Blindfolds as an icebreaker

We start out by looking at the room we’re in – which is at present a bare and empty studio, looking more like an office than a room in an Art College; and we go through various ways of trying to describe it. We start out with words, and move on to drawing – perspectives at first, then more abstract representations of sensations. I play the game I play every year with the students, leading them blindfold, in crocodile around the building, asking them to tell me what the floors and walls are made of from tactile and auditory cues. That’s the ostensible purpose but the real one, of course, is to break the ice which it always does.
In the afternoon I draft in the third years to teach the new ones how to survey a room – the predictable chaos and laughter ensues and the day ends on a high.

Parthenon

In the evening, whore that I am, I’m off down to the BBC again for my latest media appearance – on Arena, an Irish culture radio programme. It goes well, as far as I can tell, but it’s odd, sitting alone in a studio in a darkened office, making a call to somewhere else. It’s stranger still (I don’t know why) to be talking about the Parthenon and Venice and Vegas to an Irish radio programme. I feel like I should be talking about something Irish, but I’m not sure what.