Wellcome

As in 'Wellcome Foundation', one of my favourite places in London - this is a shot of the hanging display in the cafe area.

The Wellcome (on Euston Road) frequently has some fabulous, free exhibitions on and today was no exception. With a little time to kill before Roland's graduation ceremony at the Institute of Education we popped in to have a look at the Outsider Art exhibition. It was an absolutely brilliant display of the work of several artists based in Japan, and was very thought provoking about - amongst other things - how we communicate.

After seeing that exhibition we skipped upstairs to have a look at some larger than life models of insects, learned about how gastric bands work (not nice) and I played with an interactive display which created a rather lovely image of my genetic portrait (or something like that) from taking into account my pulse, height, fingerprint and an image of my iris.

The graduation ceremony was lovely. There were speeches but they were not of the pompous, deluded, self-congratulatory nature that are sometimes heard on such occasions. Rather, they focused on the amount of hard graft that had been put in by all those involved in todays celebration and stressed the importance and value of education for all in these difficult times. I must admit I was extremely moved at the point where the graduates were asked to rise, turn to face their friends and families in the audience and give us a round of applause for the support we had given them.

At the reception afterwards I heard many people say that they had not been able to find the type of permanent, full time work in education that they had been looking forward to but were doing a range of part-time, freelance work including supply teaching, tutoring or working - as Roland is - on zero hours contracts. I did not hear one person say that they had given up on the idea of working in education. Which I found quite heartening.

ps: all sorted for my visit to Trafalgar Square on Saturday.