Woodford Day 03

Apparently I didn't save my draft from before, that's a shame. It's 9:30 at night, I'm on a camping chair outside the Amnesty tent, listening to some jazz from a nearby tent. I've decided to camp in the marquee tonight and see if that's nicer. It also means I can hang out at the stall for longer and try and get some more petitions going.

Had a moment of rage earlier, one of those moment where you briefly lose faith. The tipping point a woman who annoyed by our asking her to sign retorted with 'I didn't come to a festival to sign petitions', I had to leave for a short while after that.

It's hard to comprehend that a festival very closely based on the 1960s flower power counterculture can have such uncaring people. "would you like to support women's rights" "no thank you"... Amazing the amount of women that say "no thanks". But I've also met so many passionate people, some much more disheartened than I and I took the opportunity to try and raise their optimism which in turn did the same for me. I've spent a good few hours today just having conversations with people, some in the know and others that hadn't a clue but wanted to know more.

The amount of young people stopping by has been heartwarming, even all the really young kids. I didn't even know what a petition was at their age. We're up to 526 petitions over two days which is the most I've ever seen in my 5 month stay at Amnesty.

My aim is to get that number to 1,500. We had one amazing woman that took a stack of cards and went into the street and started going up to heaps of people and leading them to our tent. We're not allowed to do that, but I wasn't about to stop her. We decided that's exactly what we're going to do on the last day, so even (worst case scenario) we're kicked out, it's the last day and shouldn't matter.

Gotye must've finished, a lot of people just started walking past. I should get back to it. Night all.

Andy Scott

Woodford Day 02

Not the worst night of sleep ever, but there was room for improvement, no room for my feet though. Tent is just a smidgen too small, even Carmen had to sleep diagonally in her tent. We bought the same tent as each other. Well technically Carmen copied me. Heh. Took half an hour to an hour to find the Amnesty tent, we're across from a bakery. Ooh the temptations.

I'm not in activist mode just yet, figure I'll let everybody have their breakfast first. And I'm a little tired myself...

Time lapse! I'm now back in bed, the background noise is of five different stages trying to outdo one another. There is nothing nice about camping. It's both boiling and then freezing, I'm itchy and cramped, it smells of wet clothes, there's probably spiders in with me and definitely mosquitoes. Oh and the cold showers...

But the festival makes it worth it because it was majorly enjoyable and I cannot wait to get back to it tomorrow. We ended up with 321 signatures for our Egyptian equality campaign. Almost double what we got for the Harvest Festival. Met so many people too, gonna have met everyone at the festival by the end of this.

Should sleep, must remember to update throughout the day tomorrow. Probably won't. Heh.

Andy Scott

ARTillery Follow-up & Woodford Day 01

So it's been two weeks, what can I say I've been very lazy. I've been taking it fairly easy the last fortnight, destressing after the craziness of organizing ARTillery. I didn't end up being really worried when we were setting up on Thursday and Friday the 8th and 9th. We'd done all the hard work and just had to push everything in the right direction.

Hate to do this but I'm going to cut this short and summarize the help out of it. I'm in a tent at Woodford right now and I want to sleep. The weekend was a great success, we ended up with 160 or so the first night. The place was packed with peoples, very exciting. Teri and I gave speeches, mine informal, hers tugged on my heart strings.

Rained a lot for the rest of the weekend so there were much less peoples. It was supposedly one of the best events Amnesty QLD has ever done, I'm very pleased with that. They said that they want me to stay on board and hope I can do more events in the future.

I certainly will! I've decided to re-enter the academic world. Good thing my enrollment hadn't expired. I'll be doing two subjects this semester and will be working closely with the UQ Amnesty group.

I'll be at Woodford for the next week campaigning for women's rights in Egypt. But it's pretty much a vacation. Man there's a lot of loud people around here... I do have earplugs.

Sorry this was so short, just felt like I should post something but wasn't really in the mood. Well that's it then.

Andy Scott

Fatigue and Adrenalin.

Just one day to go and I was probably a tad optimistic about how ready we were. Doesn't help that work needs me to come in this morning, the guy they're letting go is being let go earlier than planned. Ah wells I'll be done by midday and then can race over to te Amnesty office to help out there.

I've got to finalize the specifics for the musicians today, it can be really difficult to just get an answer to some questions. We had to get a marquee to keep the event at at a certain level of awesomeness, we have a lot riding on that courtyard. Otherwise it's pretty much just a gallery room and it'd be hard to engage people in there.

We're doing volunteer training today as well. Everyone needs to be fluent in the campaigns, but also their roles for the weekend. Then we're gonna head off to West End, the City and the Valley to hand out the remainder of the business cards.

Oh and I'm getting a tattoo today, was getting it Tuesday but that was just a stupid idea. Fortunately they were able to shift it to this afternoon. Hope I'm not too woozy for the remainder of the day. Heh. Man, I need sleep. Can't remember my last day off, I've lost count. I'm also working five days next week for the first time, not going to make that a regular thing, they just really need my help right now.

I'm thinking from this experience whether I really want to get into a management/coordinator position again. I know it'll all be worth it once we open to tomorrow, I don't regret being a part of this. But I miss having spare time, i won't say I miss my life, because this is also a very cool life. I just don't enjoy this level of busyness. Or maybe I do deep down... I'll find out when it's over and if feel bored.

Yeah, I'll probably want to do something else. Ha ha. Urgh. Just blanked out for a few minutes. I shouldn't make it sound like I'm miserable. I get to open a fucking art exhibition tomorrow, who could have seen that coming even six months ago, not I. I'm now very well known in the QLD Amnesty community and have several prospects lined up for 2012. I have it good and I'm doing great things.

That seems a good point to end on, I'll be writing again tomorrow from the exhibition at different intervals and then will upload at the end of the day. Fingers crossed time. Love you all.

Andy Scott

Physical Graffiti.

Sitting down at Jugglers Art Space. Gus, our graffiti artists, is hard at work completing the mural that will be the backdrop to our bands. I'm filming it so as to make a time lapse video, so there's not a lot for me to do in the meantime.

Went on 4ZZZ yesterday with Carmen and also Jess & Billy from The Secret Whisper, our headlining band. Was a little nervous before going in but once we hit the studio room I felt at ease. After all I know what I'm talking about and can improvise fairly well if need be. I spoke with a few people afterward that said it went really well, it did feel like it went really well. Looks like we'll never get to listen first hand though as they don't record the program. That's a shame, but it's okay because we spoke about everything we needed to and the message is now out way more than it was. But after our mX article comes out some time this week we should have huge exposure.

Vanessa, the host of the program, mentioned to us that if we were ever interested in doing out own show we could get training from 4ZZZ. I am seriously considering it. I was planning on starting my Casual Activism blog again in the new year, but what if I had a weekly radio show instead. I'd try for something like The Daily Show, except more of a focus on human rights activism. I'll have to find someone that's interested in partnering up with me for it. Will have a think.

Then we went to the Amnesty End of Year party at the Indooroopilly bowls clubs. Never played lawn bowls before, very different to regular bowling, you're not supposed to go full speed like my first attempt. Although subsequent tries weren't much better. It was a little quiet, everyone weary from a long year of fighting for people's rights. That and the recent redundancies made it a little difficult to be 100% positive.

I have a lot to do today. On my way back to the office I'm going to stop into the tattoo studio and ask them about doing the Amnesty tattoo on my wrist and filming it for the exhibition. It's an idea that's stayed with me right from the beginning. Although originally I wanted to get the tattoo done live on the opening night in front of everyone. That was quickly vetoed, probably for sane reasons.

I feel remarkably calm despite the fact that it all happens in less than 5 days from now. We are on top of this, it is going to be excellent. Whether people come and take part is up to them, we will have done out part. I'm very proud of myself for what I've done these last few months. That's all from me.

Andy Scott