"My grandparents have lived in Spain forever, so I’ve always spoken a little bit of Spanish, as a child going to ask for the bill in a restaurant or whatever. I got a love for it through that, the culture, the food and the drinking. So I decided to study it, and then my Geography teacher was like ‘You might as well do Portuguese because Brazil’s becoming massive’. And I get the chance to spend nine months in Brazil so I’m not really going to complain."
“Why do you think we’re so bad at learning languages?”
“Languages aren’t taught properly here. I think the fault is that we don’t teach the English language well enough in the first place. I honestly went into my A-level Spanish class and my teacher said ‘This is exactly the same in English, it’s the pre-perfect tense’, and no one really knew what that was! So, having to learn that in English first, and then applying it to a foreign language - it wasn’t easy."



While I was walking through the Trinity shopping centre today, I noticed a couple of stands up displaying large canvas art. I thought it was a mobile art gallery and went to have a look. While I was busy taking in the pieces, I was approached by Georgie asking if she could help. She explained that these works were for sale, and the display was a way of letting the public know that the shop, previously located in the Victoria Quarter, had moved to Trinity.

Georgie admitted she wasn’t really an art person, and had got the job through her parents associates who own a similar gallery down south somewhere. Georgie is doing a combined honours, Spanish and Portuguese, with the added bonus of spending time in both Spain and Brazil over a period of a year. She plans to use her language skills to go into translation services for law and criminology specifically, citing that it would be interesting to know things which others wouldn't, but admitted she was not very good at keeping secrets and joked that that may hinder her a little.

For the shot I placed Georgie in front of one of the large, colourful art pieces (I hope there isn’t any copyright issues with that?!), and used it as a different background to what you normally see.


Humans of Leeds