If you happened to miss out last year’s edition, now you have a new chance to treat your eyes with all Pick Me Up 2011 has to offer. The UK’s first contemporary graphic art fair taking place at Somerset House between 17-27 March 2011, where the best, most innovative and avant-garde graphic artists, collectives and galleries from the UK and across the world will exhibit and offer an exuberant mix of artworks for sale. You are more into fashion than art? That’s not a excuse for you not to be heading towards Somerset House, as we are sure there will be plenty of trendy types wandering around the galleries in all those trends you really want to follow.

17-27 March 2011
Daily 10.00-19.00, Thursdays until 21.00, 
Embankment Galleries, South Wing

ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S LONDON WALK

So it’s Monday morning. You’ve just got back into work and find yourself sharing the elevator with one of your peers. The question arises: ‘Have you had a good weekend?’  Now your answer to that question could be: ‘Just the usual’, or you could make it be: ‘Quite good actually. Went out with friends on Saturday night then woke up early on Sunday morning to head down to Holborn station to take the Alfred Hitchcock’s London walk, an affectionate celebration of the London he knew and locations used in his films from the 1920s to the 1970s, including following in the footsteps of a tour Hitch himself gave to Ingrid Bergman back in 1948’

The elevator opens. Suspenseful orchestral music plays in the background Hitchcock style.

6^th March, 11am Holborn Tube Station

IDA KAR: BOHEMIAN PHOTOGRAPHER, National Portrait Gallery

From a half eaten chicken leg left on the pavement of Tottenham Court Road to a close up shot on the nostril of your flat mate, everything seems arty and cool with your £1.99 Hipstamatic app for i-phone. You are still a long way to get your solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery though. Back in the 1950’s what we today call old school was nothing but new. Ida Kar, born in Moscow, influenced by the 1928 Paris avant-garde, subsequently establishing her photographic practice ‘Idabel’ in Cairo in 1933 and finally moving to London in 1945 with a well-received Whitechapel Gallery one-person show in 1960, could be giving you a master class on how vintage photography is done, if only she were still around.

10 March – 19 June 2011 Porter Gallery, Tickets: £3/£2.50/£2

LA DOLCE VITA 2011

The Sweet Life reads La Dolce Vita in Italian. And that’s what we want you to experience between 10-13 of March 2011 at Business Design Centre in Islington, London.

An event dedicated to bringing Italy to London allowing visitors to experience the Italian lifestyle in all it’s glory. From delicious Italian food and wine to stunning hotels and beautiful properties, La Dolce Vita offers something for everyone and is a fun day out with a difference. This year the show has many new exciting features including Gastro Wine Walks and Free Language Lessons.

Divertitevi!

10-13 March, Business Design Centre, 52 Upper Street, London, N1 0QH

LAURIE ANDERSON, TRISHA BROWN, GORDON MATTA-CLARK, Pioneers of Downtown Scene, New York 1970’s

This March the Eureka team would like to see you walking into Barbican Centre. Why? Because there is an exhibition we think you may like.

Performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson, choreographer Trisha Brown and artist Gordon Matta-Clark were friends and active participants in the New York art community, working fluidly between visual art and performance. With the city as their backdrop, canvas, stage and inspiration, this exhibition is the first major presentation to examine the experimental and often daring approaches taken by these three key figures, both individually and collectively, in the burgeoning arts scene in downtown New York during the 1970s.

Featuring sculptures, drawings, photographs, documentation of performances and mixed media works, the exhibition focuses on the intersections between their practices and explores their shared concerns – performance, the body, the urban environment and found spaces.

You’ll be craving for a Hot Dog once you are done with the show.

3 March 2011-22 May 2011 Barbican Art Gallery. Tickets: £8 online/£10 on the door. Concs: £7 online/£8 on the door

Check out some new, up and coming music at the Round House Rising Festival.

The week long festival presents the best in new music across a wide range of musical genres. In partnership with Eat Your Own Ears and 12 Tone Records there are unique performances, international collaborations, seminars and creative works shops.

There is a strong emphasis on youth creative projects for 11 – 25′s running throughout the week. Projects include remixing, sound engineering, film, radio photography and fanzine production.

Click on the link to check out what’s on…..http://www.roundhouse.org.uk/rising

Tickets start from £5. Nearest Tube: Chalk Farm/Northern Line

Red Hair Exhibition – Royal Opera House

Walk through over 5,000 metres of red dolls hair at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Created by artist Alice Anderson (http://www.alice-anderson.org/constructions.htm) for the Deloitte Ignite Festival the hair winds it’s way around the The Link area of the building. It’s pretty much the first thing you’ll see when you enter the building!!

Nearest Tube: Covent Garden & free admission http://www.roh.org.uk/

Something different for Valentines day….

“Haunted History Walks” with a Valentine twist! Valentines brings images of love and hearts, but this is a walk around some of the capitals most horrid history sites with petrifying ghost stories of love, murder and torn hearts.

For details and booking go to http://www.londonparanormal.com/hauntedhistorywalks/smithvalentinemass.htm

Mon Feb 14th 19:30 – 21:15. £10 per person but if you bring a heart of some sort it’s £5.

Chinese New Year – Year of the Rabbit – Sunday 6th February China Town & Trafalgar Square

“A placid year, very much welcomed and needed after the ferocious year of the Tiger! We should go off to some quiet spot to lick our wounds and get some rest after all the battles of the previous year”

Go and celebrate in China town Sunday February 6th. From 12pm – 6pm there will be traditional dances, cultural stalls, lights, stunning live performances, fireworks and a live show in Trafalgar Square.

Nearest tube: Leicester sq/Piccadilly Circus & free admission

As ever Eureka has some ideas!!

No Trousers on the Tube Day – Sunday 9th Jan

Wear your best pair of pants and little else on your bottom half for the No Trousers on Tube Day, which takes place once more across London for 2011. Although the No Pants Subway Ride started in New York, the prank has spread across the world. Sydney, Montreal, Vienna, Lisbon, Hamburg and Seoul have all seen similar events taking place on the same day, with trouserless and skirtless commuters riding the subway system pretending that all is normal to the bemusement of fellow passengers.

No Trousers on Tube Day is part of the Global No Pants on the Subway Day, which takes place on Sunday 9th January 2011. A number of participants plan to meet at Trafalgar Square at 3pm on the day.

http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/whatson/no-trousers-on-tube-feature-3599.html

High Society Exhibition @ The Wellcome Collection

If you find yourself at a loose end one lunch head on down to the Wellcome Collection on Euston Road. ‘High Society’ is an exhibition about mind altering drugs in history. It explores the cultural spectrum of mind-altering substances across the globe and throughout history, legal and illegal!

11 November 2010 – 27 February 2011. Wellcome Collection on Euston Road. Entry free

http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/high-society.aspx

The venue was Brick Lane’s Vibe bar and the atmosphere was great from the outset. Everyone out to have fun and listen to good music.

And listen to good music we did. Robinson opened up admirably and got everyone in the groove. Followed by the upbeat gypsy-folk-rock stylings of a band who could have been of Mumford & Sons’ cousins, called The Dunwell Brothers.

But we were really only there to see one man, and it was clear why from the moment he came on stage. The whole crowd was mesmerised by Foy Vance from the first note. Vocals harmonies, guitar riffs and an array of strange noises all sampled and layered together live, with a bit of Irish banter thrown in between songs. The modern day answer to the one man band.

Plenty of beers and laughs along the way. Can’t ask for more on a school night.

Harry

November Top Tips

Shadow Catchers at the V&A

Five artists explore photography without a Nocamera! Floris Neusüss, Pierre Cordier, Susan Derges, Garry Fabian Miller and Adam Fuss – create images on photographic paper by casting shadows and manipulating light, or by chemically treating the surface of the paper. With no negative, unlike “normal” photography, each piece is always an original.

£5  – 13 Oct to Feb 2011 V&A, Cromwell Road London SW7 2RL. Nearest station: South Kensington

http://vam.ac.uk/collections/photography/shadow-catchers-camera-less-photography/

Reindeer petting at Covent Garden

Get into the Christmas spirit with free Reindeer petting at the Covent Garden Piazza.

Every Saturday from Sat 13th November until Christmas.

Nearest tube: Covent Garden/Leicester Square

Knit night

Fancy a night learning to knit or just want to make a warm scarf for these cold winter months? If you do then head down to Drink, Shop and Do on either Tues 16th, Tues 23rd, Tues 30th November, 7th or 14th December from 6pm onwards.

Beginners are welcome and it’s free so don’t be shy. Call 0203 343 9138 for details and booking. Nearest tube: Kings Cross

Love

The move will put PR at the heart of the creative process at Euro RSCG London, alongside channel strategy and digital. The PR consultancy will now be known as Euro RSCG London PR.

The merger reflects how fragmented media channels have accelerated client demand for more genuinely integrated marketing communications. The two companies already work across a number of clients including Peugeot, Reckitt Benckiser and AWI (Australian Wool Innovation).

Russ Lidstone, CEO of Euro RSCG London, will lead the merged agency with Graham Lancaster continuing as Chairman of the Euro RSCG London PR and Holly Ward as Managing Director of Euro RSCG London PR.

Russ Lidstone said, “Great creative business ideas are choreographed ideas across channels. We’re listening to our clients and putting conversational media at the centre of our offering at Euro RSCG London alongside digital and channel strategy. It’s genuinely very exciting.”

Graham Lancaster said, “Silo thinking has no place in today’s business communications. Impact, effectiveness, results and value are the keystones of our new fusion of brand and corporate PR, public affairs, advertising, social media and world class planning and creative thinking.”

As part of the integration the Manchester and Edinburgh offices of Biss Lancaster will be re-branded Euro RSCG Manchester PR and Edinburgh PR respectively. Both offices are managed by Managing Director, Brian Beech.

Contact: Tina Hodge 0207 240 4111

About EURO RSCG London:

Euro RSCG London is a top ten UK communications agency and part of Euro RSCG Worldwide, a leading integrated marketing communications agency made up of 233 offices in 77 countries throughout Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia Pacific

As the canal boats travelled down the 191 year old Islington tunnel all the frights inside came alive!

Eureka’s guest bloggers Joe (aged 9) “enjoyed the boat trip because it was dark and the fact it was haunted , I also liked how the witches responded to the people going passed.”

Whilst Tom (aged 15) “liked the fact the witches were very enthusiastic about what they were doing, and that it was nearly pitch black and all you could see was the ‘light at the end of the tunnel”

A ghoulish time was had by all.

Mwooohahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa!

Content is generated by all the employees at Euro RSCG London – via twitter hash tags. All employees at Cupola House can post relevant content to the site by tweeting content and using the #eurolondon hash tag and are also able to post content about news, jobs, culture and respective clients via specific hash tags.

The site also uses Google maps to highlight its network reach and to provide directions to the office, plus Linked In to access profiles of the management team.

Russ Lidstone @russlidstone, CEO of Euro RSCG London, said, ‘The social web is fundamental for all businesses and their agencies today. With SoMe and digital at the heart of Euro RSCG it was only natural for our new website to reflect this.’

The innovative new website’s concept was created and built in-house – with the spirit of the agency in mind: future-focussed, open, creative, curious and welcoming. A new social media policy was developed to provide guidance for employees.

Russ Lidstone added, ‘As an agency we have utilised social media extensively across campaigns – for our own CSR programme One Young World and for brands such as Dulux globally. So this is simply about us walking the walk’.

Last week it was announced that Euro RSCG London won the Chivas digital business in a competitive pitch adding to its above-the-line duties

For further information contact Bella Hignett: bella@ckpublicity.com

With such a large cast and a plot line that reminds me how weak Eastenders et al have got in recent years, my fellow Eureka pals and I were enchanted throughout all four acts whilst a curiously timed yet appropriately atmospheric rainstorm raged on the other side of the canvas.

They certainly don’t write them like they used to. Here’s why:

Leonora is planning to run away with her lover, Alvaro, since her father forbids their relationship. When they are discovered, Alvaro accidentally shoots Leonora’s father and as they flee, they trigger a worldwide man hunt by her brother Carlo, who is intent on finding and killing both his father’s murderer and his sister.

As the lovers are separated so soon into the chase, a terrified Leonora disguises herself as man and with the help of a monastery, seals herself in a cave in the mountains awaiting the salve of death she craves to atone for her father.

Her lover Alvaro, believing she died during the chase, goes to America and joins the army.

Still with me?

Good. Well, there, he saves the life of a fellow soldier whom promises to care for him forever more (yes, it is Leonora’s brother, Carlo). Without knowing each other’s true identity, they become firm friends and, when Alvaro is seriously wounded it is Carlo who ensures he gets medical help.

Left alone with Alvaro’s possessions, idle curiosity sees Carlo find a picture of Leonora, he draws appropriate conclusions and vows to kill his friend – blood is thicker than water after all.

You can imagine what follows, but not how it plays out.

Rather than kill him there and then, Carlo waits for Alvaro to recover as he wants to kill him properly in his father’s honour. He follows him across the world and back to Italy where he finds Alvaro has become a Monk (and you don’t have to wonder where).

After a tense build up, they fight. Alvaro wins and as Carlo lays seriously wounded, Alvaro seeks help from the ‘monk’ he knew to be stationed in a nearby cave to give absolution to the dying man.

Leonora and Alvaro recognise each other disbelievingly, and, just when you think it’s all going to be OK, Leonora goes to comfort her brother in his last dying moments and he stabs her, fatally.

Now imagine all that with a raging storm, atmospheric lighting and the stunning, haunting voices of the Holland Park Opera.

Then try and watch an episode of Eastenders.

Nope, doesn’t even come close.

Despite the wide range of activities and acts available at the Hard Rock Calling festival on Saturday, by sundown it became face-smackingly apparent that every one of the 50,000 individual in the audience had come for just one man: Stevie Wonder.

Mr Wonder, you might say, is to music what the Dalai Lama is to Buddhism.  Or Edison to light bulbs.  He’s a shimmering ambassador for the art form of music.  You can mention his two dozen or so Grammys (one for every two years of his career), but this can’t summarise what he means to so many; from Tchoupi, the little woollen Eureka monkey to the little girl sat clapping along to Stevie from her dad’s shoulders.  The man cuts across the lives and experiences of so very many.   And it was a quite a sight to see, as the Master Blaster despatched hit after platinum hit, like endless waves of joy over the ocean of assembly humanity at Hyde Park.

Good day overall it was too.  Before Stevie wove his particular magic, Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay leapt about for us like an Apache, James Morrison massaged our blissed-out souls and sweet Corrine Bailey Rae (I’m in love…) serenely sang her way into our hearts. 

We didn’t get our faces painted, but we did have a funky Polish picnic, nicely rounded off by some contraband Pimm’s.  Perfect day really.  And it didn’t even rain…                 

This time, the lucky Eureka winners were Sandrine, Paul (our blogger for the event), Adam, Harry and Kate; guided by the wonderful Caroline. Watch out for the next Eureka events and tickets…