Here Comes The Sun

So my first interview since finishing university was this week and I got the internship! I thought I'd post a bit about the awesome place where I'm going to be working for the next 3 months.

The Rising Sun Arts Centre in Reading is a small, independent centre based in a beautiful building in the town centre which was built in 1877. Over 20 years ago, a group of artists squatted in the building. They wanted it to be a place to be creative and express themselves. At the time, they had little restrictions on what they could do.

Now, the centre is a registered charity. Day to day, a bunch of volunteers give up their time to help run the centre and its activities. These range from music performances and dance classes to life drawing and burlesque performances. The centre focuses on its ideals of getting as many people as possible involved in creativity. The centre has changed a lot since its beginning but it still holds a similar goal of getting the community to engage in creative activities.

The people there really do love what they do, they are passionate about the centre's ideas. I love that there are people willing to give up their time for free in order to help any charity. I'm excited to get the chance to work with volunteers who really enjoy what they do and want to help the centre in any way that they can. The volunteers are from all walks of life, different ages and abilities which allows various viewpoints in helping the arts.

My role as intern will involve me helping the volunteers prepare for the centre's yearly festival. I am really excited to be getting involved with this and I'm sure the experience will be invaluable. On leaving university, I had no idea what I wanted to do so applied to various internships and luckily got one very quickly. This opportunity will let me know if this is the sort of thing I want to do and will hopefully teach me a lot.

Leaving university was terrifying. The first week was filled with worry, I had no idea of what was going to happen. The future was so uncertain. Getting this internship was a huge relief. I now know what the next 3 months will hold. After that, I have no clue but this is a start. There are so many opportunities once you come out of university and my advice is just to embrace them and do whatever you can when you have the option!

Carl Barat & The Jackals - 13/05/14

Earlier this year, Carl Barat took to social media in order to form a new band. People auditioned and he chose the final line up of The Jackals. I got the great chance to see them live a couple of weeks ago in Reading. They performed at The Bowery District, a small but great venue in the centre of Reading. I wasn't expecting amazing things because the band haven't been together for long but, as a huge Carl Barat fan, I went along out of curiosity.

I was not disappointed. They far exceeded any expectations that I had. The band were brilliant and Carl's energy on stage with them was brilliant. They played new songs and covered Carl's solo stuff/Dirty Pretty Things/The Libertines. Everyone loved the covers, they were played really well. But, I was amazed by how good the new material was. The Jackals are a fantastic bunch of musicians and I really enjoyed the whole set.

Some people have argued that Carl should not be covering old stuff still, he should be pulling away from his past projects. I agree to an extent. However, he has all this great material and the new band is very new so they would've been unable to fill a set of original songs. Fans of Carl love all his music so it's still good to hear no matter what. The audience seemed to love every second of it and so did Carl. The band had great chemistry considering the short time and how they were put together. I was very impressed!

We also got treated to some acoustic Carl at the end of the set which was lovely, as one would expect, a video here of him performing 'France' - one of my favourite Libertines songs:

If you liked Dirty Pretty Things or The Libertines or anything like that then this is definitely a music project to watch. There are some excellent original songs these guys have and if Carl doesn't get too distracted by The Libertines reunion in July then The Jackals could go great things so watch out for them!