A field trip to Northumberland National Park

Hello Everyone!

We've had a beautiful couple of weeks weather wise haven't we? I've really been enjoying the sun, although 30 degrees is a little too hot when you're stuck inside a stuffy classroom!

Thankfully the stuffy classroom days have been short-lived this week as I was able to visit the Hadrian's Wall area of Northumberland National Park as part of a Media 'field trip'.

Along with a few other schools from the north east, we have been given the opportunity to help publicise and produce content for the national park's new project.

The new project, which is taking place at the Once Brewed visitor centre has the working title The Sill- an initiative to redevelop the small visitor centre and create a Landscape Discovery Centre and a new youth hostel to host a range of activities such as learning and participating, as well as allowing people of all ages to admire the beautiful surrounding scenery.

We have been asked to help with the publicity of the plans they have to redevelop the site, which should hopefully start in 2014 and be finished by 2016. We have been asked to create short films, conduct interviews and take photographs of the area to show what Northumberland National Park has to offer, as well as showing what there is to come. This will be happening over a few months with plenty of visits to the centre.

Whilst at Once Brewed we were allowed to part of the Hadrian's Wall site to take some test shots to get an idea of what we will be doing in the up and coming future. It was a beautiful day for it, and although the sun was not in the right position, I think I managed to get quite a few good shots- and I'm no photographer. Since I was only using a Nikon Coolpix digital camera, I was very pleased with the outcomes.

I'm looking forward to the next few trips and have quite a few ideas up my sleeve. Expect to see more blog posts about The Sill in the near future, so stay tuned!

If you want any more information about The Sill then check out their website here.

Cheerio x

A feline fantasy: CATS the musical.

There's something not quite right about humans dressing up as cats. They always seem to make a poor effort. Some black clothing, a little black nose and a few small whiskers. This was not the case last night however.

I had never seen CATS before, but I had heard somewhat mixed reviews about it, yet the Senior Youth Theatre at Alnwick Playhouse did not disappoint.

Walking into the auditorium was quite a shock. Some of the cast were already in character prowling around. One even came up and hissed at us as we walked in to find our seats!

What amazed me was that they managed to stay in character the whole time. With one 'cat' staying in character whilst one audience member tickled their neck- it was rather surreal.

The cast of CATS.

If I'm being completely honest, before seeing the show I didn't understand the story line at all, and even afterwards I still wasn't 100% on what I had just been watching. All I took away from it was that Deuteronomy disappeared and then reappeared, they all hated Grizabella the 'one time glamour cat', and she was the one chosen to be reborn. A rather confusing story line if you could call it a story line at all.

With all of that put aside, it was still an amazing show; a real visual treat. The set was as if it was a back alley, with dustbins, old tyres and old boards. Somewhere you could really imagine alley cats roaming about.

The costumes were even better, and in my personal opinion, the best costumes the Youth Theatre has ever had. Not only did they have the catsuits with tails and spray painted to make them look like real cats, they had individual face paints to give each of their cats a unique character. The makeup and costume department really did go all out.

Becca Gray, Emily Hope and Emily Pearse were a great trio as Bombalurina, Jellylorum and Demeter,  staying in character throughout, and their harmonies were top notch, in one song reminding me of Christina Aguilera's Candy Man.

Arthur Mills as Mungojerrie and Catherine Walker as Rumpleteaser really did light up the stage with the comedy duo act, and their realistic east London accents fit the part well. Their character on stage left the audience smiling and laughing throughout their scenes.

Anna Tucker was flawless as Grizabella, and her rendition of Memory, about her wish to start a new life sent shivers down my spine as she hit the high notes with ease. Definitely someone to watch out for in the future. A British Taylor Swift perhaps?

Obviously I have to mention charismatic tom cat Rum Tum Tugger,  executed effortlessly by Toby Hope, who left the audience wanting more of his, tail shaking and swagger. Hope stood out as one of the strongest members of the cast with his stage presence alone.

Others who stood out were Lexy Bee for her incredible dancing and Chris Richardson for his delightful singing voice.

Of course it would be rude to not mention the rest of the cast, who were all fantastic. Their mannerisms really  did make you believe they were actual cats. They had even perfected the little things such as the way their turn their head, and the way they would stretch, it really was interesting to watch them all.

Not every single dance move and note was hit exactly, but hey, that is just me being extremely critical. Considering this show was put together on one rehearsal per week alone, by an amateur group,  it was near professional standard.

A massive hats off to director Cheryl Stewart for managing to pull off such a challenging production- the hard work really payed off! Visually their best production yet.

I'm now off to repeat the same line of Mister Mistoffelees over and over whilst I practice trying to walk with  a bit more grace.

© Photographs by Amber Brown and Helen Ellis

Working 9 to 5.. what a way to make a living!

Hello Everyone!

This week has been rather busy for me, along with my friend Jess, I've been at the Northumberland Gazette offices for work experience. I went there for work experience in year 10- obviously they didn't put me off too much!

I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, and had much more responsibility than last year! This time round I co-wrote a story for the prom picture special. We also had to make sure we had all of the names correct for the captions which took a lot of time (going to the school and getting them to check the faces with the names on their database!) and interview the prom king and director of learning for year 11.

We also got to create 7 slideshows for the Northumberland Gazette website- so I got to do a bit of print and online journalism- YAY!

On Saturday June 22, The Duchess of Northumberland's daughter Lady Melissa got married to Thomas van Straubenzee at St Michael's Church, Alnwick, meaning there were plentyful pictures of their big day. Princes William and Harry were guests of the wedding, along with Pippa Middleton and Rose Leslie, so it was quite a big event for little old Alnwick.

We made 5 picture slideshows for the event which you can watch here:

http://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/local-news/slideshow-alnwick-wedding-the-family-1-5824818

http://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/local-news/slideshow-alnwick-wedding-royal-guests-1-5825014

http://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/local-news/slideshow-alnwick-wedding-celebrity-guests-1-5826632

http://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/local-news/slideshow-alnwick-wedding-guests-1-5826798

http://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/local-news/slideshow-alnwick-wedding-crowds-1-5826940

We also made a slideshow of pictures for the prom and a slideshow for the Armed Forces Day in Alnwick which you can watch here:

http://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/local-news/slideshow-armed-forces-day-alnwick-1-5829774

Editing together the slideshows for the website took up the majority of our time during work experience as we had to pay particular attention and precision to the detail. Everything had to be as perfect as we could get it: the captions all had to be in the same place and fade in and out at the right time, the pictures had to transition smoothly, and they had to be in chronological order. This was made twice as difficult with the pictures being in the wrong order and the computer crashing on a number of occasions and deleting the changes we had made.

I really enjoyed my time at the Northumberland Gazette and will continue to write articles for the paper and help them out when I can. The people who work there are absolutely lovely and made it very enjoyable. I learnt a lot about the way the industry works- you have to be very committed and eager to find out news-worthy stories.

My work experience has only made me more confident in wanting a job withing journalism/reporting. However next time, I would quite like some work experience in TV and radio!

Cheerio x 

I ventured to London!

Hello everyone!

So Monday 24th of June I went to London!

I can imagine some of you are thinking, 'Why is that such a big deal?' but it is for two reasons!

No. 1- I'm from the north east of England, so far up north its almost Scotland, and because I have little money, it is a big deal for me going to the other end of the country!

No.2- I was there for a very special reason; The Shine School Media Awards, which I will leave a link to here.

*Back story.*

Back in October of last year I was appointed editor of my schools newspaper The Alnwickist, a very daunting role at first. I later got into the swing of it and come the beginning of December it was ready to be all edited and put together at The Northumberland Gazette, who very thoughtfully let us use their computer software (our school is what I could say in the nicest terms possible, a little lacking...) and with the help of my computer whizz deputy editor Matthew it was up and running.

Come middle of December it was published and an insert in every copy of The Northumberland Gazette, which would be in shops all over north Northumberland!

My media teacher then entered the school newspaper into the Shine School Media Awards.

*End of back story.*

Anyway, if I'm being honest I didn't think anything of it, the majority of the schools who were finalists last year were posh, nice and smart private schools, not shabby state schools like ours. (side note- this is in no way a dig at the teachers, they're brilliant, just a dig at the building/s.)

I shouldn't have been so pessimistic because we ended up being shortlisted in 7 categories- YAY! That was when I started to believe we may have a chance at getting into the finals.

It was when I was on my study leave during the AS exam period when I received an email from my media teacher saying we had reached the final- we were going to London! Not only that, but we had reached the final in three categories: best features article; best editorial content and best overall newspaper. What an achievement!

After an awfully early start on Monday, the Alnwickist team headed off down to London on the train. Probably the longest 3-and-a-bit hours of my life as we had to share a carriage with dozens of school children all around the age of 11 on a trip to France!

At quarter to twelve we arrived in London and took the tube to the Stationer's Hall- my first ever experience on the London Underground and it was no where near as scary as I thought it would be!

At Stationer's Hall there were little 'stops' where we could pick up free leaflets and pens, and chat to people about journalism and university applications (the cosmo girls were especially lovely). After a light lunch was the awards ceremony- woooo!

We were sat down in long tables with benches whilst presenters Simon Heffer, Daily Mail senior journalist, and Louise Court, editor of Cosmopolitan magazine gave speeches and presented the awards.

Unfortunately we didn't win any awards, but we were recognized as nominees for 7 categories and highly commended in 3, so overall very happy- especially since it is the first year we entered the competition.

A rather sun-burnt me with two of our certificates!

After the ceremony and congratulating the winners, we headed back to the underground and took a much more unpleasant ride on the tube to convent garden. We had a look around and a bit of a wander and ended up in Trafalgar Square!

Excited London Tourist Selfie!

 After admiring the water feature and the buildings we made our way to a lovely Italian restaurant for a post slap-up meal because why the hell not we were in London!

We had another look around London before getting the tube back to Kings Cross Station where we tried to get into Hogwarts but it didn't quite work...

All in all, although we didn't come away with any major prizes, we came home with certificates and smiles. I am very proud of myself and The Alnwickist team for getting this far.. we are already planning next winters addition and how we can make ourselves even better so we can hopefully in some awards next year!

Cheerio x