3 days until the start of the Get Back sessions
John Lennon and Yoko Ono made a brief appearance at the Royal Institute Galleries in Piccadilly on December 30, 1968, by invitation of 40 teachers who had been fired by the Guildford School of Art. The occasion was the “Guildford Minus Forty” exhibition, in support of the terminated staff.
Per a report in the December 31 Guardian, John accepted the teachers’ invite “because I like them … I sympathise with them.”
Opening the exhibition, John and Yoko handed out “quarto-sized” papers with the simple instruction: “Fold it nine times – John Lennon, 1968.”
John Lennon at the Guildford Minus Forty event, December 30, 1968. (Photo by John Walmsley)
He later told the assembled media: “You can’t fold a piece of paper more than eight times, so I asked them to fold it nine times. It was something I remembered from my boyhood.”
On leaving the dias after speaking, John gave the simple message, “Well, keep swinging!”
The exhibition ran through January 9, 1969.
They May Be Parted 
