Lydia Clarke

I went to Rivington Place in Shoreditch to see LONDON IS THE PLACE FOR ME. I didn’t enjoy it downstairs because I thought it was very simple and plain but I enjoyed upstairs.

Downstairs, I thought it was just a couple of pictures of people in a phone booth and I didn’t see the meaning of them. It was a really spacious gallery and I thought they could have done more with it.

Upstairs we had a photoshoot. We got to choose our own backgrounds and then we had photoshoots done with our children. We had to choose a famous London landmark. I chose the Millennium Bridge. The backgrounds were on postcards that had already been done with people that had been there before, and they had a book we could choose from with all the backgrounds.

They gave us 2 postcards. On them we had to write to somebody so I wrote it to my mum. One we got to keep and the other one they put up on display. The display was a long bit of string and you had to peg your postcard onto it.

The exhibition was by Leticia Valverdes who is a professional portrait artist. I liked her, she was funny. Paige had a good time too. I would recommend it to others. Emma (who came with us) went back for more. She went back the next weekend as well!

Emma chose a Victorian bedroom as her background. Someone else was in a hot air balloon. Mine was the Millennium Bridge. We chose a background, had our photo taken and they used a computer to put the image with the background and then the postcard came out. There were hundreds of postcards on display. My favourite was three women on top of a red double decker bus having a hen party. If I hadn’t chosen the Millennium Bridge I would have wanted the one that Emma had but she chose it first!

I wrote to my mum because when I was at secondary school I saw the Millennium Bridge being built so I wrote to my mum that this is the final piece… seems years since it was being built and here I am! At that time Paige was twinkle in my eye.. I wasn’t even pregnant.

The best bit about the whole day was getting the postcard. I’ve still got mine at home. I don’t think I would ever go back to the gallery again for the pictures, but if it was for the thing with leticia I would. I told my family about it after. My mum really liked the postcard and thought it was an original idea.

My other best bit about the day was lunch at the café on the corner over the road. I had a really nice tuna and sweetcorn sandwich... and Camilla coming with us!!

Lydia Clarke

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