This is the last blog I posted in the UCA language course. I really appreciate all my tutors, which makes me more confident and learns a lot of studying methods. It will be my life’s wealth. I have met many friends in here. They come from all over the world. In dealing with them, I seem to feel the warmth of home. We make project and solve problems together, share life experiences. These memories are really hard to forget.

This is my first time studying and living abroad. Here I feel respected once. Domestically, for art students, there is a lack of opportunities and platforms, and sometimes they are ignored. I cannot do my professional and special skills very well. I remember the last project, Adam helped my classmates to have a small photo exhibition in our school, which really touched me. It is my long-cherished dream to let more people see my work. Even a small action will be a successful start. Everyone here will get the support and affirmation of the teacher. They will help me realize my dreams step by step instead of suppressing me.

Thanks again for everything here, you made me feel that coming here is my right choice, you made me become a better person.

01/09/2019-Shirley.

Many people do not realize that fashion is the second largest pollutant industry in the world, second only to the oil industry. A large number of chemicals used in the manufacturing process from over-cultivation and the use of large amounts of cancer pesticides in cotton growth. This has an impact on local water facilities and destroys the life of the soil, which is very damaging to the environment.

However, there are even more human factors. From exploiting farmers, factory jobs and child refugees to just $2 a day, some big brands even use Syrian refugees and child labor to produce and serve them. The company seems to remain focused on the bottom line, and everyone who cares about human rights and life seems to have been ignored.

Cheap fast fashion is the root cause of this and creates a greedy toxic culture. Fast fashion that the low-cost clothing collections based on current, high-cost luxury fashion trends, is by its very nature, a fast-response system that encourages disposability. A formerly standard turnaround time from catwalk to consumer of six months is now compressed to a matter of mere weeks by such companies as H&M and Zara, with heightened profits to match. While creating benefits for themselves, these brands have created a lot of non-degradable fashion garbage. Due to the fast update and large production volume, most of the garments can’t be recycled, and finally they can only be incinerated, which seriously pollutes the ecological environment. This also goes against the fact that sustainable fashion does not take into account all of its stages in the product life cycle.

In 22 August, we start the last project and we will going to London. The main gallery is The Tate Modern. I will start my art journey from here. I searched the artwork about sleepless on the internet, which will be the first artwork I pay attention to.

There is a Bankside gallery near this exhibition hall. This will be my second stop. There are many illustrations with design sense, among which the works of James faure walker and Gerry Baptist are the objects I could focus on, and their works will greatly inspire me.

In addition, there will be three nearby exhibitions, which I will visit if I have enough time.

At the same time, I need to make some preparations for my project 4. Since the theme of this time is related to the environment, I will pick up some paper or plastic garbage on the road, recombine them and make new artworks.

Loneliness, living alone and poor social connections are as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. (Holt-Lunstad, 2010)

To help people reduce loneliness, we have planned an art project, an art organization about family activities, divided into three sections: family poster production, LEGO construction and clothing re-engineering. We will conduct these three events in the form of competitions. These activities are done by parents and their children. For example, in the re-engineering activities, I will plan parents and children to exchange one old T-shirt with each other, and then use different fabrics, materials and accessories to re-create a new one. Clothes are given as gifts to each other. Finally, we will select the winning families in each event and distribute movie tickets as rewards.

The reason why we use movie tickets as a reward is because I think this is another way to promote parent-child interaction, which can also reduce loneliness. The above is an overview of the activities I have done in this project.

According to the previous blog’s plan, we started our third trip, Turner Contemporary in Margate. We interviewed some individuals and families according to the plan. They came from different ages and had different understandings of “loneness”.

Through this interview, we found that parents and children in single-parent families are more likely to feel lonely than in a complete family. For parents, when their children are not at home or raised by the other side, they feel the most lonely. For children, parents who are too much involved in their work and thus lack the companionship of family members will make them feel lonely.

According to our survey that there are around 1.8 millions single parents- they make up nearly a quarter of families with dependent children. The average age of a single parent is 38 years. I also come from a single-parent family. I always feel lonely , especially when a situation which need parents together or when my mom devoted to her work cannot accompanied with me.

At the same time, some young people think that they rarely feel lonely because they have many friends and live in groups, which will make them less lonely.

Everyone has their own different attitudes and solutions to loneliness. In the next blog, I will introduce our project plan in detail to help people promote interaction and communication between family members, thus reducing loneliness.

In this August, we started the first group work – project 3. My team members have Shawn and Winnie. This combination seems to be no suspense, because we are the best partner of each other.

Before the start of this project, our tutor told us to always say “why” to ourselves, so that the content of thinking will be more complete and comprehensive. So, before we went to margate gallery, we used this method to determine the main works of art and topic. We repeatedly asked each other “why” in the group, and finally Anthony’s work – ”another time” won and decided to go deeper. Go talk about the topic of “less loneliness.”

Based on the experience of the before two projects, this time we have done a more complete pre-departure plan and assigned their respective tasks. Through online informations and TED talks, we learned in advance the meaning of the work and the author’s creative background. It exists in many different spaces. These lonely human art are his different understandings of loneliness. In Margate’s sea sculpture, different art forms will appear at different times. This really gave us a lot of inspiration and was full of expectations for this piece.

Finally, I want to say that I am very happy to meet new friends. Some of them come from different countries. This project is our common project. I hope that I can learn more ideas through their blogs and facebook. come on!!!

Finally, I decided choose four or five topic point to describe and talk the relationship between art and war in my essay. “Art is used to promote war “”Art is used to oppose war””The destruction of art, is used to demoralise opponents during war””Art is looted in the course of war””Art is used to recover from war”. there is an inevitable connection between them.

 After wars have ended, art has also been used to raise funds for soldiers injured in the course of wars and to provide relief to refugees displaced from them.  Art has also been used as part of DDR strategies to provide employment for former combatants and to rehabilitate former combatants emotionally.  Artists have even used the weapons of war to manufacture art.  

 This historical journey made me feel the meaning and relationship of war to art. Especially those who have experienced various massacres in these wars, they have experienced the cruelty of humanity, through their artistic language to express and complain about the dissatisfaction with the war.

This piece is my favourite piece of my trip to Canterbury. Because I wanted to know more about it, I did some communication with the Beaney by sending e-mail and Facebook, but unfortunately, they didn’t give me the answer I wanted, so this Saturday, I Once on a journey to Canterbury. At first, when I saw him for the first time, I thought it was a rose. Because it was covered by a glass, it reminded me of “beauty and the beast”. I think there may be a piece behind this piece. love story. But when I learned about it in depth, I found out that this is a bird’s nest for a sunbird. The artist created it with different plant materials. These vegetables and cotton are combined to make me feel very interesting.

After repeated art review and personal reflection, I decided to use the relationship between war and art as the theme of my thesis, because I found some works related to war, which made me want to explore them, in the next One week, I read a lot about the changes in the artistic situation during the war and the evaluation of the world. So, for me, this journey is a journey of spiritual history, which also only my body walk on the road, but also let my soul embark on a journey.

Some time ago, when I first watched the video about The Beaney house,which really moved me. It is not just an art gallery. Because it ont only improves the relationship between children and their parents, but also helps homeless and disabled people access art, like we do. This made me look forward to the exhibition hall at first.

The beaney will hold some activities regularly. This photo was taken by me at the beaney’s library, where a parent-child interaction was held and the parents gave some words to let the child find the corresponding pattern on the ground. The pavilion also displayed paintings by many children. This cultivation of children’s art and the artistic environment of the beaney made me very touched.

This picture is about a photography exhibition whose author is Jimi. The team tells the story of the homeless by photography. The team helps them overcome these problems by providing housing, education, employability and personal development, regaining control of their lives and making a better future possible. This made me realize for the first time that art is not only for people to appreciate, but sometimes for a force to help those who have difficulties.

Everyone has different opinions about travel. Some people like the bustling city. Some people love the surging sea. Some people like quiet and comfortable villages. I prefer places with ethic characteristics, because such places often have ethnic groups. The most important thing is that these places have unique local costume culture and patterns, they are a traditional art.

First of all, from Africa my first flag is in Morocco. This is a country where the whole nation believes in religion. The whole country seems to be red and green, making the land look more vivid and bright. The Moroccan style is world-famous, and their design are colorful and gorgeous. What attracts me the most is their weaving crafts. If I have the chance to go there, I will learn to combine their craftsmanship with fashion. I think it must be another retro fashion style.

Czechoslovakia is the second place I want to go because it is the birthplace of bohemian style. Bohemian style is a fashion trend. It has a very important position in the fashion world. I want to explore this mysterious place. It is also very curious what kind of geographical environment and humanities can create such romance and freedom. Clothing style.

Finally, I want to go back to Asia from Europe and go to Japan to experience a different fashion journey. From Japanese traditional kimono to street Harajuku style, Japanese clothing has a very high position in the world.

In short, compared with the modern fashion city, I prefer to explore the birthplace of traditional fashion.