Earlier this month I made another visit to the Victoria & Albert Museum. The first time I went there last year was with a lady called Rafie, to see how accessible it was as a visually impaired person for her PhD study. And this time I met her at the museum again, but this time it was for a focus group accessibility study organised by some of her colleagues from University College London (UCL), and there were 3 other participants as well as me. The ladies from UCL were running a few of these sessions over a couple of days, organised by a lady called Lydia, and this one had sounded very intriguing to me. Quite literally ‘sounded’ in fact, given that it involved some clever use of ultrasound!
Although I was born in the early 80’s, I grew up with a lot of 60’s music, because my parents enjoyed it and so had plenty of it in the house. So I’ve always enjoyed listening to tracks from that era, including the hits of Motown. So many amazing and timeless artists and songs have come out of the Motown movement, that people still enjoy today, and that still influences many musicians today.
So it’s only right and fitting that we now have Motown The Musical to celebrate it, and I got to see it this week at the Shaftesbury Theatre, with my friends at East London Vision, for an accessible performance organised by those wonderful folks at VocalEyes.
Just because I said I enjoyed Winter at the Young Vic and looking at the snow recently, it doesn’t mean I want the winter season itself to continue! We’re halfway through March now, so you’d think the spring might make a bit of an effort. But no, we had a bit more snow today, with more due tomorrow! When I’d heard this on the weather during the week, I was worried that it might stop me from going out today. But thankfully it didn’t. What little snow fell in London failed to settle, much to my relief!
So that was great, because today I was able to tick off another big production from my theatre wishlist – Wicked. It’s had loads of awards and gets loads of great reviews, and I already knew a couple of songs from it, so I was really keen to see it. And when the opportunity to book tickets with a touch tour and audio description came up a little while back, I gladly went for it. So I went this afternoon, and in this post I’ll tell you what I thought!
Well, what a way to start a new month, with snow all over the place! Winter has seemed very reluctant to let Spring take over, but hopefully things will warm up in the coming weeks now.
And the cold weather didn’t stopped February from being an eventful month. Following on from my January 2018 Favourites, it’s now time to look through what I’ve been enjoying in February. And even though it’s the shortest month, I seem to have packed quite a bit in! So I hope you enjoy this post and video for February.
Update (March 1st) – I won the challenge, much to my surprise! Thank you so much to Rare Disease UK! It was great fun being involved, because I loved the theme of the campaign, and I really enjoyed seeing other people’s photos. So very well done to all involved. We can all be proud of our efforts to raise awareness during the month! 🙂
Today is a wonderful international opportunity to raise awareness of rare diseases, conditions, disabilities, etc, to educate people and highlight the need for greater funding and research. Here in the UK, it’s led by Rare Disease UK. But there are events taking place worldwide, so there will be related organisations in many countries.
1 in 17 people have a rare disease, meaning it’s a lot more common than you might think. So even if you don’t have one yourself, chances are you know somebody who does. And if you do have a rare condition, you’re certainly not alone.
There are over 6,000 rare diseases, affecting over 300 million people worldwide (including 30 million in Europe). That’s a huge number! So this is a day for all of us unusual rarities to get together, along with anyone and everyone who supports us and the cause in any way.
This year, the theme is “Show your rare, show you care”, and everyone can get involved, regardless of whether or they you have a rare disease. So that includes patients, families, carers, medical professionals, policy makers and members of the public.
If you live in the UK like me, you’ll be well aware that we’re getting another blast of winter from the weather gods right now, including some snow. Which is lovely to look at if you don’t have to go travelling in it – yay to being a homeworker! – but on the whole I think we’re all looking forward to spring and some warmer weather more than ever.
But as we’re still in the winter season at the moment, it felt like a very appropriate time to go and see a play called Winter by Jon Fosse, which was on at the Young Vic theatre from the 14th-24th February. Granted, it’s got nothing to do with the weather, but the title and timing is appropriate. And it is quite an unusual play compared to the ones I’ve attended so far. So I wanted to tell you a bit about my experience.
Before I do, there are a couple of important points to note for transparency:
I was among a few visually impaired bloggers very kindly offered complimentary tickets by the theatre to see the show, as they were extending their accessibility services for this production and wanted our feedback. However, all ramblings and opinions here are my own, the theatre have had no input into this post.
This is a spoiler-free review. Although the play’s run at the Young Vic has finished, it will appear in other venues, just it has done in the past. So there’s a chance other people interested in the show will find this post, and I don’t want to ruin anything!
Now that’s sorted, let me tell you how things went last Friday. I hope you enjoy reading about it.
I haven’t just been looking at Harry Potter things this month. I’ve also been to other museums as well. And in this post, I want to talk about the Information Age gallery at the Science Museum. I explored the exhibition over a couple of visits, as there’s so much to see in there. It was all very interesting, and I was also curious to try a special accessibility app that had been developed especially for it. So this post is a little review of my experience.
Hannah - twenty five for now, music lover, crazy cat lady, disability campaigner, maximising life with health conditions. Blogging my adventures and banging on about anything that matters to me.
