40 Days and 40 nights Pt II

I joined Coleg Gwent in the early 90s as a part time lecturer just delivering a couple of hours a week of DTP. Coleg Gwent was an FE college in Newport and I worked in the Engineering Department under a man named David Nelms. David Nelms is the only manager I have ever met in my life who possessed no hypocrisy, no malice and had a genuine desire to help people. Towards the end of his career (blighted too soon by ill health) as the face of FE education was changing into the mess it is now he would fight tooth and nail for his team. As a former engineer he was smart, organized and a craftsman. he didn't really understand the potential of computers, nor did he have any idea about art, graphics or multimedia. But, he had a sense that a change was coming. Talking to him once he remarked that he felt I was made for great things (I have heard this so often its bizarre). He often told me that he thought I would become principal before I hit 30. (my teachers variously had told me that I would make my first million by 18, become the first asian prime minister by 35 and on one memorable occasion rewrite history before hitting 30 - I cannot comprehend what would make seemingly sane, educated adults say things like this to a child, least of all me)

The most brilliant part of his character was that he would turn to those who did know and those he could trust. David Nelms' greatest talent was his ability to spot the genuine article among a sea of phonies. I was on 2 hours a week and he asked me to begin creating what I had talked to him about - new interactive future. I wrote several courses, hundreds of units (in fact at one point a former head of OCN remarked that over 90% of all OCN units in creative media being delivered in Wales were written by me!). I bought Macs, software, cameras - you name it. I created the first multimedia studio in an FE institution in Wales - all as a part timer. In the meantime a full timer had been appointed in graphics that even he didn't know about. Later on he told me that he had found out, after a great deal of shouting, that the college was getting money from Europe to run courses to promote getting women into technology. As a result college managers had demanded that a woman be employed - not me. Still I continued to build - my week was now approaching 60+ hours and I was being paid for 24!

In the late 1990s the college found itself in serious financial problems (to the tune of several million) through what was alleged to be mismanagement, fraud and incompetence - it all blew up after some lecturers had anonymously blown the whistle to newspapers. The result was a massive restructure. It was also the time I left the union. the union had agreed a deal to safeguard most of the full time jobs - at the cost of massive cuts in part time hours. I was a union member too but a part timer - they stiffed us.

The restructure led to a new Section of Art and Design being created and I applied for the post of Section Head. I didn't get it.It turned out that the successful candidate was a close personal friend of the head of the faculty and despite having demonstrated no ability was preferred to me. I stayed on and decided to carry on what I was doing.

Around the same time I had finally managed to persuade the Head of Campus at the time that my concept for a state of the Art Multimedia building should be taken on. I had won the argument about multimedia and even my fiercest critics could not argue with my belief that games, mobiles, web, interactivity were the future. I sat in the Director's office talking him through lans, sketches and designs for the building (the same one I had pitched to UWN some five years earlier - with an estimated cost of £18m. I was virtually laughed out of the boardroom for suggesting something so 'ludicrously expensive'. A year after UWN dispensed with my services they had a new building built on the campus for the art faculty - it was smaller, less innovative, had no integrated technology and cost over £4.5m more than mine)

It all looked like finally things would happen. Yet, more financial woes had been unearthed and less than 6 months later - just a few months before the bulldozers would have started work on my building - the land for it was sold off to Aldi.

This is the point at which I felt I couldn't go on. It was also the first time in my life when I genuinely felt sub-human.

There was another restructure and I couldn't apply for Head of School since the posts were now ring fenced.

Now I am programme leader (although my deputy head of campus refers to me as 'just' a lecturer) of multimedia and watching the rapid destruction of the everything I had once built. I still have a studio but creativity no longer flourishes. I spend the best part of my week both in work and out completing needless paper work that does nothing but hide the deficiencies of managers. I have no autonomy. I get told what to teach, where to teach, when to teach, how to teach and what with. I'm not even allowed to put an ink cartridge in my studio printers. I can't purchase anything anymore so we keep buying crap technology that it wholly unsuitable. Teaching and Learning has become secondary to the management of teaching and learning. I have no voice. I have half a million pounds of hardware and for the past 2 years neither final cut pro, motion, CS2 Suite or DVD STudio Pro has worked. All my cameras today are £300 Argos consumer type jobbies, I've been waiting for 3 years for game development kit and I now use more square footage of space for storing administrative files than student portfolios. My studio is in the corner of the engineering workshop block. Most days my Mac Pros are slower than the 10 year old G4s they replaced. Squeezing anything to do with Welshness and Wales into the kids' daily routine is more important than encouraging creativity. In short, I've failed again.

One day recently I woke up and found that I was 40 and my life had gone. I hadn't even noticed. I don't know what I want to do or even what I can do. I don't trust my talents or abilities and doubt them regularly.

I do know though that I have to leave. taking on this MA is the first step. Beyond it I can't see anything. My BA turned out to be as worthless as I feared and I can't dismiss the possibility that one of the reasons that I am struggling to consider a future plan is the nagging suspicion that after graduating with an MA I might find history repeating itself. so why put too much hope on the future?

I've thought about maybe looking at creating iphone (or even ipad!) games. I could lock myself away with just a mac and an internet connection and work - never having to see another human again. I need to do some serious upskilling in coding for this tho. I can handle Lingo, Javascript and a little Actionscript, but I haven't touched C for nearly 8 years now. I have good skills in 3D, Graphics, Video, DVD and interactive authoring. I can also write fiction ok - although I've never tried to get anything published.


As a child I thought it would be a good thing to grow up and change the world - make it a better place in the sense that children think of. I always felt like the world was in trouble - I don't know why - and that someone should save it. I grew up trying. Now I don't care if the world becomes better or not. It doesn't want to be saved. Only my monumental stupidity and arrogance wouldn't let me see that.

If I get my MA I might feel better. if I can get a new job or career out of it that would be better. if I could become successful enough to bulldoze UWN and Coleg Gwent, salt the earth and carve my name into the ground then maybe I might finally be able to sleep at night.