Sunday 3 April 2011

April - a new start, new cards!













and THESE are the cards available now in the Hannah Frank card range.... see below!!

OK - I've been in Glasgow for nearly six months. I still have to complete my conclusions but my plan is to get the whole thing off to my supervisors THIS THURSDAY, with Friday as a fallback....

I'm quite excited about my PhD. I seem to think about it most of the time, racking my brains about little problems like 'how did that particular person ever get to university' and 'where do I put this bit I have just found in a book I read years ago and have just looked at again'. But as a very helpful friend has explained, you never actually FINISH a phd, but it comes to a point when you just have to STOP.

So once I do that, my supervisors can tell me what I still need to do for my final submission. The university date is 31st July - if they get it back to me in a month (mid May) then I get a couple of months till mid July to sort it all out.... viva in Sept.... graduate in Nov? maybe ! except that I really would prefer to go to a conference in Boston on graduation week, and graduate the following July.

Which also brings me to the question of What Next?

So, I didn't get the ESRC grant I thought I WOULD get, to roll out the fabulous Senior Learners link between U3As and Universities around the country for a year. Hmm. That was a bit of a shock. But it's pretty much par for the course: 3 referees and the assessor recommended it and it still didn't get funded. Well - loads of organisations have had their funding cut this week. It's all part of the 'squeezed middle'. There is NO MONEY for the public sector any more - the sector that has been feeding me since I left uni, with no gaps at all. So I'm going in three directions -
1. I'm available for consultancy work, and have already started on a job for Strathclyde Uni Centre for Lifelong Learning. When I get back to Lancaster I'll also start putting out that I'm available for other work. (see my post, further down, about Soundboard Consultancy).
but more exciting
2. our family have the copyright on Hannah Frank images for the next 50 years. So, with lots of help from printmaker/artist Louise Scott, I'm going to start taking the cards and prints round to trade fairs/art fairs. We're already launching 'Hannah Frank at Glasgow University Visitor Centre' this Tuesday, and at Westacres, the old people's home where she used to live, next Sunday - and the Glasgow Women's Library will be promoting them on their website, and the Iona Gallery will be selling them from May. Just need to find five or six more good outlets like that.... to celebrate all this new activity I've just had some new cards printed including one of Women with Birds which has never been a card before.

So we now have cards of the all the pix at the top
Sea Story, Dance, Garden, Woman with Birds, Girl at Window, Dream and Garden...

ok off for lunch and then back to Glasgow

will update about the launch at Westacres and Glasgow Uni next week.... and whether I get the full draft off at the end of this week or not!

Fiona xxxx

ps you should also follow the blog of Lancaster Cohousing http://lancastercohousing.blogspot.com/ lots more photos and news than this one!