By Rachel Huck
One of the great things about studying in my course; Advertising, is the encouragement my teachers give us to go out and experience media and culture. This creates more inspiration for us in class when we are thinking of ads and campaigns. In one class this semester, we had a fun assignment that lead us on one of my favorite outings in Newcastle.
Our assignment was a hypothetical heist. Our brief was that the queen’s jewels had been stolen and hidden in Newcastle’s museum, Hancock Museum. Our job was to create a plan to get the jewels back while staying anonymous. In order to understand the inner workings of the museum, my partners and I decided to go to the museum after class. We roamed the museum looking at stuffed polar bears and artifacts from around the Newcastle area. The museum is a very interesting place that I recommend everyone visits. We saw the Egyptian exhibit and took a great deal of photos together while enjoying the unusual day out. After this long walk around the museum we crated the perfect “re-robbery” scenario to get back the queen’s jewels! I was the supposed Hacker who would hack into the security systems and shut them down. (For anonymous purposes I’ve changed my friend’s names) Jessie was the “cat woman” who sneaks into the museum through a tunnel my friend Zac would’ve dug the week before. And of course we would hire Jamie Oliver to cook for us beforehand for sustenance. It was a great experience to not only get to explore Newcastle’s museum but also pretend to be spies like James Bond.
Afterwards, we all were in such a good mood we decided we didn’t want to go home just yet. So my friends and I took a stroll down to the Newcastle University art studios. We walked around enjoying the students’ art exhibition. It felt so nice to be out and doing something cultural.
Then afterwards we walked to our favorite lunch spot, Mani’s Pizza Deli. This place has the best pizza in my opinion as well as a chill basement with couches and TV. It’s the perfect place to grab a slice of pizza and chill out with friends. After a long time of walking and exploring it was great to wind down in my favorite pizza place in Newcastle.
After filled up with pizza, we walked down to Northumbria student bar, Habita. Habita has such a cool atmosphere that I really love. During our stay at Habita that day, there was live music playing. An indie guitarist sat in the corner playing soft indie music. We all sat around the booth having cider and chatting about how awesome the day was.
I’m blogging about this day in particular because before moving here I wasn’t aware of all the fun free places you can go as a student. While here I want to explore like this and discover even more hidden spots in the seemingly small city. It great to live where there are so many options of places to go with friends.
