From Polly Pocket to the Camden Roundhouse: Sir Torquil Norman, Londoner скачать в хорошем качестве

From Polly Pocket to the Camden Roundhouse: Sir Torquil Norman, Londoner

Sir Torquil Norman graduated from Harvard and Trinity College, Cambridge. He gained his pilot’s licence at eighteen and completed his National Service in the Fleet Air Arm. When he left the airforce he bought a Piper Comanche aircraft and took up skydiving. A hobby he shared with his late wife. After working as an investment banker in America for eleven years, he returned to the UK in the 1960s and subsequently entered the toy making industry. He later founded Bluebird Toys and created some of the icon toys of the 1980’s, such as the Big Yellow Teapot House, the Big Red Fun Bus, and the very successful Polly Pocket. He is a long term Camden resident. He famously bought what is known today as the Roundhouse,for £3 million in 1996 "as an impulse buy," having read it was proposed to be turned into an architectural museum. He then raised £27 million from public and private sources, including almost £4 million more of his own personal funds, to restore the crumbling Victorian former railway repair shed into the Roundhouse. Sir Torquil, who had previously received a CBE, stepped down as chairman of the Roundhouse Trust in 2007 and was knighted the same year for his "services to the arts and to disadvantaged young people”. In 2007 he won the Beacon Fellowship Prize for his work with young people through the Roundhouse Trust. This film was made on a Roundhouse workshop in partnership with Chocolate films. 1000 LONDONERS This film is part of 1000 Londoners, a five-year digital project which aims to create a digital portrait of a city through 1000 of the people who identify themselves with it. The profile contains a 3 minute film that gives an insight into the life of the Londoner, as well as their personal photos of London and some answers to crucial questions about their views on London life. Over the course of the project we aim to reveal as many facets of the capital as possible, seeing city life from 1000 points of view. 1000londoners.com    / 1000londoners   facebook.com/1000londoners Twitter @1000_londoners 1000 Londoners is produced by South London based film production company and social enterprise, Chocolate Films. The filmmakers from Chocolate Films will be both producing the films and providing opportunities to young people and community groups to make their own short documentaries, which will contribute to the 1000 films. Visit chocolatefilms.com Transcript: My name is Torquil Norman. Torquil is a strange Scottish name that my parents gave me. I really like the toy industry and I had a homemade research team with five young children and so it worked very well, I suddenly discovered. They asked me, from time to time what are the qualifications for making toys and I thought to myself, well it wasn't my law degree, and it wasn't being a banker. I think the two qualifications are an eye for detail because I discovered that young people are very interested in detail and love how little things work, you know, and so on. And the second thing was a mental age of about seven. I qualified very well on that side, so I never really grew up inside, as far as toys were concerned. My most successful toy was Polly Pocket I have to say, because we did huge things. And also it was such fun and so easy to think of new things to do with her. I mean every year we had so many options as to what to make. Then eventually we made little houses where you'd lift the roof off and every house had a bulb and a battery in it so it lit up, so when you put her to bed and put the roof over, the windows lit up. Initially my wife who, alas, died of Alzheimer's disease before it was finally finished, but when I left the toy industry I wanted to do something that would be of some help to young people, after all for eighteen years I'd been designing things and working with and trying to improve them and so on. And I thought it would be a good thing to give something back, so when I heard the Roundhouse was for sale I got quite excited about that and my wife and I decided we'd use the money and the charity that we'd started to try and buy it and we were successful. The building itself is improved, because we were able to put various big, thick chunks of glass. There are three pieces of glass in all the windows. Each one about that thick, with a gap between, and that meant that we soundproofed the whole building. You can go to about 108 decibels now which would blow everyone's eardrums, without disturbing the neighbours! Young people are still at the centre of what we're trying to do here and that's the way we wrote the lease. The building has to be used for that purpose and so with any luck, in 90 years time or something when the lease comes to an end, it will have done quite a lot of useful work.