Can't find the venue you are trying to reach?

1. Find a safe place to pull over.
2. Spot a few landmarks, road names etc
3. Call the venue and explain where you think you are.
4. Work with them to describe your location further if they are unable to work out where you are.
5. Listen to directions seeing if any locations are familiar, or can be related to your map or sat nav. Clarify with questions if needed.

Don't
1. Still be driving around so that any point of reference quickly becomes irrelevant.
2. Get your son to phone up, then put it on speaker phone.
3. Keep shouting visible road signs and locations at the person trying to help you, rather than answering their questions.
4. Hang up halfway through the call.

I almost hope he can't find us. But that's a bit harsh on the kids I could hear in the background!

So as I'm in a mood about fire alarms going off, legal issues over incorrect fine print requiring me to destroy some already completed work, endless customer queries about bank holiday opening hours, a pile of query emails and a display screen loosing all it's display formatting, the Make A Wish foundation get in touch to arrange a visit for a terminally ill 12 year old, and his family.

Suddenly, the troubles of a grumpy Exhibitions Manager seem a bit inconsequential.

I went Norwich recently to bob about the Norfolk Festival. And then we decided that great British weather made the castle a safer bet (and a few pubs afterwards!) I had studied the castle briefly in uni as an example of this and the other, but had little idea of it's long use as a prison, or attached local museum and the stunning contents therein. 
Slideshow reviews are below, just click the pic to see the next one!

The castle is a strange building in all, impressive in scale it's almost hard to get your head around as we're so used to semi ruined or very rebuilt sites, and much remains the original keep. Once inside the height and space is giddying, but as we visited when it's undergoing reinterpretation, it's hard to judge the presentation and information. An area on it's use as a prison has some good hands on kids things, but felt very text heavy with most visitors skimming through, a shame as it had some excellent tales to tell. Space downstairs covering the castle being built hold some well put together but slightly tired mannikin/diorama displays and a very good CGI of the whole Norman site.

Then... we went into the musuem, where you can find out about inexplicable skeletons, LOTS of teapots and treasure and more, in the rest of the post below..... (click the read more text ->)

The two lads, aged about 11 and 13 were obviously very amazed at what the museum held, then very surprised that an adult was present. They were so embarrassed, I pointed out that I wasn't going to tell them off for swearing per say, just remind them to be mindful as younger children may be around.

1. A foreign visitor asks via social media if we can host their wedding and/or reception.
   
2. We carefully explain the reasons why we choose not to arrange and hosts such events, but do explain what we can do for them such as coming here as part of a hen or stag day out.
   
3. Another visitor via social media suggests “You could just turn up there anyway, the venue wouldn’t be exclusive but it would be awesome.”
   

Because wedding receptions are always best when held with no prior arrangements with the venue, especially when their public facilities are fully booked during weekends and school holidays, and their eating/drinking facilities are frequently at capacity. I guess it depends on your expectations?...

Having just bumped into the interesting government proposal to redefine what counts as ‘creative’, in order to have a better system to realistically assess the employment and financial contribution of the creative sector, I’m spending my lunch time reading government reports, director’s responses, newspapers and blogs to get a better understanding.

In short, they are suggesting using  different parameters to work out if a role, or an industry as a whole, classify as creative. I may go into more detail on this once it’s all sunk in fully – but I’m torn as it appears to be a Good Thing which also holds a few Bad Things by accident. So crafters, you know, most people who have an idea, hand create the thing, sell it, have dropped off the list of creative industries...

A very interesting point for many of us is this, from a discussion paper: (my own italics)

“In classifying the only component of a creative industry as its workforce, the creative intensities measure really strips away some of the cultural components of what we would argue are the vital infrastructural aspect for the creative sector to thrive. A key example here is the museum.  Both Creative Skillset and Nesta’s papers (in our view) correctly define museum curators as creative occupations, yet their occupational intensity within the museums, archives and libraries  sector is not large enough to push them over the threshold to turn those occupations into a separately defined industry.

Herein lies the problem - a museum has creative workers at its core, but it has apparently diluted them with enough administration staff, security staff, cleaners and other personnel to apparently create institutions which are less creative than, for example, a tech-start-up company, which only employs developers, hires a temporary workspace and outsources its  office management, HR, cleaning and associated ‘support’ jobs.”

Museums, we fail. Arts facilities, you luckily made it in under “Creative, arts and entertainment activities.”

If you've not heard, they are 'archiving the internet' as from April 6th, as the British Library, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales, Bodleian Libraries, Cambridge University Library and Trinity College Dublin, are now enabled to archive the entire UK web, along with e-journals, e-books and other formats. 

Beforehand the plan was British Library’s own, to voluntarily capture the web as produced by/from the UK, which involved requesting permission from site owners. This was alongside their legal obligation to catalogue almost all the printed work produced in the UK. Now that they’re legally obliged to capture the electronic work as well, they’re enabled to use an automated web crawler to find .uk endings.

There should be a lot of old, abandoned and weird stuff caught up in that, so already talk abounds of what is WORTH archiving for the future, what will be a good snapshot of our country’s interests and all? So “…curators and other experts from all the participating libraries chose the 100 Websites which they judge will be essential reading for future generations researching our life and times in 2013.”

It is well worth a reccy! For an interesting sweep across our culture, some of which is a bit eclectic. Highlights for me on the list are Shit London , The British Cartoon Archive, Old Maps Online, and McGonagall Online 

Full list is here: http://www.bl.uk/100websites/top100.html