Week Six Staple Hill

Well, you think you know someone, then they put a silver cape on and become a poet! 

Just our usual Tuesday here at Staple Hill library. There were impromptu congas on pedestrian crossings, cross dressing, dressing up, up to mischief goings on....

 I have been blown away by these last six weeks and the people I have met. Stories heard, tears shed, hands held, imaginations unleashed. I will never forget images painted from memories shared: D as a young woman up scaffolding working on a roof to the astonishment of men below, the dances she danced through life with beauty and poise, the way C turned a design on his coffee cup into a metaphor for community, fellowship and friendship; coach trips, car trips, walks through life. Our little groups have spawned friendships as well as creativity and so we have opened out the artists residency to include more group input as we turn all of the wonderful material we have generated in the groups into an artwork. 

Our 'Passports of the Imagination' are coming on beautifully and will be ready in a few weeks; just in time for our public showing of the work. 

Watch this space for an invitation to the party!

Week Three, Staple Hill

This week another fascinating exploration of explorings and journey makings.

We spoke of our favourite journeys and compared transport choices to life style choices. Taking Van Gogh as our inspiration on the subject of rowing boats, we spoke of everything from being un-anchored in life to being stranded on a shore and ways and means of getting around this quandry.

All in all we had both a very philosophical morning and afternoon! From riding a pedal bike outside of time, to how one piece of string can save us from many a mishap, the group bonded fondly over tea and choccie biccys. In fact, all participants seem to have the measure of each other and rather enjoy each others' company.

This became even more apparent in our later exercise of  making up luggage labels so we could take (perhaps only in our memories or imagination) our most treasured object on our imaginary group holiday to a south sea island.

It would seem that the morning group would take

3x teddies
1 radio
1 journal
1  video recorder
1 daughter
1 piece of string

with all those packed we should be prepared for anything!

... So it seems we are very open now to the idea of journeying together by now, so let's see where next week's sessions take us!

Week Two, Staple Hill

I had such a lot of fun today! As described in our first physical exercise, I was feeling a little Bleeeuuuhgggghhhhhhh but ended the day feeling much more Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy! A fantastic energy filled the room as we took the theme of journeying and literally ran with it. Things took a metaphorical turn as we discussed our attitudes that drive us through life’s journeys. Several writing exercises produced some amazing texts, we had Coincidental Catastrophes in Conway and Beautiful Beings at the Bar in Babbacombe.
 The writing that came out of today’s session was profound and beautiful. I began to suspect that we had some published writers in our midst. Watch this space for evidence of their talents! People took a leap of faith in some of the more physical exercises which we will build upon to generate material for creating the artwork as a culmination of these sessions. The artists already have an idea brewing after two really great days at Staple Hill. We will, of course keep you posted.

Week One, Staple Hill

Week one at Staple Hill library was a revelation. Wonderful friendly staff and an another engaged community made us all feel welcome from the moment we arrived and calmed our first-day nerves beautifully.

As you might have come to expect, much tea was drunk and cake eaten and much to our surprise, our participants were ready to jump straight in with some wonderful group sharing. Liz Vivi and I felt very humbled by these stories – not least because they will help to shape the structure of next week's work and allow us room to develop our ideas quicker than expected. Superb stuff.

Speaking of stories, we were speaking extracts from stories in our groups this week. One from Durrell's 'My Family and Other Animals' and the other a poem 'Ozymandias' by Shelley. Each of these extracts had been generously supplied by staff at the library and gave us a richer stepping off point than we could have hoped for. With both members of staff having added their personal associations with the texts to the session, the group discussed families and the value of books right from the outset, which located us all in the right space – the library- ready to be taken elsewhere. Perfect.

Responding to the Durrell extract brought about some musings on the bountifulness of nature, whereas Shelley took us to a more barren landscape which inspired imaginings of desserts and the positives and negatives of being alone... interesting stuff indeed.

Transporting our group members to distant lands of fictional tell in this way, we also asked the participants to smell teas from around the world so that we could also travel in our minds to real places if that's what was preferred.

We also each chose one of the vast array of teacups and told each other stories of the cup whether those were simply why we chose it or perhaps who might have owned it and where it had sat in their house.

A sumptuous beginning to this project, we are very excited to see which texts the groups bring in next week to transport the group elsewhere. What with the space feeling so relaxed already, I feel we are truly ready for the next step on our journey together. Exciting stuff!  

I was delighted to have been invited to the Memory Café at Winterbourne last week. The empty tables beautifully adorned with blue flowers (the forget me not is central to the Alzeimer’s Society Dementia Friends campaign) soon filled up and the hall was alive with conversation, jokes and general hubbub.
I was providing a taster session for RE:MAPPING, our new arts based project which starts again this September (Tuesday 15th at 1.30pm) in Staple Hill Library. The afternoon sessions are aimed at people living with dementia, their families and carers.
Seeing as tea was to be served I thought I’d bring some teas of my own along to start off the conversation. We sniffed and felt Jasmine, Darjeeling and several other fragrant concoctions. We watched a beautiful flower tea unfurl in a glass cup. Everyone gave me one word to describe their thoughts about this strange sight. This wonderful group was very poetic, in the cup they saw: Sea Urchins, Kelp Forests, Other Worldly Coral Reefs In Bloom, Artistic Creepy Animals… No one however was brave enough to drink this particular tea!
People had very definite ideas about what makes the perfect cuppa. I found out about peoples’ favourite mugs bringing memories of loved ones, when the best china comes out of the cabinet and some very particular instructions for stirring your tea! As you may find from this list, the ‘perfect cuppa’ is a very personal thing…
HOW TO MAKE THE PERFECT CUP OF TEA, by Winterbourne Memory Café
* Put a tea bag in a cup OR warm the pot
* Use one tea bag per person OR one between two
* Use boiling water OR let it cool a little
* Mash the tea against the pot OR stir it 3 times anticlockwise
* Put in a pinch of salt OR not!
* Leave to brew for two, three, five OR ten minutes
* Choose your favourite cup OR any cup will do
* Pour the milk in first OR the tea in first
* Fill your cup not quite to the top OR always leave a little undrunk at the bottom
* Enjoy your brew!
BUT the best advice I found at Winterbourne for the perfect cuppa….?
Get someone else to make it for you!
I had a great time getting creative with people at the Memory Café. It was gentle introduction to the many things we do at our sessions. We use stories, poems and pictures to take us on creative journeys together. We create writing, performances, films and much more in our sessions. The afternoons are fun and enjoyable, and yes we do drink a lot of tea!
I would like to thank everyone at the Memory Café for welcoming me into their group, and for being so poetic and artistic with me in a short hour. If you would like to find out more please email: info@lizclarke.org, or call:
0784 0663616
All are welcome to join us at the sessions whether you are living with dementia, are a family member or a carer.

Week Six

A big pile of soil, some glitter, some photos, various gems, various textual gems that we have shared and some coloured feathers all put together on a world map. … What on Earth?

This week we said goodbye in the nicest possible way to our first group's devised character Eddie who came into being in week five as an excellent example of a 'life well lived'. We saw him off with a fond wave after asking each other what we would like to ask him and composing our answers on his behalf.

We dealt with the Big Questions like 'What do you find funny?' (his answer? 'Me'.) as well as 'What advice would you give people?' (his answer, 'Live openly and fully'). Our creation helped us to understand preconceptions of the Other and of ourselves and how we can challenge these and we love him for it.

Thanks Eddie.

The rest of our extremely creative day was spent with our fingers in the dirt looking for evidence of the work we had made together over the course of this project. We heard special phrases from each of our participants again as we unearthed snippets of stories, conversations and phrases; my personal favourites including, 'Underlying dandelion', and 'Mary Poppins took all the children off to meet the stars'.

One of the most poignant moments in this project for me overall however was one participant's reaction to the jasmine tea flower we unveiled in week one where she observed, 'The moisture feeds the flower – it is like a sea urchin'. This was not only poetic but the support assistant she had arrived with shared with us that in over a year she had never heard such words from her. There were happy tears all round. Wonderful.

Interactions such as these have made for an intensely emotional journey for both Liz and I and we hope that each of the incredible people we have shared it with feel the same. We thank everyone for taking part, being so open as to try new things every week (as well as helping us to eat all that cake!) and for sharing themselves with us.

We have all – literally - planted seeds today (in case you wondered why the soil) and I sincerely hope our orchids grow strong and remind each of us of the times we have spent together.

Thank you all.

Week Five

We can’t believe we are on week five already. We have met some amazing people and been privileged to hear some of their incredible stories. We’ve been around the world many times in these sessions which have naturally had a theme of Wanderlust.

Today was no exception; today we created a map of a Life Well Lived and transposed it onto a stranger’s face! From studying the lines, creases and contours of a face we mapped a journey with troughs, peaks and plateaus. We marveled at how tiny pieces of visual information could change our perception entirely. 

In the afternoon we camped under the stars, toasted marshmallows over a fire (well, a tealight), created our very own constellations and whispered stories under starlit canvas ‘til lights out. Isn’t it strange how cocoa tastes better when you’re camping?

We heard about the monkey who used a little girl’s hairbrush and all fell for an unlikely story about mice and grain. There was an impromptu round of old school camping songs before we all packed up our sleeping bags and zipped the tent shut. Luckily we didn’t have time to eat the pot noodle I brought to share.

Week Four

This week we asked our groups to make further explorations of storytelling and to share 'significant journeys' with us without words. We used our bodies to exchange emotions and then - sitting on our hands - we conveyed everything from moments of 'letting go' to real tears in order to transport other group members on our personal journeys.

We also made a physical map of the emotions in the room, allowing participants to create an expression of themselves from whichever media to hand they chose.

Exploring our performative selves through language, texture and expression we threw away inhibitions and donned everything from mermaid dresses to feather boas in the process!

We spoke of our relationship to each chosen material, all the while imagined what expecting a strawberry and getting a lemon might taste and feel like in the moment of sensory explosion.

These new forays into sharing showed us the depth of trust the groups are developing and has moved us nearer to creating a score of the last month's work as well as laying the groundwork for a more performative last couple of weeks.

We are inching closer to looking at notions of mapping and of self such as 'What does a persons' face tell us of their life?' and 'How can the stories we tell about ourselves change who we are now whether in our own view or in that of the Other?'......  

Week Three

A woman in red sits reading on a picnic rug.

Will she have to eat all the cakes herself?

What does she keep in her handbag?

What are her secrets?

From small visual cues our imaginations ran riot. Stories, travels, relations. We sent her round the world and back again, writing postcards as she went. I think she is in Australia at the moment; she went on a whim. She’s that type of woman.

Her story flowed like a river and we had a go at getting to the essence. We retold her life in 100,50, 20 words….

Free spirit, leaving. Starting afresh. Australia. Building bridges.

Emotions, moving, mother and child to new life, wondering worldwide.

Empty glass, an unopened letter. Plane leaves in a week.

Can make my life brand new in Australia.

We were then transported by a soundscape and floated down a river. Each individual journey was shared and shaped by a randomly chosen word. We collectively created a story from these words:

Looking from above at the picture by the stream

the baby cries whilst the bird nurtures its young.

The secrets of this place

and people as we follow the stream

and it turns into a river

But, a question…

where are we?

We are certainly being transported by these sessions and the collective imagination in the room is amazing to witness!

Week Two

It seemed fitting that we would take it in turns to record our experiences of the sessions; so this week Shelley has written from her perspective...

This week we indulged in some storytelling around bicycles and journeys. Everything from the distinct feeling of gravel in grazed knees to a mathematical equation written in tea leaves was covered and uncovered on another glorious sunny day.

Participants taught us of how a visitor's journey duration would either ensure or demure their likelihood to use the best china in the house upon arrival. What's more, given the sense of an increasing bond in the room, we all left feeling as if the key to the glass cabinet were being located in apron pockets in each of our homes.

Exploring these lived experiences within the group helped us to create an excitement of the senses as we depicted the common themes of the gaining of independence, liberation and motion in loose breakfast tea leaves.

We listened to an appreciation of the bicycle by Roger-Pol Droit which - by gentle turns of the group's handlebars - became the personal story of a shiny new bike that began in the garden and ended in a river bed.

Having mapped the dynamics of the groups in these ways, we are looking forward to exploring a whole new chapter next week when we look to take participants on a journey of their own devising. Full steam ahead!

Week One

RE: MAPPING. New Ways of Thinking About Ourselves

Welcome to the page for this new and exciting project! Here I will be recording moments and thoughts from the workshops as they unfold. I hope you will join me on this incredible venture by keeping track of the work as it progresses here. It is very early days and there are still places available for people to participate. Please visit here or email info@lizclarke.org for further details.


'When delightful rain falls always use the amazing umbrella'....

A useful piece of advice indeed! How else to begin our very first session than to share a nice cup of tea? We sampled tea from around the world, swapped stories about our Nanna's china and created tongue in cheek, sanguine and sublime sayings to put on  the tags of tea bags using our random text generator.



We think we could be employed by a certain herbal tea company with our efforts! Our instructions for making the perfect cuppa turned into 'How to Make Tea Mindfully' which became a beautiful reflection on being thankful for the small things.
We shared a sensory experience of smell, touch and taste which moved our work in unexpected directions making it a fabulous first day. The participants gave so much energy and enthusiasm to the sessions, and the work naturally meandered on exciting tangents. We have so much material already from our first day. I can't wait to see where our process takes us!

Thanks to everyone who made us feel welcome at the library and to everyone who gave so much to making the day a success.

Jasmine Tea

the giving of life

turns a sea urchin

into a discovery of underwater

rebirth

the moisture to the flower

is charming and capturing

patience reveals

the mysterious

hidden underwater coral reef

gentle, beautiful and colourful

the fascinating flower

fed by the moisture

Now...

Taste the flower