Free Friday

We went into Brighton on Friday afternoon to do free things! Namely: go to art exhibition, go to museum and watch the sunset on the pier.

All of which was lovely. 

Art exhibition was this, following the workshop we did there the week before. There was plenty to see there, with the various representations of parts and systems of the body (printing, 3D withie-based constructions, found object work, drawings and other media) filling the gallery space and some arteries and veins leading along the corridor to the end room too. Mussel shells painted as lungs, little pencil-drawn skeletons, withie-and-tissue digestive system, light-up brain, etc. A good array of stuff, much of which was done by local children in workshop sessions, brought together into a whole by the Same Sky people.

F was interested and enjoyed it but distracted by a story she was doing in her head, apparently, which took a lot of her concentration. She did like it though, and I didn't mind that she was doing her own stuff as I know that feeling. She brought up the fact that most of the sensory organs are on the head/face.

Then we moved on to Brighton Museum, had an orange juice between us with the only cash I had brought, before going to look at the Egyptian exhibits - some good interactive computer things there to learn about the lives of different children ( poor, rich, boy, girl) in Ancient Egypt - nicely done, very user-friendly, perfect level for F. Another one looked at hieroglyphics and another covered the preparation of a body for the afterlife. F enjoyed the whole Ancient Egypt section.

We also looked at the Land Girls exhibition - F didn't seem very engaged and thought grandma should have been represented (my mum was a Land Girl and has some good stories about it), though she quite liked the plastic models of rationed items, a good physical way of representing the amounts of bacon, meat, cheese, butter - although a bit hard to relate to if you're from a vegan family maybe!

We went round the rest of the museum - I think it has improved a bit since we last visited, or maybe we've improved. F liked some of the costume exhibits.

The gallery and the museum both really reaffirmed to me that F engages much more on a tactile/movement level, she likes to do stuff rather than view stuff. Listening posts and glass cases hold little appeal for her, but touch screens and things to hold are much more her thing. Have noticed it before, that she is a kinesthetic learner. I am verbal and mainly like to read stuff - I can press a button on an interactive display and watch something happening but I won't feel I understand it till I've read an explanation! Her dad is visual and likes detailed pictures/diagrams/models, etc. 

So, after the museum, we headed down to the pier, to watch the sun set. It was very chilly with a really cold wind blowing, so we hovered on the sheltered side, and did a bit of stomping around to keep warm. We saw some mad sod emerging from the sea at some point - don't know where his clothes were, he walked right up the beach and into the arches! Made me shiver to think of it, was so freezingly bitter.

We enjoyed the sunset, then went and got the bus home, were lucky and one came along almost immediately. The bus goes past the Phoenix, so we saw the lit-up brain looking good in the darkness, changing colour.

A lovely Friday afternoon out in the city.