Debbie Issitt

by Colin

Debbie kicked off cultural exchanges for me and an excellent start it turned out to be. Debbie left school at 16, tried various jobs, all unsuccessfully and then went to study acting. It was she said,"Where she wanted to be."

She laid out for the audience her journey as an actress, writer and Director. She formed the Company 'The Snarling Beasties', a description she said of male genitalia.Her plays, which travelled the world from festival to festival,were designed to have visual impact with a strong mime and black comedy content.

Debbie is now a film director, influenced by the work of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach.She works completely Ad Lib keeping crew and directors in the dark until the commencement of each day's filming.

There was much a writer could learn from Debbie and the time flew by.

Psst - what's Cultural Exchanges!?

By Jack O'Sullivan

Right, ok, blogging on the Cultural Exchanges blog... The first port of call was to find out what Cultural Exchanges actually is. The words hung around in my head like a fading smell - I'd heard them before, but it was on one of those occasions where you've more or less only got your brain turned on for the sake of it. Like during adverts or whilst listening to Jeremy Kyle.

Anyway, back on track. My faithful buddy Google knew exactly how to deal with this situation, even kindly correcting my spelling for me after suspecting that I was in fact not intending to search for "cyltural ecchanges" (I should also note that Google achieved this without making me feel like a delinquent). That's what happens when you're trying not to disturb a cat sprawled across your keyboard.

After removing said disgruntled feline, I delved into the hits Google had brought up for me (in 0.31 seconds). The first result seemed suitable, having DMU in the URL, so I clicked away. From the page that flashed up, I discerned that it was a sort of celebration of the Humanities/Art faculties, based initially on the opening of the Clephan building in 2000. This seemed much more plausible than my first theory gleaned from their advertising logo that it was some kind of obscure tattoo parlour. Many notable guests speakers turn up for the week long festival, and it seems overall to be a very formative experience.

You can expect fascinating talks such as Dr Ian Hunter's "Cult film as a guide to life - which delves into just how emotionally and philosophically attached fans can become of cult movies - ranging all the way to Jonzi D, who will be giving a demonstrative show of "hip hop theatre". That one does sound pretty interesting.

So that's it from me and Google for now, though be sure to look up Cultural Exchanges yourself too! Don't just take our word for it. Learn more about Cultural Exchanges week.

There is a small fee involved for some of the events, further details can be found by following the above link.