Collaborative work: 

The other members of my group are Emma Hackett and Edward Hotham.
Their contact details are:
Edward: 07928959636
Emma:

Individual subject areas: 

We are researching the subject 'Leisure and Pleasure.' We discussed many elements of leisure and pleasure in London, and after researching around the topic I have decided to look into the custom of drinking tea, and the coffee shops of London, as I think this would have been a major part of leisure over the time period we are studying. I think it it would be interesting to research the emergence of the social custom of drinking tea, and the part London played in its popularity.

We also discussed the different types of leisure we could research, I think it would be interesting to research domestic leisure, what people did in their own homes in their free time, for example reading, listening to music or throwing dinner parties. However, we also must focus on the much broader topic of outdoor leisure activities, such as visiting London's pleasure gardens, the theatre or London Zoo. Within the group we also discussed that we will research the topic of games, but we will not place too much emphasis on this in our presentation as a previous group has done this. We discussed the ideas of drinking, gambling and prostitution in London being within the topic of leisure and pleasure, and that it may be worth mentioning these things in our seminar presentation, but we do not want to talk too much about them as they may be more related to the seminar on crime and punishment.

During our group meeting we noted that it would be particularly interesting to bring in knowledge we have gained through studying heritage into our presentation. Recently we have been learning about the formation of galleries and museums, and as this is within our time period we could use this work to help with our presentation, for example we have learnt about how the British Museum in London, established in 1753, became increasingly popular over time, with many visitors. The development of museums in London is certainly a topic we will focus on within our research.  Roy Porter's 'London: A Social History' has also given us inspiration about what to research, particularly in researching the pleasure gardens of London.

Original aims and objectives: 

We want to create both an engaging and interesting presentation. We also want our presentation to be very informative, and to make sure that the audience understands our topic. In order to do this we may need to plan a question and answer session, or a quiz on the presentation we have given. I think it is important that our seminar presentation does not go into too much detail, as often it can be quite hard to concentrate if a presentation is quite wordy. While our presentation should be extensive, there should not be too much the audience has to write down. We aim to create a seminar presentation that holds that audience's attention. Furthermore, hopefully our presentation will be for the correct amount of time, it is important for a presentation not to be too rushed or slow, as this can make it tedious.

Record of meetings: 

We held a meeting in the library on Thursday the 8th of November. After meeting up, I decided that my task would be to research drinking tea, furthermore Edward seemed to be interested in the gardens of London, so he may have chosen this as his research topic this week.

Contact list:

It may be helpful to contact the British Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. We certainly must also visit these places.

Problems: 

We had some problems trying to arrange a meeting this week as it is quite hard to find time when we are all free. Also, we had trouble deciding exactly when to go to London. We will have to discuss this issue in our further meetings. It may cause problems that Edward lives so far away from me and Emma, our first meeting was on campus in the library, however we may have to meet in a more suitable place next time so Edward does not have to travel so far. Logistical issues aside, we also encountered a few problems relating to the topic our seminar presentation is on. We had trouble when we were discussing what time period to focus on. We are unsure whether we should take a chronological approach to the leisure and pleasure activities we will discuss, or whether we should focus on one time period, for example leisure in the 19th century.  I feel it would be best to have an overview of leisure and pleasure in London over the whole time period we study, as it will enable us to observe changes in the way people spend their free time.

Reflection:

While a little disorganized, I feel our meeting this week was a success, as we covered the important task of deciding what to go away and begin researching.