The photo says it all doesn’t it. Deserted old baby doll, an MDF crib and a hastily assembled sheep made from silver foil rolls, cotton wool and PVC glue. Add to this several pairs of gold cardboard wings, some tinsel halos, 3 paper crowns (sharp-edge free), plenty of stripy sheets and even more recycled curtains and what do you have? The show any perfect Christmas wouldn’t be without: the School Nativity. It’s the pride and joy of every parent, but also the source of their greatest anxiety: Will they remember their words? Will they cry or have a tantrum mid-way through? Or will they, like the nightmare of one parent at a nativity my sister attended last year, projectile vomit all over the front row of the audience? For the teachers, even the smallest nativity is a mass production of prodigious strategic complexity… reminding the children to smile, to sing, to stop picking their noses, steering the little angels in the right direction, and pulling them away from where they’re not meant to be, remembering the words to the carols on their behalf and of course watching out for that same nativity-shattering tantrum.
Nativity Norms (Pen on paper, 2011 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown)
Read more
Richard III (2016 ©Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, acrylic on canvas)
Norms at the Halloween House of Horrors (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)
The Nighthawk Norms (after Hopper) (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)
Norms at La Pedrera (2014 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen and ink on paper)
Norms visit the C’an Joan de S’Aigo (2014 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen and ink on paper)
Norms in Soller (2013, © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown)
Norms in Pisa (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen and ink on paper)
Norms in Dubrovnik take the Cable Car (2014 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen and ink on paper)
While for Parisian Norms, it’s not unusual to see Egyptians wondering by.
Tube Norms (2012, © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)
While these Norm tourists are at the Musée Rodin.
Norms on Dubrovnik Beach (2014 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen and ink on paper)
For Lisbon Norms this is a scene from every day life
The Daily Norm 
Dec 16
All the joys of the Nursery School Nativity
The photo says it all doesn’t it. Deserted old baby doll, an MDF crib and a hastily assembled sheep made from silver foil rolls, cotton wool and PVC glue. Add to this several pairs of gold cardboard wings, some tinsel halos, 3 paper crowns (sharp-edge free), plenty of stripy sheets and even more recycled curtains and what do you have? The show any perfect Christmas wouldn’t be without: the School Nativity. It’s the pride and joy of every parent, but also the source of their greatest anxiety: Will they remember their words? Will they cry or have a tantrum mid-way through? Or will they, like the nightmare of one parent at a nativity my sister attended last year, projectile vomit all over the front row of the audience? For the teachers, even the smallest nativity is a mass production of prodigious strategic complexity… reminding the children to smile, to sing, to stop picking their noses, steering the little angels in the right direction, and pulling them away from where they’re not meant to be, remembering the words to the carols on their behalf and of course watching out for that same nativity-shattering tantrum.
Nativity Norms (Pen on paper, 2011 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown)
Read more