{"id":1261,"date":"2016-04-15T17:13:52","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T17:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/international\/?p=1261"},"modified":"2016-04-15T17:13:52","modified_gmt":"2016-04-15T17:13:52","slug":"family-journey-colombia-into-british-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/international\/family-journey-colombia-into-british-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Family Journey. Colombia into British Culture."},"content":{"rendered":"

37 Years. <\/b>Differences in time & space<\/b><\/p>\n

My father, Felipe Posada,\u00a0studied in London back in\u00a01978 – 1980.\u00a0He came with my Mum,\u00a0Clara \u00c1lvarez. We had a conversation about the time they spent here and what my dad remembers as the most striking experiences in London.<\/p>\n

V- How come you both decided to come to the UK? Is there any particular reason?<\/b><\/p>\n

F-<\/b> We both wanted to speak English. We didn\u2019t want to go to the States, we preferred the United Kingdom because we had a couple of friends living in London, from Medellin as well. Besides that, we knew a lot about the cultural activity of London.<\/p>\n

We admired a lot the work of Pink Floyd<\/b>, we actually went to the world release of The Wall Album. We liked Queen, Supertramp, Fleetwood Mac<\/b> and, of course,\u00a0David Bowie<\/b>. Also we loved the Philharmonia Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra and we knew a lot about the musical activities at\u00a0the Royal Festival Hall, which attracted our attention a lot.\u00a0In Colombia the cultural realm, particularly at\u00a0that time, was not so developed. We were also attracted by the National Gallery,\u00a0<\/b>National\u00a0Portrait\u00a0Gallery, TATE Britain <\/b>and the British Museum.<\/b><\/p>\n

\"international<\/p>\n

V- Tell me about your life as a student in London. What do you remember the most? <\/b><\/span>Particularly at\u00a0the Polytechnic, was it located at Regent street? When did you arrive at the first time?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

F-<\/b> It was the 4th of October 1978 and we left 15th September 1980. The first 6 months we spent studying English to take the Cambridge University Proficiency Certificate to enter the University.\u00a0<\/span>Almost the same process that you have had to take.\u00a0Then I joined the PCL Polytechnic of Central London\u00a0<\/span>(which is the University of Westminster today) and\u00a0there I took two part-time courses, one was in\u00a0p<\/strong>hotography <\/b>from a technical point of view and the second one was in\u00a0history of photography<\/strong>. The first one was very compelling to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

My lecturer was Dr. G.G. Attridge<\/b>, he was the co-author of the book of The Manual of Photography<\/b>. That book was really useful to me in my life as an entrepreneur of photography within Latin America<\/b>, I trained my employees from there. The focus of Colormatic <\/b>was the quality and customer service, which was based on that book.\u00a0<\/span>I found the education in the history of photography very political, w<\/span>hich at times\u00a0overwhelmed me.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"internationalV-How do you feel the British people perceived\u00a0Colombia, and Latin America in general, back in the days when you lived in London?<\/b><\/p>\n

F-<\/b> At that time Latin American countries, especially Argentina, Chile and Uruguay were coming out of dictatorships.\u00a0For that reason Latin America was a fashionable place, they all wanted to know what was going on. People were\u00a0interested in those countries and how they were returning to democracy<\/b>. The Military Coup in Chile was a really well known event in London.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0case of Colombia, when I was there some M19 guerrillas took the Embassy of Dominican Republic and it was really notorious in London\u2019s Latin American atmosphere.\u00a0In terms of my daily life,\u00a0Latin American culture was not in the atmosphere <\/b>as much as was, for example, Germany or people from the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\"international<\/p>\n

V-Did you have\u00a0any ideas about coming back? Did you ever return to London after leaving?<\/b><\/p>\n

F-<\/b> After having lived in London, I came back twice.\u00a0<\/span>Once for work and another time\u00a0for vacations, we went to Bath, St.Ives and St Michel\u2019s Mount.\u00a0<\/span>I would love to come back at some point.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"international<\/p>\n

V- Talking about Clara, do you have any sense about how she felt here?\u00a0<\/b><\/span>Tell me a little bit about her experience here.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

I cannot remember clearly.\u00a0<\/span>I believe she studied painting in an Art academy at the V&A cultural institute if there ever was one.\u00a0<\/span>She also completed the Cambridge First Certificate in English. She was really happy here<\/b>.\u00a0<\/span>In London you experience a feeling of freedom a<\/span>s a Latin American, that is quite difficult to describe. <\/span><\/p>\n

V- What did you gain from\u00a0having lived and studied in the UK? Also I would like to know what are your thoughts about me living and studying here now?<\/b><\/p>\n

My living and studying in the UK gave me a lot of things: firstly, I was able to learn the language. Although I did know some English, it was kind of clumsy, I got to speak \u2018nd write \u2018nd read as if I were a Briton! Once I was in\u00a0a Pub\u00a0near Soho, just off Oxford street, and was having a nice chat with some British acquaintances I had at that time and, after the conversation had gone on for a long while, Damien, my English teacher, made a comment about Colombia, my country. You can\u2019t imagine how surprised my British friends were that I was a foreigner, for they\u2019d thought I was a British subject with a cold as my voice sounded as if I was having a flu to them.<\/p>\n

My skills in photography<\/b> and business created the ideal state of mind for founding my own business when I returned to Colombia. The mere fact that I spoke English opened many doors in the Colombian entrepreneur scene<\/b>,\u00a0<\/b>as not many people of my age spoke English at that time and having a Business Degree from\u00a0a British University added extra qualifications to my CV for which I felt so proud of.<\/p>\n

We also enjoyed the cosmopolitan lifestyle <\/b>you got in London at that time, the culture of the world was gathered in London, the art, the music, the cuisine, the fashion. Besides, the\u00a0world politics was also discussed in a broad way within the English media.<\/p>\n

During my time in London the BBC series \u201cLife on Earth\u201d <\/b>was being aired by Mr. Attenborough himself, we used to watch every week\u2019s episode without fail. This was a kind of science series we loved and had the opportunity to enjoy getting to know; there were also a lot of art series similar to the\u00a0life on earth, which my wife and I had the opportunity to watch on British TV then.<\/p>\n

\"international<\/p>\n

About my daughter living and studying in the UK,<\/b> it is as if I were living through it again, I feel so happy s<\/strong>he\u2019s having this opportunity and seeing her enjoying it so much<\/b> makes me feel a lot of joy and gratitude to life.\u00a0I am pretty sure she is going to take great advantage of her getting involved with the academic art world in England.\u00a0I could continue\u00a0on end for hours\u2026.<\/p>\n

For more images please visit Veronica’s Flickr\u00a0page<\/a>\u00a0and Felipe’s Flickr page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

37 Years. Differences in time & space My father, Felipe Posada,\u00a0studied in London back in\u00a01978 – 1980.\u00a0He came with my Mum,\u00a0Clara \u00c1lvarez. We had a conversation about the time they spent here and what my dad remembers as the most…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":169,"featured_media":1266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10,12,14,15,18,19],"tags":[164,200,252,385,399,424,470,538,623,676],"class_list":["post-1261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-favourite-memories","category-friends","category-london","category-music","category-student-experience","category-travel","tag-colombia","tag-diaspora","tag-family","tag-journey","tag-latinamerica","tag-london","tag-memories","tag-pink-floyd","tag-soho","tag-studying-in-london"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}