eyes, so it's nice to see them together.
• 10:59
  Wow. And where did you get the idea from in the first place? So I'm
• 11:03
  a massive Grayson Perry fan, so I wanted to do something that was a ceramic,
• 11:07
  but I didn't know how to make, so I just decided to paint. Just wanted
• 11:11
  lots of colour and, yeah, just to tell a
• 11:15
  bit of a story. Fantastic. Thank you very much. Enjoy the evening.
• 11:18
  Thank you so much. And the third winner of the Twining
• 11:23
  Eggington Prize for Fine Arts is Cassidy. Hi, Cassidy. Hello. How are you
• 11:27
  feeling right now? I'm feeling very good. I feel very validated as an artist.
• 11:31
  Fantastic. And do you want to just tell us a little bit about your winning
• 11:35
  entry? It's called the Bather, and it was based on
• 11:39
  a graphite study that I'd seen and I found it just really
• 11:43
  nice and, like, atmospheric and I really wanted to replicate it in my
• 11:47
  favorite color, orange. So, yeah, it was just a fun little experiment, really. I didn't
• 11:52
  see it as like a fully fled piece.
• 11:55
  Brilliant. And have you done much other artwork? Is it something you enjoy doing?
• 11:59
  Yes, I've recently just gotten back into it after a level. I had
• 12:03
  a bit of a hiatus because I was a bit burnt out. But, yeah,
• 12:06
  I've really gotten back into it. And another work that I put UP is from
• 12:10
  2023, so it's kind of ranging across styles.
• 12:14
  Fantastic. Well, enjoy the evening. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye.
• 12:18
  So I'm here with Steve Bennett, who is Director of Drama at Downing and is
• 12:22
  the new keeper of the Hyunga Mallory. Hi, Steve. Hello. Are you pleased with the
• 12:26
  event this evening? I am, actually, yeah. I think it went very well.
• 12:31
  People seem to enjoy it. Everybody was having a good time and the
• 12:36
  surprise of the evening was the remarkably popular
• 12:41
  recorder trio that came as a complete surprise to everybody.
• 12:45
  Yeah. Well, our fellows are multi talented, what can I say?
• 12:48
  Yeah. And how are you enjoying being Keeper of the Gallery? It's interesting.
• 12:53
  It's a bit. It's new to me and I'm still finding my feet, but it's
• 12:59
  a challenge, but it's a positive one and I think we're getting a lot of
• 13:03
  good feedback from the students and the fellows and from the public who
• 13:07
  come in and they've seen a few exhibitions that
• 13:11
  have also been surprisingly popular,
• 13:14
  which bodes well for the future. Fantastic. Thank you very much. You're welcome.
• 13:24
  This week in college, on Sunday at 6 in the
• 13:27
  chapel, the choir sing the first evensong of term with music by Stanford and Wood,
• 13:31
  followed by refreshments on Monday at six in the Music Office on T staircase,
• 13:36
  the Take a Break choir is back. Anyone is welcome to drop by to let
• 13:39
  off steam, singing through hits from the musical Mamma mia.
• 13:43
  On Thursday 7th May there's a stress lowering session 6 till
• 13:47
  8pm in the gallery, a chance to use a variety of art media to
• 13:50
  get creative and unwind. No need to book, just turn up. If you're
• 13:54
  working for exams, don't forget to take some time out. The Twining Eggington Exhibition is
• 13:58
  open until the 10th of May and it's a fantastic display of downing
• 14:02
  artistic talent. Thanks for listening.