Charity Planning Meeting - Non-Magical Cultural Center on Magical Arts Room and Sports

Bertie Jackson

June 11, 2020 9:24 PM

Charity Planning Meeting - Non-Magical Cultural Center by Bertie Jackson

Bertie made his way to MARS, his expression neutral. That, he supposed, matched his feelings, if you considered ‘annoyed’ as balanced out with ‘excited by a chance to practise shorthand’ as creating a neutral sum total. He was definitely feeling both those things.

He had just about had a heads up both that Zara was doing this and that she had the default expectation that he would help before she put up the posters. He didn’t dislike the Center, far from it. It was full of cool things. Muggles let you straight up simulate killing people for fun. Not that the Center tended to promote those kinds of things. They tended to be more about Dance, Dance Revolution and Mario Kart. The latter of which was cool, he guessed. He really wanted to try one of the games that was full of zombies and guns though, just to see what it was like. He also had many happy memories of family afternoons doing their fetes and drive in movies and everything else.

He loved being at the Center and with Family-Who-Are-Not-Mom (Mom was not cool). But this wasn’t doing either of those things. This was doing A Thing at school and it was going to involve People and Effort, and Bertie did not particularly care about doing it. He also resented Zara just assuming that he would ‘cos family.’ That was such a Teppenpaw reason to do anything and she had yet to give him a logical reason and Bertie only did things for logical reasons. Well, usually. He was here because he thought he’d probably get in trouble if he wasn’t. That, he satisfied his own conscience, was a logical reason, even if Zara had failed to provide it.

The posters Zara had put up had contained a breif explanation of who they were an what they did. And lots of stars and eye catching moving text and a title in bubble writing. He resented being represented by a poster with bubble writing. It was like the hand drawn equivalent of comic sans. It did not present them as serious at all.

Non-Magical Cultural Center, Boston
Are you interested in how we bridge the gap between magical and non-magical culture?
Do you wish you could explore the non-magical world further, but lack the skills and knowledge?
The Non-Magical Cultural Center is dedicated to teaching magical people more about non-magical culture, in order to foster understanding, cultural exchange and appreciation.
Come to our planning meeting in the MARS Art Room on….’

Bertie did a double take as he entered the room, and found himself somewhere very familiar. The room was an exact replica of their gallery space back home. A small room with white-washed walls. His eyes roved over the intro text pasted on the wall, even though he knew it off by heart.

Non-Magical Art Throughout the Eras

This exhibition aims to provide a comprehensive overview of different movements and styles in non-magical art.

Each artistic movement is represented by a number of paintings. Firstly, a ‘classic’ or ‘famous’ example of the genre - the art or artists most likely to be referenced by non-magical people discusing this style of painting. However, as prejudice throughout history has led to many canons being comprised predominantly of white, middle class men, an effort has been made, where possible, to find and showcase artists of color, female artists, artists of different classes etc.

We hope you enjoy getting to know about different movements in non-magical art.

Please note that non-magical paintings do not move. There is no need to summon a maintenance person.

Around three of the four walls (excepting the one with the door Bertie had walked through) there were frames housing copies of paintings showcasing different styles of painting, along with an explanation of the movement and the artists shown. These periodically changed, cycling through the major movements of non-magical art.

The main difference to usual was the fact there was a long table in the centre of the room, with his sister sitting at it. He went to join her, notepad at the ready as they waited for enough participants to get the meeting started. He hoped people would come. And that they’d be nice. After all, Zara had effectively invited people into their home.

13 Bertie Jackson Charity Planning Meeting - Non-Magical Cultural Center 1497 1 5

Felipe De Matteo

June 11, 2020 10:19 PM

Present! by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe wouldn't prefer to be anywhere in the world but beside Zara, especially for a good cause. That being said, he would maybe have preferred that Bertie didn't terrify him while he did it. He was pretty sure the boy wasn't being scary on purpose, but Felipe was so used to Leonor - who had been very vocally against Felipe's plan to join in on this particular charity, and who had smirked about something she wouldn't explain to Felipe when he said he was going back to his room. So perhaps he was projecting, and Bertie was actually a good person. He seemed like a good person. So Felipe shouldn't be anxious about this.

In any case, he wasn't there yet. It was just Felipe and Zara and Felipe got to see into Zara's home through her own eyes. He'd been here before, of course. To the real one. But it was different seeing it conjured from someone's memory. It was a perfect replica, but it felt more personal somehow.

"This is perfect," Felipe breathed when he first saw it, looking around to take it all in. He was more used to non-moving pictures than moving ones, and it amused him to see warning signs up by them.

Bertie came in then and Felipe smiled at him, inclining his head politely. The Jacksons probably weren't the sort to have a man of the house, and certainly not one who was eleven years old, but it still felt like that to Felipe. He wasn't totally sure whether he would have been the heir had Leonor been born first, but still; being a boy mattered to the De Matteos and it was easier to treat Bertie like he was a young man than like he was a little brother. Part of that was probably because he had almost definitely seen Felipe kiss Zara before - a lot - and it was a bit awkward to think of that in terms of sibling-hood. Perhaps that's why Leonor was being so sour recently . . .

It felt . . . right. Being on this side. Being on the Jackson side of the room. Being with Zara and Bertie and being here in this place, ready to do this thing. If Zara would ever agree to marry him, he wondered whether she'd mind if he took her name instead of the other way around.

22 Felipe De Matteo Present! 1434 0 5

Mab

June 12, 2020 9:05 AM

A curious venture by Mab

On the whole, Mab was not a particularly social person. She'd been sorted to Pecari not Teppenpaw. She wasn't in any clubs. She had no interest at all in playing or watching sports. She had a awkward relationship with even her roommate. She counted exactly one person in this school as a friend, and she'd all but literally adopted him into her family (the legal term at this time was 'fostered').

So when the Headmaster mentioned at the Feast that there would be a Charity Fair this year, she hadn't thought much about it at all. She figured she'd go to the thing, pass around some of the weird magic coins Bel gave her for the purpose, and be done with it. She wasn't going to get involved.

But then the sign-up sheets and posters started appearing. And the more she saw, the more she was upset that the cause she wanted to see championed wasn't turning up. And then she saw one that had her hometown in the advertisement, and something broke inside her.

Fine.

She'd get involved in this stupid fair. She'd make her own stupid booth. But first she was going to go to this planning meeting, to get an idea of how these things even worked, what the organizers were supposed to say.

And to satisfy her curiosity about what the Non-Magical Cultural Center in Boston even was. She'd lived there for her whole life, non-magically, admittedly, for most of it, and she wanted to see what this even was.

So here she was.

She pushed opened the door to the MARS Art room and looked around, thinking oh, it's an art gallery. She wasn't really against art galleries, but Mom had never had the money or time for something so frivolous as going to an art museum, and Bel . . . wasn't really the sort to enjoy looking at paintings made by dead white guys, she didn't think. She nodded to the three people already there, then looked around at the walls while she waited for it to get started. She had to work at stifling the giggle at the admonishment not to call maintenance over the non-moving nature of the paintings, and thought Bel would probably at least approve of their dedication to diversifying their content, even if Mab still didn't think looking at the paintings of dead non-white persons who might not be guys would be high on her foster mom's list of things to spend her Saturday doing, either.

When her wandering brought her too close to the organizers, she felt compelled to nod politely to them and say, "I'm Mab. I'm from Boston. I was curious what this was. Where in Boston is it?" Not so much because she wanted to drag her new family to see it, as because she wanted to know if she and Alexander had Sonora classmates as near neighbors. If they were supporting this obscure art museum, they probably frequented it, and if they frequented it, they probably lived nearby, right?

Well, with the floo network and brooms and apparition, not necessarily. Still, if they got to Boston to regularly visit a cultural center, they could at least regularly get to Boston which still seemed kind of weird to her when she went to school in Arizona.

1 Mab A curious venture 1473 0 5

Zara Jackson

June 29, 2020 4:49 AM

Hey neighbour by Zara Jackson

"It can mimic any gallery or museum," Zara reminded Bertie, noting his surprise as he walked in, "We qualify," she added, her voice defensively proud, though more directed at the possibility lurking in the ether that said someone might doubt that rather than at either of the two people in the room.

At least, she assumed that was what Bertie's look of surprise had been due to, and not to the fact that she had had to hastily remove her tongue from Felipe's mouth when she'd heard the door open. She didn't think Bertie had seen and even if he had, she doubted that either teenage kissing nor the fact that she was doing it with Felipe were new bits of information for him to deal with.

It didn’t take long for someone else to join the meeting. The girl was… not Bertie’s year? Zara hadn’t noticed her often but she was pretty sure she’d noticed her before.

“Oh cool,” Zara smiled as Mab explained she was from Boston. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean she was into what they were doing here but she was a neighbour, and she hadn’t run a mile at the words ‘Non-Magical Culture.’ Hopefully this was friendly recon. “We’re in the West part, Dorchester,” Zara answered. It had a bigger immigrant population, cheaper rents and a heck of a lot of hoops to jump through for getting any kind of magical building camouflage outside of the main magical district - for which read the incredibly expensive Pureblood exclusive area with unaffordable rent.

“We try to embrace and educate on all forms of non-magical culture, providing a resource for magical people who are keen to learn and for those with non-magical heritage to stay in touch with both worlds,” she explained, handing Mab a leaflet which detailed the center’s art and culture programmes (this ranged from the permanent exhibition they were sitting in to more modern experiences like drive in movie nights) to their education and resources (as Zara had said, these were targeted at both populations, lessons on how to use the subway listed alongside community telephones and computers).

“Where in Boston are you, and is this something you’d be interested in?” Zara asked politely.

13 Zara Jackson Hey neighbour 1444 0 5

Mab

July 09, 2020 10:10 AM

Greetings, neighbor. by Mab

"Dorchester," Mab repeated, nodding, recognizing the area as a bit south of where she had spent most of her childhood. The name of the neighborhood was spoken with comfortable familiarity rather than the tones used by the people she met later in her elementary years, who she'd always been careful not to talk to about where she'd lived earlier in her life, or even the housing development where she lived at that time. "When I was little, I lived in Roxbury, and maybe a little in Dorchester, too, but I don't remember that a lot. Once Mom got more stable, she found some housing in South Boston closer to where she grew up that was only kind of expensive instead of horrendously expensive, but, um," she decided the Jacksons did not need all these details and jumped ahead to the present, leaving out the worst parts of her living situation history, which were not in Roxbury or Dorchester, "now I live more uptown. We're not far from the Boston Auror headquarters. That's where my, uh, my foster mom works." Because that gave just enough information that they ought to know not to ask. And they got both the answer to their spoken question and the unspoken one of 'do you even know where Dorchester is?' so that covered that base.

As for her interest . . . Mab looked over the leaflet she'd been given. The movie nights looked interesting. Maybe Alexander would be interested in going down for one next summer with her. "I am a chang- er, a, um, the term is muggleborn?" she asked uncertainly. She'd heard the fey term they used for people like her on multiple occasions, but it wasn't the term she used in her own head, so it wasn't one that stuck. "So I like the idea of keeping a bridge open between the worlds."

She gave the older girl a small smile. "Plus you are from Boston. I will support you just for that. Go Red Sox," she added with a wry look and an unenthusiastic fist pump that made it pretty clear she had zero interest in baseball, but was loyal to the city team anyway.

1 Mab Greetings, neighbor. 1473 0 5