Encouragement and my favourite pair of jeans

Now that my blog as the backing of both the Oliver family and the Learning To Love Yourself More project itself (well, its twitter account at least @ltlym if you're interested) I'm glad to announce the completion of my latest assignment. This one is kind of like the mascot for the exhibition, one of the more popular ones when it come to the number of people also attempting it and the very first one I noticed when I first came across the project when it was advertised at the Baltic all those months ago. Ladies and Gentlemen, assignment number 63 Make an encouraging banner.

All you had to do was make a banner with a bit of encouragement that you tell yourself often and hang it somewhere where it can encourage others. I chose to use a famous Japanese proverb 'fall down 7 times, stand up 8'. Not bad eh? Certainly works for me. But then it all started to go wrong for me.

Firstly since I had to put each letter on a separate piece of coloured card, I had to do this 22 times and it took me hours. It is surprising how stressed I got cutting out bits of brightly coloured bits of card and sticking them to another piece, I seriously don't know how I used to do it all the time when I was younger and not suffer from high blood pressure.

I then had to try and hang it up where it could encourage people. I had an idea to hang it up on a gate near my uni to help people as they take the dreaded hung-over walk to a lecture. Here’s proof of me and my house mates attempting it at in the middle of the night.




Now perhaps this is just me but this was bloody hard and for a moment we thought the police were going to stop us. We gave up on the idea (for the time being at least) and went for the far easier option that thankfully other who decided to complete this assignment and just hang it up in their house. So here it is:



Now looking at this, I have to say that this is the assignment that I am most proud of achieving so far. Not only did I spend the most amount of time and effort on it but this simple idea is what the project as a whole really represents, that anyone can create art which can inspire and encourage people. My only regret is that I couldn't hang it where I wanted as the actual message would have worked far better had more people seen it. But at least I can take comfort in it, especially the amount of time I have 'fallen' over the years.

This leads me beautifully to my next assignment number 55 Photograph a significant outfit. Now hang on I know what you’re thinking, what is the link here? Well bare with me. Let me first show you the outfit.




Now the next day after finishing my banner I got a phone call from the CID letting me know that I can now collect this outfit from the police station as it was no longer needed as evidence. You see, this was the outfit In was wearing when I got assaulted in September of last year which resulted in me getting my jaw broken and unable to eat solid food for a month. He mustn't have liked that belt. A pretty grim story you must admit and one of my many fallen moments for me of recent years.

But this project is supposed to make you see the finer things in life and appreciate them so we'll talk no more on the subject except the silver lining of the story here.