“All good things must come to an end” – a famous quote said by many and at the end of March we ran our final classes at The People’s Market. It was great to run classes in their space and we can’t wait to cross paths with them again in the future. More importantly for now, we ended on a high note with some great classes!
In HDR photography Joel McDonald introduced the latest craze in photography and social media surrounded by the perfect back drop of The Peoples’ Market. Simultaneously, Nicola Weildeling was sharing her knowledge on Book Clubs – how to start them, how to run them and most importantly how to have the most fun in doing so. Keep your eyes peeled for new book clubs springing up near you!
It was our pleasure to welcome back Rose Turtle Ertler to give us another rendition of her class on Ukuleles. Situated underneath a beautiful hope catcher we learnt everything from the tuning and holding of a uke to the basics of strumming and reading of chord charts. We spent the last half an hour of the class plucking and strumming away, playing some classic tunes (Psycho Killer was our favourite) and generally having a really good time.
Meanwhile back in The Little Mule we welcomed Tony Sarhanis back to teach another baffled bunch how to tackle Cryptic Crosswords and then Mitch Piazza rounded up some foreigners and Queenslanders for a different type of tackling in his class on AFL for Non-Natives. We learnt enough about a game that’s odd enough to not have a standard pitch size just in time to understand what’s going on for the start of the season.
Veronica Grow and Bruno Herfst from Old School the New School for Typography got us thinking about fonts, everything from serifs to italics, in What is Good Typography? There was plenty of fun and games and we already have Veronica scheduled in for more classes. We also hosted Albert Benjamin who came and told us all about Ending Extreme Poverty. Learning that world food program costs $5.6bn and that Australia’s food wastage comes up at $5.2bn certainly gave us all a take home message and plenty to think about!
In our final night at the PM there were knights, bishops and even the odd queen around as we invited our previous penguin expert, Alisdair Horgen, back to teach with us again but this time it was all about Chess: Basic Strategy. In a nearby shipping container we also had Emmet O’Cuana around to talk all about one of his heroes Grant Morrison. Morrison, a bestselling comic author and occasional chaos magician, was a great topic for discussion; the way he has become so popular by drawing inspiration from underground culture is absolutely fascinating!
Finally, after we’d had our fill of chess and comics Hugh Gundlach took us on a trip back to the 80s with a class all about John Hughes, The 80s Comedy Auteur and his movies. We started off with a little round of ‘tag-line trivia’, and then discussed the common themes and elements that characterise John Hughes’ movies, including adolescence, dysfunctional families and bullies.
And that was it for another month at Laneway Learning! It is with a sad smile that we say goodbye to Mo and all the guys at the Peoples’ Market, at least for now, as we will miss our Wednesday evenings in Collingwood but we had a hell of a time while it lasted.