Southbank Crates

As part of the cultural Olympics the Soutbank Centre has a series of crates on display which promote some of the events that are taking place this summer.

 The Phare Ponleu Selpak is the Cambodian circus school I have mentioned before in my blog.

The South African musician Eugene Skeef taught two Bosnian musicians how to play the Nigerian udu drum.  If you go to this crate and listen you'll hear a song called Cosmic Genie

A Uruguayan mural project from 2008 - 4000 people created 131 murals to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

 Photo by Oscar Monsalve. A music project in Colombia called Batuta - a network of educators, musicians and children.

Casa Grande - a Chilean based art collective who drop poems from aircrafts over cities that have been bombed in the past during military action.  This photo is of poems being dropped over Guernica in Spain.

'Popstars' from around Europe

I completely forgot that I have actually visited more of Europe than I realised via the Eurovision preview parties!

In 2008 I saw quite a few acts live at Scala in Kings Cross and my favourites were:

Ruslen Aleho from Belarus singing 'Hasta La Vista'

Sirusho from Armenia singing 'Qele Qele'

Ani Lorak from Ukraine singing 'Shady Lady'

Laka from Bosnia & Hertzegovina singing Pokusaj

The Willesden Bookshop

This little bookshop in Willesden Green has children's books from a large range of countries including some I hadn't yet visited for my blog: Bosnia & Herzegovina,and Slovakia.

Looking though their online catalogue makes me wish I was a kid again so I could read books like this:

http://willesdenbookshop.co.uk/