Manchester Science Festival Finale: Comedy in Space

Well as always it was all over far too fast! Taking place down stairs in the MOSI main building was the finale, Comedy in Space hosted by Chella Quint. This was stand up comedy by women :) The volunteers were invited as a thank you for all of our hard work. We had drinks vouchers so I had 2 glasses of red wine. It was great to see some familar faces again and I got a hug when I arrived from a fellow volunteer which was nice. She loved my skull dress and scarf. On each of our chairs was a bag of flyimg saucers, a quiz (name that galaxy) and a piece of paper with a question on. They alternated between 2 questions and the one I got was if alien life visited us on earth which tv alien would you most like then to be like? I said Mork. We had to hand the quiz and the question in at the start. It seems that most people thought like me which is sweet to know.

   

 Chella was in a space onesie for the first half then changed into a black and white dress. We had space poetry by this women in red. One was a tribute to the festival volunteers.We loved that! There was also Jen Gupta who I have seen before talking comedically about her ridiculously long title and her job.

 We also had a lady doing abit of role play firstly quoting funny quotes about space and then she turned into a drill sargeant. Lastly was Helen Keen talking about well known women of space from the past. This included showing photo's and asking us if we thought they were criminals or role models.

   There was also room to give Pluto the stage and also Uranus which yes did include any innuendo, you can think of!

This was such a great night, what a way to end the festival!
All that remains is the credits


       So long, I hope to do it again next year if you'l have me

Call of the Wild

Today, Saturday 1.11.14 is my last day as a volunteer this year. I enjoyed it very much but felt abit sad as I can't believe it is over already! I was at MOSI for the day from 9am to 4.30pm doing a workshop 'Call of The wild' with renowned wildlife sounds recordist Geoff Sample. My first festival event last week was a conversation with him and Marcus Coates. Always nice to get up close and personal and chat with the researchers and Geoff is such an amiable chap.

 This event started at 11am after a few technical hitches. I was to work with another volunteer on this all day whose name escapes me. He is a biomedical student.Not doing too well with names this year but hopefully I will find them out tomorrow night :) He is lovely anyway. We greeted the visitors and I had a list of names so I could tick them off. This is a popular event and after seeing it I can telly why.Such a pity that on both occasions there were empty seats even though it had been fully booked.
Geoff started off by setting the scene by giving us sounds of various location types and asking us what they were. They included the seaside, a forest and a waterfall. Next he played us various animal sounds and we had to guess what they were. They started off easy e.g cuckoo, crickets then proceeded to become a bit tricky and then became hard. I managed to get some photos when he revealed the answers and there are some creatures I'd never even heard of which I plan to look up, such as the Mole cricket and a bird called the Nightjar. So thanks Geoff for teaching me a few things about the animal kingdom. Anyway here are some photo's.

Please click on the photo's to embiggen.

The final part of this event required volunteers from the audience and the kids were more than happy to oblige. Some adults too! They made noises or said words into a microphone which Geoff then edited and altered the speed of using some software. This aspect does take some time.  It was fun how he changed peoples voices or words to sound like an animals. He explained that this can be done at home as there is free software and all you need is a microphone. This is a long but lovely event which takes time but after lunch it was repeated again. My colleague actually volunteered to have his voice recorded. We helped Geoff pack his things into his car afterwards and it was a nice chance to talk to him. He told us he was about to start writing a new book, so if you're interested, that is definitely something to look out for! So the science festival is all over already. Of course tomorrow is the last day and there is still plenty to see at venues all over Manchester.
 http://www.manchestersciencefestival.com/whatson/guide/default.aspx?view=all&d=2+Nov+2014

I am really looking forward to the evening event Comedy In Space with Chella Quint. This is also a thank you party for we volunteers. We are promised drinks vouchers and all the flying saucers we can eat! I am of course looking forward to meeting up with fellow volunteers again and having a good chat and a few laughs. If you are there, say hello! I also look forward to volunteering again next year. If they will have me.

 http://www.manchestersciencefestival.com/whatson/msf14comedyinspace