So for me, 2010 is going to be all about good things; good practise, good people, good will, good… well you get the picture I’m sure. But here’s maybe where you come in? I’m assuming if you’re reading this you have an interest in the Arts and Creativity, you may well work in one of the top ten creative industries, you may be a student of the arts, a creative, a director, a musician, an artist, a dancer, a teacher, a writer, a blogger…
This year in association with Creativity4Health ( www.wellbeingsoutheast.org.uk) I’m compiling a *Creativity Cook Book* aimed at inspiring and encouraging people (in particular foster carers) to spend time on creative activity with their children and I really need your stories;
what is the one creative activity you love to do with your own children or those you work with? If you are a creative what is your favourite creative activity or exercise that you use for yourself or your work?
I’d like to know
who you are, what you do, whats your favourite creative ‘thing’ why you do it and why you love it.
From the complex to the simple, from a singing exercise to reading a book using funny voices - anything creative goes and hopefully using a recipe format we will be able to create a free, useful, fantastic and inspirational resource especially for those wonderful but busy and time-stretched people who have big hearts, open houses but not enough hours in the day and need both resources and inspiration.
Soon I hope to have a downloadable template up but I’m anxious not to crush your creative approach to contributing. In the meantime and if like me you’re thinking – yes I can do this! but the reality is, if you don’t do it now you never will, then please email me juliet@artsmonkey.co.uk while the thought is still brewing.
We need your know-how, your expertise, your inspiration, for you to share with us just one story, just one inspirational activity or idea/exercise and coming from you it will mean so much more and have much more meaning.
Hope you can help?
Many, many thanks in advance Jx
Snowdrops are starting to shyly peep out through the mud and bare earth. Green shoots are always a good sign.
Extract from Lotties interview with the Live and Local team on Spire FM www.spirefm.co.uk
Yesterday was a long day for me, but by the end of it I was so grateful to be considered an adult and not a ‘young person’. I’m on an advisory panel for ‘The Unit’ where a group of young people have taken over a small empty shop unit opposite a Bus Station and along from the Bingo. The idea was to open a youth information centre, and these intrepid young people have raised funding, surveyed local opinion and been along to the Tourist Information Centre to gain advice and guidance and yesterday we were hanging up the baubles, dressing up the tree and applying a modest amount of snow to the proceedings. The previously unglamourous corner shop has recently been painted and now sports an address and the name ‘The Unit”. Theres a kettle in the under stair cupboard, fire extinguishers, a water unit it’s really quite habitable, ready for our opening launch tomorrow night.
We were delighted when a lady popped her head in and said “can I ask a question?” Yay! We thought, interest already. There followed a rant, it became very clear that the lady considered all connection to Music (Pop) was a passport to a drinking and drug culture for young people and that they should all be out in the countryside, route marching and that all young people should be forced to be academics…. possibly you get the drift by now. It was fairly shocking that a well presented and seemingly intelligent adult should think it was acceptable to speak out in front of the four adults and four young people present in such a sweeping and ill considered way. It was apparent that she felt that by opening up anything in the city centre with the label ‘youth’ attached to it that this would result in her car being vandalised again, and her sleeping hours disturbed by more drunken brawling and that pretty much all young people who get involved in music bands are going to fall into a pit of reckless, abusive behaviour and that even sport, led people into the ‘club’ culture of drink and drugs. It was a depressing episode on many levels but the four volunteers present took it on the chin and Firestarter Arts, Director Ruth managed to bring the rant to a close by asking the lady her name at which point she made a speedy exit on a final “You won’t listen to me”.
We had, of course listened for ten long minutes, inwardly shaking our heads as she confused vandalism and night club culture with a group of young people trying to make a difference, and now horrified at the thought that an adult should think that being ‘academic’ was a magic cure-all for violence, drunkeness and the rest. We expect more of this but for every negative we experience twenty positives. It is profoundly interesting to hear the ill-formed opinion of someone who feels threatened by our activity and humbling to realise that with our enterprise and hard work comes a huge responsibility to protect the young volunteers who help out at ‘The Unit” but also to ensure that the people who look in from the outside, understand what we are doing, what we hope to achieve and what we are – not a youth club, or a youth hang out so that when they pop their head in the door to ask a question, they are satisfied with the answer. A debate may ensue, an exchange of views and opinions this is after all, social enterprise, an opportunity for young people to learn business and social skills and it would seem, to act as youth spokes people to the local community.
I wondered how many people living in our city share a similar view of young people, a fear almost? I also wondered if the lady stopped in at the bingo next door and gave all those adults out for a good time with friends and a little flutter on the bingo, such a hard time?
You can see Lotties response here http://www.sstreetteam.livejournal.com/3060.html
and photos of how The Unit’s looking here: www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=124526919644&ref=share
This weekend we were given a glimpse of how flooding can impact on your life with disasterous results and how having good neighbours who just happen to possess a digger and are prepared to get up and dressed having already retired for the night are worth their weight in gold! We live beneath a bank and the field on top finally had too much water last Saturday night, waterlogged it wept, no poured with great enthusiasm the excess onto the road that runs down the hill past our house and the water determined to get somewhere chose our house as its resting place.
Suddenly we have forgiven our dog and the four pairs of school shoes he has recently chewed chunks out of, and, the cobblers repair bill paled into insignificance as he barked like a good ‘un as the unfamiliar sound of running water outside our front door got louder. So we checked wondering who was outside and on the fourth occasion actually opened the door and there it was – a swimming pool of muddy, leafy beige water and rising!
Out with the shovels, and planking, and brushes and in fact anything that could be used to divert the water away from our front door as the rain continued to fall. It was a little like the scene from The River with Mel Gibson and Cissy Spacek, but only a little and the arrival of a digger to dig out mounds of earth from the bank and bolster up the planking to create a damn really helped!
Our neighbours have lived here for over twenty years and only once in that time has water from the mill race (did I mention we live opp. a mill?) reached across the road at the bottom of the hill but never has it run off the field above in such a waterfall. Sadly the storm drains were blocked with sludge and silt and were of no use whatsoever. We had partially unblocked ours a week ago with the help of a passing engineer who happened to have a bunce’s grab on the back of his van – (google it, they’re a great piece of kit) otherwise our hallway would have been saturated and our new carpets ruined.
So I’m grateful for good neighbours, the genorosity of passers by and our naughty dog who came up trumps! And I’m humbled by the thought of those people recently devasted by floods, who have lost their homes, whose lives have come to a halt whilst they deal with the devastation and also the troubling thought, that our climate is changing and this unexpected event may become the ‘norm’.
Yesterday I was wandering around Manor Farm, a living history site and Victorian Farm that forms part of Manor Farm Country Park near Burseldon in Hampshire www.hants.gov.uk/manorfarm and the large group of five to eight yr olds with me loved discovering how people only washed once a week and washed their clothes and slept three to a bed, stored cheeses, preserved fruit etc.,
Today, I met with Mr Horn, a 74 year old gentleman who does picture framing. As we talked he shared with me stories about his early life living in Broughton near Stockbridge, Hampshire in a Tudor house that was mentioned in the Doomesday Book. About an air raid during the war when his mother (or was it his grandmother?) didn’t go to the air raid shelter but hid under the stairs in the family house and thus witnessed a German Junkers plane land in the paddock, the pilot get out and walk around the plane before getting back in and taking off, only to be shot down minutes later crashing into the hills nearby, that still bear the indentations of where the plane fell from the skies.
I heard about the place near Danebury Hillfort over from Chattis Hill, where they made Spitfires, in particular the blue ones that had cameras on them (in fact when you google the area on googlemaps you can see a lane marked ‘Spitfire Lane’). How he recently discovered his Grandfathers Pony and Trap Licence. About a race-course dating back to the 1730s which attracted royalty and London Society down by train to Stockbridge and then by pony and trap on to the race course to gamble on races, picnic and how the Racecourse Grandstand is still there but overgrown by ivy and the racecourse hasn’t been used for many years. About Lily Langtree staying in the house which is behind the old garage forecourt near the hotel in Stockbridge and a nut tree that grew in the garden of Stud House that was so old that the nuts were very large….
History, stories, memories wonderful warm clues to how things came to be, how it used to be. Things lost, forgotten. My head is full of pictures of people, Regency gamblers, Victorian gentry, German air pilots, people I never knew and tiny windows into their lives. All places that I haven’t been to but today I have travelled.
So having been made Community Champions by O2 ‘It’s your community’ project, O2 organised a photo shoot for the young people organising the evolution of THE UNIT from #empty shop to youth info centre/ideas hub/music project central/ etc., Here’s some of the photo’s local young photographer Julian Farmer took of the whole shebang!
Artsmonkey’s other blog- Engine Room January 29, 2010Two weeks ago I had one of those phonecalls. No, not that kind of call. I mean one of THOSE phonecalls where the hair on the back of your neck prickles and you just know it’s going to be something good. This call, went something along the lines of “Hello, you don’t know me but [...]
- ‘Snow knowing what’s around the next corner… January 25, 2010So far this year snow stopped travel plans and play commenced (as long as my feet and hands are warm I love the snow!). Being based in South Wiltshire I had to go looking for it at first but once it finally settled everything looked beautiful and so began a magical start to the year. [...]
- Travelling Light November 19, 2009I travel quite a bit in my role as a freelance creative consultant and often at my own expense, so I’m careful about my journeys. One of my favourite journeys is returning home from Brighton. Brighton, as far as I can tell is like Marmite, you either love it or you hate. I love it. [...]
- National Theatre of Wales - Live launch November 5, 2009Today is November the fifth a day for plots and coup attempts, remember? Well today also marked the official launch of the National Theatre of Wales and boy did they do it in style. Not only were parties being thrown across Wales but Producer Lucy Jones and Artistic Director John McGrath shared the event online [...]
- Engine Room January 29, 2010
