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1<br />
Interactive Cultural Ecology On Line<br />
(ICOL)<br />
1 ICOL<br />
2 Dig That Pic<br />
3 A Wonderment Curriculum<br />
4 Wonderlust<br />
5 Visual literacy<br />
6 Introducing the WOW factor into education<br />
The pictures are part of a sequence taken on holiday in Costa Rica.<br />
This blog is a development of http://blog.culturalecology.info/2017/09/<br />
1 ICOL<br />
ICOL is an informal not-for-profit UK organisation that networks schools, communities and<br />
individuals with digital learning resources for curriculum development and lifelong-learning.
2<br />
Its purpose is to help turn the United Nation's 2030 Agenda, aimed at living sustainably, into<br />
local action plans for the benefit of future generations.<br />
ICOL's aim is to introduce the 2030 Agenda into learning environments with a portfolio of<br />
free, customisable digital resources that can be added to and networked by organisations<br />
and individuals. ICOL has adopted the project 'Rescue Mission' as the model for<br />
international networking on line. Rescue Mission was a response of young people after the<br />
Rio 1992 Environment Summit to establish a global democracy of youth to meet the UN's<br />
targets.<br />
ICOL’s digital resources use cultural ecology as a cross-subject knowledge framework<br />
promoted with 3 hosted domains, 19 Wikis, and 20 Google Sites produced by teachers,<br />
integrated through a blog (between 10 and 30 registrations per day) and social networking<br />
using Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest. Site analytics for the Wikis and<br />
two of the hosted domains record a steady flow of between 300,000-400,000 unique<br />
international visitors year on year. A Google search for ‘cultural ecology’ reveals over a<br />
million websites. The Wikipedia entry, produced by ICOL, is top of this list followed by two<br />
entries for ICOL’s home website, culturalecology.info, at positions 5 and 6.<br />
Since the early 1990s the cost of developing and maintaining ICOL has been met with grants<br />
from the European Community, UK Government Agencies and Commercial Organisations.<br />
2 Dig That Pic<br />
One of ICOL’s wikis (http://digthatpic.wikispaces.com/) is an experiment-in-progress<br />
involving researching and evaluating web based multimedia place-based<br />
picture-education in relation to the formation of visual sub-cultures. In particular it<br />
explores the connections between art, culture and ecology.
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Today we are very much alive to a global culture with all its diversity being presented 24<br />
hours a day through pictorial media. 'Dig(g) That Pic' is an educational experiment in<br />
which discrete information packages are presented as groups or sequences of pictures.<br />
Each picture-package is created as a slideshow/gallery/video narrative designed with<br />
words/music making a self contained educational art work It is an exploration of the<br />
concept of meta art as an art work composed of art works aimed to elicit social action.<br />
Some useful definitions are:<br />
Dig or digg<br />
1 To learn or discover by careful research or investigation: dug up the evidence; dug out the<br />
real facts.<br />
2 Slang<br />
a. To understand fully: Do you dig what I mean?<br />
b. To like, enjoy, or appreciate: "They really dig our music and, daddy, I dig swinging for<br />
them" (Louis Armstrong).<br />
c. To take notice of: Dig that wild outfit.<br />
Pic; informal for a photograph, picture or illustration “Would you like to see my holiday pics?”<br />
PIC; acronym; platform for Internet content<br />
3 A Wonderment Curriculum<br />
A wonderment curriculum is led by the belief that values other than market values must be<br />
recognized and given importance and that the state of Nature provides the ultimate measure
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by which to judge human endeavours. A parent blogger put the need for a wonderment<br />
curriculum this way:<br />
Children see the world through a fresh lens. It’s almost as if they have a better understanding of<br />
creation than we adults who are racing and organizing and pushing. They have the time to see the<br />
vibrant colours of a butterfly, the fluffiness of a cloud, the funny gait of a caterpillar. They wonder at<br />
the world around them almost as naturally as they breathe. We need to harness this wonderment.<br />
We need to take the natural curiosity and joy of learning and develop a curriculum based on WOW!<br />
Factors and ways of infusing information that correspond with this.<br />
Unexpected encounters with creatures like the caterpillar offer us that “wow” factor and a<br />
sense of awe, that reminds us all just how amazing and diverse nature is, and draws us in to<br />
learn more. But even the most humble and commonplace organisms are doing amazing<br />
things in service to life. One of the most important roles for educators is to share those<br />
insights; to cultivate the “wow,” which ultimately opens the door to learning from nature, not<br />
just about nature.<br />
Laurens van der Post, author, traveller and mystic, spent his life drawing our attention to the<br />
mismatch between humankind’s wants and needs. Since his death it is now commonplace<br />
to see that in the long run we have no choice but move towards a global society in which<br />
there cannot be any economic growth, market forces cannot be allowed to determine our<br />
fate, there must be mostly small and highly self-sufficient and self-governing settlements,<br />
mostly local economies, very little international trade, highly participatory political systems,<br />
and above all a willing acceptance of frugal lifestyles and non-material sources for life<br />
satisfaction. In the meantime, the best that education for sustainability can achieve within<br />
present socioeconomics is to inculcate a sense of wonderment in the natural world and<br />
teach the skills necessary to provide technical fixes to overcome inevitable future<br />
catastrophes.<br />
Regarding educating for a sense of wonderment. Albert Einstein set out the thinking<br />
framework as follows:<br />
“I have no doubt that our thinking goes on for the most part without use of signs (words) and<br />
beyond that to a considerable degree unconsciously. For how, otherwise, should it happen<br />
that we sometimes “wonder” quite spontaneously about some experience? This “wondering”<br />
appears to occur when an experience comes into conflict with a world of concepts already<br />
sufficiently fixed within us. Whenever such a conflict is experienced sharply and intensely it<br />
reacts back upon our world of thought in a decisive way. The development of this world of<br />
thought is in a certain sense a continuous flight from wonder.”<br />
“A wonder of this kind I experienced as a child of four or five years when my father showed<br />
me a compass. That this needle behaved in such a determined way did not at all fit in the<br />
kind of occurrences that could find a place in the unconscious world of concepts (efficacy<br />
produced by direct “touch”). I can still remember — or at least believe I can remember —<br />
that this experience made a deep and lasting impression upon me. Something deeply hidden<br />
had to be behind things.”
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Einstein’s childhood learning experience is in line with the research of George Loewenstein<br />
who wrote that curiosity arises, “...when attention becomes focused on a gap in one’s<br />
knowledge. Such information gaps produce the feeling of deprivation labeled curiosity. The<br />
curious individual is motivated to obtain the missing information to reduce or eliminate the<br />
feeling of deprivation.”<br />
Loewenstein’s theory helps explain why curiosity is such a potent motivator: it’s not only a<br />
mental state but also an emotion, a powerful feeling that impels us to search for information<br />
that will fill the gap in our knowledge.<br />
Rachel Carson put it this way:<br />
“A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our<br />
misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful<br />
and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence<br />
with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should<br />
ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it<br />
would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and<br />
disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things artificial, the alienation<br />
from the sources of our strength”.<br />
The conventional educational belief is that by exposing people to the outdoors and<br />
immersing them in the workings of nature will elicit a deep sense of appreciation and<br />
wonderment. Van der Post’s standpoint is that only by finding our place in nature, and<br />
nature’s place within us, can we can truly address the environmental challenges we face<br />
today. His educational mission was to reconnect us to the natural world and to bring to our<br />
attention its role in sustaining human life on this planet. He sees us all as walking artists,<br />
hunter/ gatherers of stories about, place, memories and objects. His writings are a<br />
wake-up-call to the ecologist within us all. The educational home for this awakening is deep<br />
ecology, the environmental movement and philosophy which regards human life as just one<br />
of many equal components of a global ecosystem.<br />
Taking this into account, the following core beliefs of a wonderment curriculum operate<br />
within the positive cycle of learning fuelled by curiosity and wonderment.<br />
●<br />
●<br />
●<br />
●<br />
From birth, our innate curiosity drives us to wonder, explore, dream and discover.<br />
Curiosity drives passion. “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious”. Albert<br />
Einstein<br />
Promoting belonging and inclusion for all children to ignite and follow their passionate<br />
curiosity.<br />
Education and learning should be a vehicle that ignites a child’s natural wonderment and<br />
curiosity encouraging them to ask why and why not.<br />
Laurens van der Post followed this prescription in words, developing his ideas in the form of<br />
an ongoing philosophical travelogue. In summary his message was “There is a way in which
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the collective knowledge of mankind expresses itself, for the finite individual, through mere<br />
daily living… a way in which life itself is sheer knowing”.<br />
Wonderment triggers poetry As well as pictures. John Keating in ‘Dead Poets Society’<br />
encapsulated the social value of poetry as a vehicle to express wonderment..<br />
’ ‘We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we<br />
are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine,<br />
law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But<br />
poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for”.<br />
4 Wonderlust<br />
The aim of education for living sustainably is to prepare students for a world that will require<br />
them to learn continuously, to find and solve problems globally, to act with empathy so as to<br />
bring hope and equity to many and strive to live a life full of a passionate pursuit of beauty<br />
and wonderment. A wonderment curriculum is led by the belief that values other than<br />
market values must be recognized and given importance, and that Nature provides the<br />
ultimate measure by which to judge human endeavours.<br />
A practical prescription is to live and learn pictorially in a state of profound wanderlust and<br />
wonder as da Vinci might have done. Leonardo da Vinci was a brilliant artist, scientist,<br />
engineer, mathematician, architect, inventor, writer, and even musician-the archetypal<br />
Renaissance man, but Fritjof Capra argues, he was also a profoundly modern. Not only did<br />
Leonardo invent the empirical scientific method over a century before Galileo and Francis<br />
Bacon, but Capra’s decade-long study of Leonardo’s fabled notebooks reveal him as a<br />
picture thinker centuries before the term systems thinking was coined. He believed the key<br />
to truly understanding the world was in perceiving the connections between phenomena<br />
pictorially to reveal the larger patterns formed by those pictorial wow-factor relationships.
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5 Visual literacy<br />
If we think of literacy as reading and writing words, visual literacy can be described as the<br />
ability to both interpret and create meaningful visuals. With the constant, overwhelming flow<br />
of information and rapid communication today, both parts of this modern literacy equation<br />
are non-negotiable Our brains are wired to rapidly make sense of and remember visual<br />
input. Visualizations in the form of diagrams, charts, drawings, pictures, and a variety of<br />
other imagery can help students understand complex information. A well-designed visual<br />
image can yield a much more powerful and memorable learning experience than a mere<br />
verbal or textual description. Movies and still images have been included in learning<br />
materials for decades, but only now has faster broadband, cellular networks, and<br />
high-resolution screens made it possible for high-quality images to be a part of eLearning.<br />
Graphic interfaces made up of photos, illustrations, charts, maps, diagrams, and videos are<br />
gradually replacing text-based courses instead of augmenting them. We are now in the age<br />
of visual information where visual content plays a role in every part of life.<br />
According to Lynell Burmark, an education consultant who writes and speaks about visual<br />
literacy:<br />
“…unless our words, concepts, ideas are hooked onto an image, they will go in one ear, sail<br />
through the brain, and go out the other ear. Words are processed by our short-term memory<br />
where we can only retain about seven bits of information (plus or minus 2) […]. Images, on<br />
the other hand, go directly into long-term memory where they are indelibly etched.”<br />
Because of television, advertising, and the Internet, representing social facts pictorially as<br />
resources for learning through visuals is now the primary literacy of the 21st century. It’s no<br />
longer enough to read and write text. Students must learn to process both words and
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pictures. They must be able to move gracefully and fluently between text and images,<br />
between literal and figurative worlds.<br />
Today, anyone with a digital camera and a personal computer can produce and manipulate<br />
an image. As a result, the power of the image has been diluted by the ubiquity of images<br />
and the many populist technologies (like inexpensive cameras and picture-editing software)<br />
that give almost everyone the power to create, distort, and transmit images. But it has been<br />
strengthened by the gradual capitulation of the printed word to pictures, particularly moving<br />
pictures . The ceding of text to image has been been likened to an articulate person being<br />
rendered mute, forced to communicate via gesture and expression rather than speech. It<br />
was as a storyteller that Laurens van der Post communicated to people in their millions. Our<br />
brains are far more engaged by storytelling than a list of facts–it’s easier for us to remember<br />
stories because our brains make little distinction between an experience we are reading<br />
about and one that is actually happening. But a point can be driven home even more<br />
effectively by images.. That’s because visuals add a component to storytelling that text<br />
cannot: speed. Research shows that, visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text,<br />
which means you can paint a picture for your audience much faster with an actual picture.<br />
It’s no surprise then that tweets with images are 94% more likely to be retweeted than tweets<br />
without. This also points the way to the use of Internet media such as Pinterest (picture<br />
pinboards), Tumblr (picture blogs) Instagram (social networking of pictures) and Mindomo<br />
(mind mapping pictures) for mass education.<br />
6 Introducing the WOW factor into education
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Picture education is about exposing students to the wow-factor. This focuses learning on<br />
the theory of multiple intelligences and particularly on spatial intelligence. There is a<br />
number of distinct forms of intelligence that each individual possesses in varying degrees.<br />
Gardner proposes eight primary forms: naturalistic, linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical,<br />
spatial, body-kinesthetic, intrapersonal and interpersonal. A number of others also suggest<br />
an additional one: technological.<br />
One implication of Gardner’s theory is that learning/teaching should incorporate the<br />
intelligences of each person. For example, if an individual has strong spatial intelligence,<br />
then spatial activities and learning opportunities should be used. A wonderment curriculum<br />
has to concentrate on the principles of picture production. It is probably true to say that all<br />
people to a greater or lesser extent possess spatial intelligence. It has been estimated that<br />
visual learners comprise 65 percent of the population, so crafted images are clearly key to<br />
engaging people in eLearning courses and making picture education accessible to most<br />
learners.<br />
People with spatial intelligence (“picture smart” or visual smart) have the ability, or<br />
preference, to think in pictures. Spatial intelligent people create and use mental images;<br />
enjoy art, such as drawings, and sculpture, use maps, charts, and diagrams; and often<br />
remember with pictures through the process of mind mapping.<br />
The other thing that picture education is about is the feeding of wanderlust. Wanderlust is<br />
defined as the desire to gather knowledge by seeing new things and is usually applied in the<br />
context of the urge to travel. According to Miriam Websters Dictionary, the definition of<br />
Wanderlust is simply “a strong desire to travel”. It comes from the German language and is<br />
spelled Wanderlust. It is a relatively new word, dating back to the beginning of this<br />
millennium. These days the world is explored and presented through wanderlust images,<br />
when the traveller goes forth for pleasure or for political, aesthetic and social meaning.<br />
Andrew Delaney, Director of Creative Content at Getty Images explains Wonderlust (sic.)<br />
Imagery as: “Images that inspires a sense of awe. They are images that are connecting us<br />
with our surroundings and elicit a reaction of wonder when you see them.”<br />
Here are some of Delaney’s key points for teachers wishing to produce their own Wanderlust<br />
Imagery:<br />
● Work with depth.<br />
● Play with colour and texture.<br />
● Give a sense of the unknown.<br />
● Don’t worry about showing “bad weather”.<br />
● Mother Nature is often the “hero” in the image.<br />
● Be very aware of scale and effective composition.<br />
● Catch the particles in the air to diffuse the light e. g. smoke or dust.<br />
● Experiment with a wider crop. Embrace the 16:9 format to illustrate the scale of<br />
nature.<br />
● Dare doing a non-extreme sports shoot. A contemplating feel is often more<br />
welcomed.
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●<br />
●<br />
●<br />
Make pictures that are inclusive, that makes you wish you were there. Sometimes<br />
cliché works.<br />
You don’t always have to show the entire object to get other to understand what you<br />
are saying. Don’t be afraid of cropping.<br />
Use a subtle approach to colour rendering. Colour pallets are becoming more subtle.<br />
Man and nature are becoming more blended.<br />
Delaney makes some interesting points when talking about authenticity of the image. The<br />
concept of Point of View (POV) photography can sometimes be very effective when trying to<br />
evoke a feeling with the viewer, because it is about enjoying what that person behind the<br />
camera is enjoying. He says: “Be prepared to either discover it, or create a set of<br />
circumstances where the moment happens and you are there to photograph it.” Another of<br />
his tips is to try to be present and do your best to catch the decisive moment. It is not about<br />
controlling a shoot, but creating a shooting window, where as a period of actions happens<br />
and you step out of it to record what happens,<br />
“When the editors at Getty first look at a picture, they see if it works emotionally. Technical<br />
qualities are secondary but can sometimes add authenticity. Flare, backlight, a crooked<br />
horizon, blown highlights, or excessive grain/noise can all evoke emotions and helps with<br />
nostalgia. This must however be done delicately.”<br />
“All pictures today live or die on the basis of how they look as a thumbnail – which means<br />
you absolutely got to get your composition right”. If your picture doesn’t read as a thumbnail,<br />
it’s going to die. It is not going to get clicked on. The client of ours is not going to go to the<br />
next step of investigating an image if it fails the test of what it looks like as a thumbnail. It’s<br />
got to look good”.<br />
The concept of accessing a photographic point of view is central to generate the motivation<br />
to travel in order to experience the point of view first hand. Travel needs and motives reveal<br />
educational needs because they stem from an inner feeling of wanting to learn about new<br />
places and things, further fuelled by external pull factors that promise just that. This<br />
contemporary type of explorer has a fairly clear idea where she wants to go and she is not<br />
travelling away from her home (such as it is the case with escape), she is travelling toward a<br />
fixed destination. Her basic need springs from the feeling of a deficiency that she has<br />
encountered in her home environment. This deficiency (contrary to a lack) is subjective and<br />
a social construct. If the traveller’ nowadays described as a tourist, is not capable of<br />
satisfying this deficiency (with its corresponding need), she has to look for other ways to<br />
continue.<br />
The first aim of an escape is to gain distance from one’s home environment. It is like living in<br />
between two realities: the home environment that has been left behind, and the destination<br />
where one is physically present but not as a part of it; this is a betwixt and between situation<br />
that is also referred to as liminality. The alienation of the home environment during the<br />
period of being a traveller refers to a space-related liminality, wherein places that themselves<br />
are liminal, such as beaches (between land and sea), are usually preferred. Profound<br />
changes in the way that place and time are experienced as a result of accelerated
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globalization have led to a new questioning of identity, the self and the place people take in<br />
this world. Not only are ways of living leading to a sense of loss of identity, for many<br />
individuals computerized work conditions and everyday roles impose constraining and<br />
monotonous routines in which individuals find it difficult to pursue their self-realization. Many<br />
theories on motivation and needs to be satisfied have used this model as a basic<br />
educational outline. Pearce applied it to the case of tourism and combined it with the tourist’s<br />
experience. He proposed five layers of holiday motivations:<br />
●<br />
●<br />
●<br />
●<br />
●<br />
relaxation (rest active)<br />
stimulation (stronger emotions)<br />
social needs (family, friends)<br />
self esteem (self development through cultural, nature or other activities)<br />
self-realization (search for happiness)<br />
Travel needs and motives follow these different levels, the first two being the most common.<br />
It should be noted that this model is based on the Western world and in those parts where<br />
community life is especially valued, the ultimate goal is often not self realization but being<br />
able to serve the group, for example.<br />
Through the works of Laurens van der Post there runs a thread demonstrating intrapersonal<br />
and interpersonal intelligence. Overall his writings are a philosophical travelogue,<br />
communicated in words. They illuminate the capacity of humanity’s inner life to distinguish<br />
the evils of modern civilisation, the life-enhancing wonders of primitive (especially Bushman)<br />
culture, and for communicating ecstatically detailed sunsets, sunrises, lions, elephants,<br />
bees, and extraordinary facts about the wilderness of (it seems) South-West Africa. His<br />
writings are short on pictures. This is a feature of the times when they were written. A large<br />
body of research indicates that visual cues help us to better retrieve and remember<br />
information. The research outcomes on visual learning make complete sense when you<br />
consider that the human brain is mainly an image processor (much of our sensory cortex is<br />
devoted to vision), not a word processor. In fact, the part of the brain used to process words<br />
is quite small in comparison to the part that processes visual images.<br />
Mystery, enchantment, and wonder figure in our psychological and emotional well-being.<br />
WOW! and It’s Awesome! are exclamations that communicate an experience that has had a<br />
powerful effect on our body and mind..<br />
They express two core qualities:<br />
1. Perceived vastness — something we think to be greater than ourselves in number,<br />
scope, or complexity,<br />
2. A challenge or experience that alters our understanding of the world.<br />
Both exclamations are the outcome of an instant when you can’t quite grasp something. It<br />
feels like magic, amazement, mystery, reverence. It’s the moment when we realize it’s a gift<br />
and privilege to be alive. WOW and AWE can be triggered by different things for different<br />
people. It can result from profound beauty; spending time in nature; feeling connected to
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others; remarkable human accomplishments; scientific discoveries; or great works of<br />
architecture, art, and music.<br />
It doesn’t matter what pathway it takes, or what your belief system is, or what the story is.<br />
We just want to feel it. What is important is…to be moved.” Curiiosity is vital to human<br />
survival and social function. Thus the fostering, development and preservation of curiosity<br />
stimulate the imagination. For that reason, doing those things which develop, nurture and<br />
foster curiosity and imagination takes on moral force and doing those things which tend to<br />
stifle these capacities is morally problematic.<br />
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/curiosity-prepares-the-brain-for-better-learning/<br />
http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/15/how-to-stimulate-curiosity/<br />
http://www.culturalecology.info/imagination/
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Appendix 1 Format for a Pinterest Prize Draw<br />
WOW!!! It’s AWESOME<br />
Pic It!<br />
Open your eyes to the wonders linking nature with people<br />
Express them with Photographs and Creative Writing<br />
Dig deeper to satisfy your curiosity<br />
Communicate your wonderment via social media<br />
And spread messages about living sustainably<br />
You enter the prize draw by submitting a Pinterest pinboard you have produced with pins<br />
(pictures) taken at one or more of the nature reserves managed by the South and West<br />
Wales Wildlife Trust.<br />
Each picture should have text telling why you think each picture has a WOW factor and the<br />
covering text should tell a story of what moved you to take the pictures and assemble the<br />
pins.<br />
The educational context may be seen at:<br />
www.digthatpic.wikispaces.com
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These are the rules which apply to your participation in ICOL’s Pinterest Prize Draw. By<br />
submitting your entry you agree to these rules. If you do not agree, please do not submit<br />
your entry.<br />
1. The promoter of the prize draw is the not for profit organisation, ‘Interactive Cultural<br />
Ecology On Line’ (ICOL). The promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered<br />
by, or associated with, Pinterest.<br />
2. The prize draw is open to pupils of Pembrokeshire schools, excluding anyone associated<br />
with ICOL, their immediate family, or any person or company associated with the draw.<br />
3. The prize is for one winner only, judged by ICOL in the first week of the calendar month<br />
following on from the closing date for entries. .The result is final and no discussion will be<br />
entered into concerning the outcome.<br />
4. The prize is …....<br />
5. The winner will be notified through ICOL’s messaging system.<br />
6. Any personal information and contact details you supply will be used only for the purposes<br />
of administering the competition.<br />
7. ICOL reserves the right to amend these terms and conditions or to cancel, alter or amend<br />
the draw or the prize due to any circumstances that arise beyond our control.<br />
13. The prize draw is subject to the laws of England and Wales.
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https://www.renderforest.com/gallery/1826<br />
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