How can I Exhibit in the Atrium Gallery？

The Atrium Gallery in LSE (the London School of Economics and Political Science) provides a space for exhibiting a range of creative works, especially the works of our students.

We aim to promote a programme of high-quality art exhibitions which reflect creative activity.

Proposals to exhibit

We select exhibitions by proposal submission. Selected exhibitions showcase innovative, ambitious new work that contributes to the School's learning and research activities, and is a source of pleasure and inspiration to students, staff, visitors and the wider LSE community.

You must be a student at LSE at the time of the proposed exhibition. LSE Arts has no source of funding, therefore we will normally expect proposals to come with a minimum level of funding to cover core exhibition costs.

Proposals will be judged termly for exhibition the following academic term. And there is a high demand for our gallery space, so please list your first choice of dates and any alternate dates that would also work.

Complete our exhibition proposal form and send it to arts@ lse. ac.uk with accompanying images.

Proposal Submission Time

The deadline for exhibition proposals for Summer term 2019 is Friday 18 January 2019. The committee will review applications and successful applicants will be informed on Monday 11 February 2019. Exhibitions will be on display from 29 April to 14 June 2019.

Not all applications will be successful. Successful proposals will generally be exhibited the term after receiving the proposal.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at arts@ lse.ac.uk.

Beaches have been around in many schools. But a group of school kids in Cork in the south of Ireland are trying to do something a bit different with them. They have created a special bench called Buddy or Friendship Bench.

The idea for the bench came about last year, when Regina Farrell, school counselor at Mclntyre Elementary, was conducting a leadership group to help students overcome shyness and gain confidence. Four fourth-grade students came up with the idea when working with him.

The concept of the Buddy Bench is simple:Students who want to take part in playground games and activities, but may feel hesitant, can take a seat, which suggests to other children on the playground that they may needed an extra boost to participate. It builds kid’s self-esteem(自尊) to ask others to play with them. Likewise, reaching out to a peer who is feeling left out makes a great difference.

But do children actually use the benches? It’s something Sinead Mcgilloway from Maynooth University has been looking at. “We found that 40% of the children had actually used the benches at the time of the study. And over 90% said that they would talk to a child if that child sitting on the bench.”

“Since it was installed on Nov.16, the bench has been effective,” he added. “The simple concept has gained applause from the students, and already has created a more inclusive environment within the school community.”

“Each day, I go and see the Buddy Bench working,”Farrell said. “The lessons they are learning mow will benefit them their entire lives. It is simply a beautiful example of kids wanting to be kind and continue to be kind every day.”

The last African elephant at the Johannesburg Zoo, Lammie, lost her male partner to a sickness in September.

Lammie was born in the zoo 39 years ago. She had lived for 17 years with Kinkel, who died at age 35. Kinkel had been rescued in the wild after his trunk was caught in a trap in 2000.

Around the time of her partner's death on Sept. 4, Lammie had stopped eating. The day before Kinkel died, she was seen trying to help him get up.

Elephants are known for their intelligence, strong social ties and even the ability to mourn. Some people argue Lammie should be sent to another place where she can be with other elephants.

Audrey Delsink, wildlife director of Humane Society International/Africa, said Lammie "is in desperate need of a happier environment to live out her years." Delsink added that a wildlife rescue place is ready to take Lammie if the Johannesburg Zoo agrees to let her go.

But the zoo says Lammie is staying. It serves an educational purpose, especially for the poor who cannot pay to visit wildlife parks.

Michele Pickover disagrees. She is director of the EMS Foundation, a South Africa-based African wildlife rights group. She said "nobody learns anything" by seeing an elephant in captivity. She said that watching a film about elephants would be more educational.

But, a spokeswoman for the Johannesburg Zoo, Jenny Moodley, says it is looking for a new partner for Lammie. She said the zoo is following guidelines in its search set by the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

She added that experts are closely observing Lammie and that the elephant might not adapt well to a new environment.

Moodley said of Lammie: "She is coping incredibly well, considering that she has lost her partner."

The self-cleaning powers of Lotus (莲) leaves are something magical. Water sprayed onto them forms instantly into silvery pearls and rolls right off again-carrying any dirt on the leaf’s surface with it.

Lotus leaves resist water because of the special arrangement of their surface tissues. That arrangement has been reproduced in several man-made materials. Unfortunately, these materials are fragile--and, not being alive, cannot regrow and repair themselves. They are thus hard to commercialize, which is a pity, because the self-cleaning, self-drying surfaces they create could be of great value. However, a technique just described by Dr Jurgen Ruhe of the University of Freiburg, in Germany, may fix this problem by giving lotus-like materials the ability to regrow when damaged.

Dr Ruhe’s approach is to copy a second living organism-this time an animal, the lizard (蜥蜴). As lizards grow, their scales (鳞片) do not grow with them. Instead, old scales fall off and are replaced from below by new ones. Dr Ruhe theorized that it might likewise be possible to create a stack (堆叠) of lotus-like layers that would drop off when damaged, showing a new surface beneath. The task he set himself was to create a stack of these that could tell when the one at the top was compromised so badly that it needed to be replaced, and then replace it automatically.

To test his idea, he first glued the layers of the stack together with a water-soluble (溶于水的) glue. Then he scratched the top of such a stack with a small knife and exposed it to water. He found it worked. The top layer, did, indeed, come loose and fall off as the water leaked into the underlying glue. Such an arrangement will not, of course, last forever. But if the idea can be applied to industrial practice, then long-lived, self-cleaning surfaces may at last become routine.