Tuesday 22 May 2012

Digital Diary

Who Stole my Milk? Exploring Student Homes in London comes to an end. The concourse exhibition is now open, the Global Homes event went off without a hitch, and it’s now time for us to say goodbye. It’s been a fantastic journey and we’re thrilled you chose to come along for the ride.
But before we go, let us leave you with something to remember us by: our digital diary. Let the photos tell the story of how MA students from UCL Institute of Archaeology took you on a journey of self-discovery and reflection.

Documenting Student Homes Team members, Hannah and Riccardo, prepare the audio- recording equipment before an interview.

Documenting Student Homes Team members, Chao-Chieh, conducts an individual interview inside Sophie’s room in the Tower Hamlets flat.

The Project Manager is seen answering questions from Geffrye Museum staff during an all- important panel meeting.

During the third panel meeting, Web Resource Team members, Charmaine and Urška, present the outline of their Digital Story to the project members, UCL coordinators, and Geffrye Museum staff.


 

Audience Advocacy Team member, Jeni, listens to feedback from Geffrye Museum staff, Vanessa, during the third panel meeting.




Learning and Interpretation Team members, Min Young and Namyoung, show children how to properly hold chopsticks during the Family Days World of Chopsticks activity.


Public Information Team members, Javier and Kate, mans a stall alongside Geffrye Youth Panel members, promoting the Student Homes Project as a whole, inviting Geffrye Museum visitors to the Family Days, to Global Homes opening evening, and the concourse exhibition.







Audience Research Team members, Katy and Tz-Ling, spend a day at the Geffrye Museum inserting promotional material into envelopes and distributing them around Hackney.

Wednesday 16 May 2012

The Bright Side of Student Living: Contest Winner Announced!

Two days ago we published three interesting stories about your pleasant memories of living in student homes. We asked you to vote for your favourites and you did. This week’s winner of two free tickets for today’s Special Evening Opening at the Geffrye museum is Charmaine with her ‘Pizza Time’ story! Congratulations!

The "Who Stole my Milk?" Exhibit launched yesterday and will run until September. Even if you can’t make it to today’s opening event, come and see our fabulous exhibition! In the meantime, take a look at the digital story ‘London Living: A Student’s Tale’ that we’ve created for you. 





We’ve also got a short video showing you some of our behind-the-scenes footage!



Stay tuned for our report from the Special Evening Opening!

Monday 14 May 2012

The Bright Side of Student Living – Feedback

Student life can be the most memorable and impactful time in someone’s life.  There are challenges, yes, but there are also some great times.  Last week we asked you to share your stories about your favourite student-living memories. You replied with the following stories:


“Burning Television” or “How Sharing a Flat Can Prevent Catastrophe”
My flatmate, Nicola, is really nice person but sometimes she lives with her head in the clouds. She’s absent-minded. One evening when I was lying in my bed and surfing the internet, I heard a strange crackling noise. I thought that one of my flatmates was playing video games or something which was producing the sounds. As the sound seemed a bit suspicious to me, I decided to check to see what was happening. I loudly called Nicola from my room. She didn’t reply and I immediately knew something was terribly wrong. I ran to her room where I saw her television was on fire. The room was filled with smoke, the flames quite high and the soot everywhere. I immediately ran into the hallway screaming: “Nicola’s room is on fire”. My screams woke up the other flatmates. We all ran like mad – from the kitchen to the bathroom to Nicola’s room, filling bowls and buckets with water to extinguish the fire. Luckily, the television was switched off and we were able to extinguish the flames. The results of the accident were a completely damaged television, walls covered with soot and the smell of smoke which we could not get rid of for a long while. Luckily, due to my intervention, the damage was not as severe as it could have been.

You’re probably wondering what had happened? My flat-mate went to take a shower and she left her candle burning on the top of the television without a candle mat. The Small tee-candle obviously heated up very fast, burned the plastic and fell inside the television. The television caught fire. What happened next, you already know.
It was horrible experience for all of us, but luckily the story has a happy ending. If I didn’t hear the crackling, we wouldn’t have worked together to extinguish the fire quickly enough, her giant poster would have caught on fire and the fire would have spread. . I don’t want even think about what could have happened if Nicola had lived alone. She is happy to have us, to take care of her air-headedness. Therefore my story is proof that sharing a flat with other people sometimes can be good as it can prevent catastrophes.
-Anonymous



Birthday party
My flat-mate and I are really close. I can say we are best friends. We always celebrate our birthdays together. This year, some friends and I threw him party and bought him a cake. He was extremely happy, even letting us take a picture of him blowing the out the candles.
-Anonymous






Pizza Time
During undergrad, my flatmate and I had a ritual of getting pizza from this dirty, seedy pizza place near where we lived every Sunday.  We would always get 1 extra-large pizza each.  And then we would go home and stuff our faces with pizza that night – and for the next 2 days.  Kind of gross, I know…But it wasn’t just about the pizza – yes it was delicious (and disgusting at the same time), but those Sunday nights were reserved for us.  We rarely ate together because of our conflicting schedules, and there would be days where we didn’t even get to see each other, but every Sunday night was pizza night – we would chat or watch a movie, and just make time for each other.  It was always my favourite part of the week.  That year, I gained 11 pounds.  It was totally worth it. 
- Charmaine



Again, we’re asking YOU, our dear audience, to vote for your favourite story. The winner will receive two free tickets to the Special Evening Opening: Global Homes at the Geffrye Museum this Wednesday! Vote for your favourite by leaving your comments!

Monday 7 May 2012

The Bright Side of Student Living + New Contest!

Happy Monday, everyone!  There are only 8 days left until the Who Stole my Milk? Exhibition opens!  We have had a great time reading all your stories and seeing all your pictures.  It has been a wonderful experience, so thank you for all your contributions thus far! 
As our blog will be coming to an end soon, we would like to end off on a positive note.  We’ve covered many topics over these last few months, from food to cleanliness, and from favourite objects to conflict.  The time spent as a student is a very unique stage in one’s life.  Although there are often challenges that arise when students live together, more often than not, living together can also be an enriching experience.  It’s during this time that people make some of the best memories of their lives.  So this week, these are the stories that we want to hear about!  Send us your stories about your favourite student-living memories, your accounts of wild (but child-friendly) experiences, or anything else that makes you feel warm and fuzzy on the inside!  As always, contributions can be directed to whostolemymilk@gmail.com.  We look forward to hearing from you! Like last week, we will reward the best story or photo with two free tickets to Special Evening Opening: Global Homes!

Friday 4 May 2012

The Dark Side of Student Living: Conflict Contest Winner Announced!

On Monday we published a bunch of interesting stories about the conflict in student homes. We asked you to vote for your favorites and you did. It is now time to announce the winner of two free tickets to the Special Evening Opening: Global Homes at the Geffrye Museum. The winner is…(drum-role please)… Iris, with her story about Dani - the early bird who did not share her food.  Congratulations!

Your stories of conflict evoked memories, inspiring even more of our readers to share their stories and photos. Since these later entries are really interesting, we could not resist publishing them.



- Jill



We also had a great story from Lucy:

I simply can't resist telling you my story of the charming girl I lived with last year. She quite frankly destroyed my year.

Me and "Jess" had been good friends in our first year of university, so it seemed a natural progression for us to share a house in our second year, what could go wrong? She started out as a lovely and fun friend, but it soon all started to get a bit odd, and not so friendly. We rented our house in June and I had to go away for a month or so with university on a project in Italy. I asked all of our housemates including her to ask me if they wanted to let a friend use my room for a night or two while I was gone, but other than that 'please don't just use my room, I pay a lot for it' (or something along those lines).
 
Anyway, when I returned, similar to the other story you posted, my room wasn't in quite the same way as when I left. Lo and behold, not only had "Jess" let someone stay in my room for the whole duration of my trip (without asking), but she had charged rent. Wonderful. So, as any sane person would, I confronted her about this issue. After making a 500 pound profit from the room I pay for, she refused to give a penny of it to me, unsurprisingly. Arguments of epic proportions followed and I eventually gave up, and came to the conclusion that "Jess" was not a very nice person at all.
I thought that would be the end of it. I could not be more wrong. I (and my 4 other suffering housemates) soon learned that "Jess"'s arts degree was far more important and difficult than anyone else's in the house (including those studying medicine and vet. science, of course). She insisted that we all listen to her daily rantings about essays, exams, lectures and so on while our work was not as important. During exam season or when an essay was due, we would all quietly knuckle down. She would not. She would go absolutely nuts. There would be tears, drama, demands that other people make her cups of tea and often meals, and insist that we drop all of our own work commitments to read and help edit and re-write her essays (and for some reason we sometimes did...). When she did not have an exam or essay due (while the rest of us did), she would blast her stereo and sub-woofer and insist on 24/7 noise and 'fun' with her pseudo-hipster strange friends. She would also be revoltingly dirty, refusing to do any dishes or cleaning during her period of 'undue stress'(funnily enough she is the one who created the authoritarian cleaning roster). Bad enough? Yes. But not the end of it. We all also learned that "Jess" was very possessive over people.
She did not like her friends becoming friends with one another, and when I got together with my current boyfriend, I actually received a 'warning' that nothing could 'ever happen' because he was 'her friend' and not mine. Needless to say we both deemed this a little crazy and hilarious and did in fact end up together, very happily. As if the warning wasn't enough, whenever James would be feeling down, "Jess" would audibly insist that it was because of me, and push him to break up with me (in our house, in the room next door to me), and then act sweet and lovely when she saw me five minutes later. She would also talk daily about how 'tough' it is that everyone fancied her. They did not. She became obsessed with the idea that all of her male friends, and anyone else's, wanted "Jess" more than anyone could comprehend. This isn't nearly the end of the story, much worse things have been done by "Jess" since we all moved out, but they are of such an extreme nature that they deserve a memoir at the very least. That's my story of the charming young lady who attained the apt title of 'the Führer' amongst our housemates.



Thank you to all for your contributions and congrats, again, to Iris, the winner of our contest!  Our exhibition is fast approaching, and we are preparing another contest for more free tickets, so stay tuned!