Looking back at Cactus over the last few months
Thursday, 5th June 2008
Germaine Broadbent looks back at Cactus during Brighton Festival Fringe 2008
So the Cactus events at Brighton Festival Fringe 2008 came to a close with one magnificent party to celebrate langauges and travel at the Western Front!
Highlights included Alex’s wonderful skills at prize-giving…never has a bottle of Vin Rouge been so bigged up! 3rd prize in our rather difficult travel quiz (thanks Hayley!) was won by a local TEFL teacher who lives and works in Brighton. We all approved of this as many of us used to teach English as a foreign langauge abroad in our youth. 2nd prize of a 10-week evening language course was won by my friend and colleague Wendy Gorham - she was there with her colleague and friend Therese Cole, both of them from the Education Business Partnership based in Brighton.
1st prize of a language course abroad – ANYWHERE! - plus accommodation too was won by a lovely Polish lady. She is a violinist who had an amazing life story regarding living and working in Poland under communism, how being a musician had offered her the opportunity to travel and speaking English had offered her even more opportunities etc. She was at the event with her daughter who is considering doing a TEFL course. They had attended the Cactus TEFL evening originally and had come along to our finale party after hearing about it the Thursday previously. I picked the winner and went for the piece of paper that was right at the bottom of the ice bucket. I couldn’t think of a more worthy winner.
Other guests that we were pleased to welcome were Clare Forder from Routes into Languages. Clare invited me recently to become a member of our Routes into Languages/SCULA Consortium Advisory Group. I’m looking forward to hearing about the work they are doing to try to engage and inspire 14–19 year olds to get into and have an interest in languages. Cactus has offered a prize (to be confirmed) for their Languages on Film competition, but I am looking forward to hearing what else is in the pipeline at their first meeting on July 10th. Clare has a Latvian family background and has a personal interest in languages already. It was great to see Charlie Allesbrook from Brighton and Hove Business Community Partnership.
Lucy, Communications Manager at Cactus has recently attended one of BCP’s networking challenges at Swanborough House that felt like a bit like hard work by all accounts! However, the two of them scrubbed up well for the big night and were enjoying a well earned glass of vino…or five. I have to give a special thank you to the rather surreal but quite excellent Mariachi band that entertained the crowds all night. Tequila and sombreros… is difficult not to smile when encountered with this combination. Other super stars propping up the bar included Simon Sharron, Director of the Brighton and Hove City Languages Strategy and Head of MFL at Hove Park School and Laurence Giguet, MFL teacher from Chailey school – both specialist language colleges.
All in all it truly was a celebration of languages and travel - we had clients who had travelled abroad with us to study, people who were learning a language in the UK with Cactus, and various TEFLers and local languages people too, so it was a suitably fun and noisy end to our Fringe extravaganza in Brighton for 08!
Tags: english, spanish, french, german, italian, tefl, cactus, brighton, language learning, evening language course, brighton festival, chailey, hove park school
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