JN3800 Portfolio. Christmas Markets

Should Preston City Centre's Flagmarket host Manchester style Christmas markets?

For its sixth year, Manchester has hosted its famous Christmas Markets. For a month and a half the city becomes home to a range of stalls from different cultures around the world.

Many shoppers think a similar thing would be beneficial to Preston.
Although Preston is a considerably smaller city, such markets would surely bring a lot of revenue into the city, and the Flagmarket would make the perfect venue.

Preston city councillor for Culture and Leisure, Tom Burns said “The Flagmarket is host to a lot of events throughout the year so it would be impossible to host a month long market, as Manchester does.”

However, surely with the latest retail figures falling way below average for this time of year, Preston City Council need to excite customers into shopping in the city. The BBC said " Even companies that are maintaining sales are doing so at the expense of margins."


View Manchester Christmas Markets. in a larger map

Although Preston could not possibly compete with the sheer size of the Manchester markets, as seen above, it could bring much needed footfall into the centre.

However, Mr Burns said, "The economy would obviously benefit, but our indoor and outdoor markets would suffer."

Three shoppers from Preston City Centre disagree with Mr Burns and beleive a Christmas market would be a good idea, when asked, "Do you think a Manchester style Christmas Markets would be beneficial to Preston?"

Portfolio Market 1 by tarynmarie91

Useful Websites-
http://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/200066/manchester_markets/5289/manchester_christmas_markets/1
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15642939

JN3800 Portfolio. Movember

Movember


November is over and so is ‘Movember'

'Movember' is a month long Prostate and Testicular Cancer awareness campaign. This year, ‘Movember’ has raised more funds than ever before, with the UK as the second highest contributor. Up to now, the worldwide campaign has made over £63 million this year.



‘Movember’ is a time when men from all around the world registering at Movember.com with a clean shaven face and over the course of the month growing elaborate facial hair to raise money for men’s cancer.

Year upon year the campaign has steadily raised more and more funds with even famous people getting involved such as Newcastle footballer, Joey Barton.



The website states, “Mo Bros effectively become walking, talking billboards for the 30 days of November and through their actions and words raise awareness by prompting private and public conversation around the often ignored issue of men’s health.”

More people are now aware of male forms of cancer, just as much as more well-known awareness campaign, such as ‘Breast Cancer awareness.’

Click to enlarge image.

Flickr Credits- 1st photo- by Redwineheadache
2nd Photo- by The Movember Foundation

Useful Websites
http://uk.movember.com/

JN3800 Video Skills Test- Supporting 'Movember' 2011

This interview is with 3rd year UCLan student Ross Boyle. The interview is about Movember,which is a relativley new campaign to raise awareness of testicular and prostate cancer. Over the month, many people raise money in aid of cancer research.

I chose this story as there are a lot of students at UCLan getting involved. The interview was about 1 minute long, however, I edited it to be the recommended time of around 30 seconds. Instead of leaving my interview questions in the video, I cut them and instead added titles to show the questions I asked.

JN3800 Data Skills Test

Click Graph to enlarge

Guardian Datastore Content:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/sep/29/adoption-statistics-england


Adoption rates in the UK have fallen since 2009 due to the gruelling two year process potential parents have to suffer. Instead more and more people are opting to adopt outside of the UK.
Many people choose young children so that the adoptive process is an easy one for the child, but this means older children are over-looked and are often shoved between different foster-families.
Adding to their plight, many people are turned down before the process even begins, due to ethnicity, location and social habits, again leaving more children in care, without stability.
I chose this data as it is about Britain specifically. The message I am trying to convey through this data is how Britain's adoptive process means that many children are overlooked due to the time wasted and how it should afterall be in the best interest of the children who are in care.

JN3800. Map Skills Test

For the Multimedia Production module on my course, we have been examining how hyperlocal journlalism can be used. By looking at stories from a small area this allows for more in depth stories.

In the module we were told to create a custom Google Map, using four articles from 'The Lancashire Evening Post' newspaper. On this map we were asked to locate the stories and then create interactive features, whereby clicking on the pointers on the map, the reader can find more about the stories, such as the link to the original story and a link to more information on the subject.

To show that I had understood the task properly I also explored some of the other features, such as icons and images.


View Map Skills Test in a larger map

Images Skills Test- JN3800

In JN3800 Multimedia Production, I was given the task of taking a photo of one of the following;

                                                      -Lancashire County Council

                                                      -Preston City Council

                                                      -The Flag Market

                                                      -Preston North End Football Club

                                                      -The University of Central Lancashire.

I chose to photograph The Flag Market, which is situated in the centre of the 

city.

From here, the task entailed cropping the image into three different sizes, using Photoshop before putting them onto a blog, in order to better understand Multimedia Production.                               

The sizes were;

                    -100x100 px

                    -400x300 px

                    -200x500 px. 

Here you can see the original image of The Flag Market;

 The first crop I did was the 100x100 px, here is the image;

The next crop was the 400 pixel wide x 300 pixel high image;

This is the final cropped image and is 200 pixel wide x 500 pixel wide;