London Ads, from Dickens to Taylor Swift, from house to streets.

Charles Dickens Museum and Ads magazine

What’s the best choice you can do when you have three hours left before your flight back to Italy, and after you had a long business and networking event the night before at Ham Yard Hotel in Soho, which lasted for hours and you had to spend time talking..and talking…and talking…and walking…and talking…? Discover it.

Russell Sq., a not very crowded are, quiet, full of cafeteria and hotels, and leaves 🍃 all around.

Russell Square, London
Goodenough College, London

Well, less then three hours left.

Let’s google ‘what to do in Russell Square’. Here we are: Charles Dickens was born here, go to visit C.D. Museum, 48 Doughty Street!

Charles Dickens, that popular writer, and journalist, and speech creator, who lived in the Victorian Age, and maybe not only – ’cause he is contemporary too.

Let’s visit where he was born and lived with his wife and his 10 children 😅

Charles Dickens Museum
Charles Dickens pottery

Charles Dickens house

It’s so impressive. When you walk into the house you walk into the past. An old lady 👵 (member of the Dickens’ Fellowship) welcomes all the visitors, really pleased to help and tell you the magic and legends about Dickens and his family: ‘He had 10 children, they all lived here, where he also wrote and studied.. and then there was his wife.. she was so strong, she only lived into her house, reading and knitting and taking care of her family. She must have been very strong, it’s the only explanation’.. and I was enchanted about her storytelling, she was so passionate about Dickens that her eyes lighted up when I smiled and started asking questions about his possible life. She has been my guide and now I’m sad to not have a pic with her.

Dickens’wife embroidery, found in the house
Fanny Dickens (Charles’ sister, the only beloved by the author – they say)
Dickens’s Dream – an unfinished painting by R.W. Buss (1875)

Dickens was a campaigner too. He also created a journal,  All the year round (1859), a magazine where fiction met non-fiction and literary matters were explained. What’s the best part? It still costs 2 pence!

All the year round – Ads magazine by Dickens
The Strange Gentleman by Dickens at St. James Theatre – theatre poster

London is one of the city where artists and writers could do what they want and live life free. Maybe more than in any other country. And street art works quite good. It’s the place where you are totally surrounded by ads posters and screens and videos, where there’s no one taxi or bus without a specific sponsored brand or campaign, not a only corner or tube stop left without any slogan or tv and comedy campaigns. Shop windows, cabs, streets, pavements.. immersive contents, with you inside. You get overwhelmed by advertising and their messages and you feel in London only when you’re stuck in those moments. It’s the city where Dickens was born, poetry found enough room, and music hits the ground with a bunch of singers and artists too.

It was after an hour that I decided to go further, move towards the nearest tube station. A plane was waiting for me after at Gatwick airport. Just walking outside Dickens’ house, here’s what I found:

Telephone ads – Taylor Swift, Reputation (album)

…switching from a Victorian magazine manifesto to a call box advertise. It made me think about how you can promote something nowadays, impacting the environment and every kind of support you can see during your daily walks. And here we are to another chapter, another type of writing, through the Street art, or better, street ads. 

#CallTaylor is the name of the campaign created for its Reputation, her new album. So  I read that Taylor Nation put up a post on Taylor’s Facebook announcing they have placed 13 reputation phone boxes around London where you can call a number and leave Taylor a voicemail to enter a competition… I found one, by random.

 

#NoteOfTheDay ‘Look what you made me do‘ by T. Swift (2017)

My #Art of the brick – once again in London, DC Comics

My art of the brick? By chance, Southbank, London, after having a look at this ads, in the tube, some months ago.

Amazing Lego art - London 2017
Amazing Lego art – London 2017
IMG_1897
Amazing Lego Art, exhibition in London

10 mins later I was staring at the astonishing DC characters made of Lego bricks, a private collection of work of arts created by Nathan Sawaya, maybe the most popular #brickartist.

It was a private exhibit and I think it’s going all around the world. When I asked to the guy at the entrance, how Lego contributes to this kind of arts event, the answer was that the company doesn’t deal with that. None of a single campaign nor logistics or any support was done by the giant 😳 They do not support those exhibits because they already have a popular brand which is affirmed in the world, hence maybe arts only bother them.. 🙄

By the way, the collection shows a lot of giant and reflective colorful bricks, which are able to show feelings and represent the proper DC characters and also show their movement and shapes:

Lego Art of the brick exhibition – the Joker eating popcorns 

Wonder Woman – Lego art, printed

                              one of the main room of the exhibit

Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, Flash…and the whole world of DC comics created in a bigger size:

giant Wonder Woman
Superman, Dc Super Heroes

Superman staring at the mirror
Gotham area

first type of bricks, they look a little bigger and pierced
Unbelievable cloak all made by bricks!

#NoteOfTheDay Another brick in the wall by Pink Floyd, 1982 – the song against apartheid and against the English school system.