Idiots. Proof

Carrying on from the fun and frolics at the Esteemed School of Art, here’s a good for instance to show the kind of teaching methods the Laurel Loungers employed.

In the first term of the first year, one of the briefs given to the students was to design a cereal packet. Using only three colours. (While I may be misremembering the actual objective and the set parameters, for the sake of argument it’s near enough, so let’s stick with it).

As a project, it seemed fair enough. Everyone gets to work. Project over, it comes time for the crit, where everyone is brought together and the work is evaluated. Oh, frabjous joy!

I would probably be stating the obvious to say that it got quite colourful when it was my turn. I wound one of the tutors up so much, toward the end of the first year, when prospective students were arriving for their interviews, that he screamed at me to go downstairs and explain to the applicants how I got onto the degree course and they won’t.

In this instance, we went around the room and eventually got to the first of a couple of students who had, it turned out, ignored the specific parameters and used just about every frickin’ colour imaginable. There might have even been glitter involved.

The only way to have had less colour would have been to wrap the packet in an outrageous Hawaiian shirt, eat a scarlet macaw, feathers and all, and then projectile vomit that onto the box as an encore.

And the tutors’ response? They absolutely loved it! They applauded her for her originality by thinking outside the brief. Which is probably not something to put into the enquiring minds of these young lambs.

I sat there thinking; pull this stunt out in the real world, where budgets dictate strict parameters, and your boss and the clients won’t be best pleased. Still, that was a lesson for them to learn later. Right now, everyone had an open invitation to frolic like lambs in clover. Enjoy the sunshine before the slaughterhouse beckons.