Collecting_and_niches.cda

I attended the Collecting Power lecture (online) on Thursday with St Bride Foundation. It inspired me to look through my own collections. I realised my neurodivergent traits often show up on lectures. I had trouble focusing on the lecture, because of excitement rather than boredom. I started looking at my own collections within the lecture and my brain was like, 'let's start a blog post!' That was my attention span gone until the half way break, because all I was thinking about was what to write on the next post.

I think teachers are doing kids a disservice when they just say the child is being disruptive in their lessons due to boredom, because sometimes it might be the enthusiasm the child is reacting to instead of being bored. 

Photos of my collections.mp3

I'm a passive collector, where physical circumstances and exposures influence my collections. I'm not conscious of collecting things, but often end up with the same items collected from different places and life events. These are my less personal collections. I collect cards my friends, family and acquaintances send me throughout the years, but these are too personal to distribute.

I was a very prolific collector when I was a kid, I had a collection of rocks, where I'd collect rocks from different locations when we went on holiday, as well as school trends like yo-yos, gel pens, and crazy bones (maybe I peaked in childhood). I'm more into keeping my home minimal now, with muted colours and bare decor. I think this is a way of detaching myself from a chaotic childhood, because my dad was a in the borderline of hoarding. He was a collector in the sense that his collections were utilitarian and survival, such as collecting sauce sachets, disposable knives, forks, and chopsticks from the restaurants, and the free samples from hotels. And it's not just one or two, he would grab an entire handful of freebies. I think my grandmum on my dad's side used to do that too - my aunty caught her in the act when she was filming a family holiday in the 90s [I so want to analyse but ethically can't]. My dad's hoarding used to drive my mum mad, because she wanted the house uncluttered. She had a small collection of keyrings from her holidays. I think my mum's got a magnet collection now.

My brother collects sounds from the London underground. When he travels to London, he would dedicate his days there to using the underground for leisure, and record what each station, and each underground sounds like. He records sounds from buses as well. He also collects lego, builds his own ideas, and commentates the characters in his creations. [Randomly realising just how eccentric me and my family are] I keep diaries, so I guess I collect my own thoughts. 

I think the quickest way to find out what someone is like, is seeing what their collections are, or asking them what items they would take with them if their home was on fire.

These are some of the tote bags I've collected

I collect bits and pieces from art exhibits, and things like foreign travel tickets and exhibition ticket stamps.

Collected art catalogues, as well as books on the things I'm interested in at the time, so my personal library is eclectic.

My music collection. The previous generation like the action of looking through their CD collection, but in mine, it was the joy of turning the iPod nano 90 degrees and exposing the album artworks to look through. I'm gutted the iPod Classics don't have that feature.

This was actually my friend's collection of Doctor Who cards. We used to talk on the phone for hours after school about Doctor Who, and it ended up costing my dad loads of money on the phone bill. Thinking back to it, I was kind of a leech until my 20s. One of my previous driving instructors said to me his mum told him to pay her rent money as soon as he reached working age in the 70s. It's an example of generational "meritocracy" but "lifestyle inflation" is more a accurate description that masks inequality- maybe generations before a certain decade collected out of survival, with utilitarian collections, whereas generations afterwards celebrated collecting as a marker of cultural taste, consumption and excess. Like the Stanley cups, but the function of the item becomes obsolete and more looked at as a ‘museum’ artefact.

This was my second collection - my first collection was snails, when I was 5, I used to pick them up and put them in my coat pocket. I remember seeing an ad for mr Bean magazines, bought issues 1 and 2 when it came out, then and asked my dad to subscribe me to the magazine. I liked the little facts the magazines have on different subjects. I think it introduced me to
 being curious interdisciplinary rather than within one subject.