How to teach an old dog, new tricks

It's been a tricky week here. Poor little Maisy has hurt her leg and the vet had to do X-rays. We're to keep her completely still for 2 weeks. Have you tried to keep a King Charles Spaniel still?

So, I have to stay with her, which is actually very lovely, but I wondered what could I do with my time whilst I am at home with her? 

I decided to write a long list of all the things I wished I could in terms of graphic design. I already make websites and am using these skills to reinvent and re-brand my new and exciting creative venture. However, there are things I wished I could do that I thought were beyond me BUT I was wrong!

Having a long list and time on my hands, I went on youtube and found all the best tutorials for the things I yearned to learn. 

I pieced together a 2 day course for myself. As you can guess, one of the things I wanted to learn was how to make inkblot pictures like the one I have designed at the top of this blog ... oh I am feeling really rather chuffed with myself. Off course, now I need to learn how to make transparent backgrounds so that I have the option of the image without the background. 

So, I am compiling a new list for next week, because now that I have enabled myself to be my own teacher, I reckon I can fly beyond skies the limit ...

What would you like to teach yourself?

Reinvention: Stepping into the Sunlight

For the last 14 months, I have been coming to terms with hearing loss, tinnitus and hyperacusis.

My intention for 2018, to open up my heart in deep gratitude & acceptance, includes the acknowledgement that my relationship to live music and performance, which has been my lifelong passion and career, has to now change.  I believed that this meant that I would exclude performance from my life but now, I realise that if I am open to finding a new way, then that is precisely what will present itself. 

In many ways, it is a wonderful opportunity to completely reinvent, rebirth and make a new. How utterly exciting. I might be deaf, but I hear the call of my soul now more clearly than ever before in my entire life.

I am finding myself in the gloriously seductive, creatively obsessed and precisely focused state of creating a distilled and pure pathway, leading directly to the next phase of my life. 

Focusing my soul-fired desires into creating a strong, yet flexible  framework that enables me to continue to heal myself through my passions, whilst helping those that are reaching out from the dark place that I was in, so that we can step together into the sunlight ... 

Button Up Your Memories: Dementia Friendly Books

For Christmas, I had 4 commissions for my Heartfelt Books , 2 of which touched me deeply, and have informed a new way of working. 

One client commissioned a Heartfelt book for the funeral of her niece. I found this very touching. I asked her questions and sent the poem back and for with her, until she was happy, using materials in her niece's favourite colours ... and then I was contacted by a young woman who asked if I could make a little book for her Grandmother, to help her with her memory, as her dementia meant that she was starting to become confused.

It just so happens that at the time, I was in R&D, creating a poetry book about the buttons in my late Mother in law's old tin and how each button had belonged to a different member of her family. I showed the book to the client and she asked me to make one for her. 

Only this time, I used buttons from her Grandma's tin and the poem story inside was about her family.

I am now working on a Collection of Heartfelt books to trial with the listeners and peer volunteer storytellers at Sound Memories Dementia Friendly Radio. www.soundmemoriesradio.com

The gentle nuances of empathy

This week, I have been on a training course as a Creative Practitioner with the Arts Council of Wales. It was the first training course that I have been on since becoming deaf and living with 2 hearing aids, so I was a bit nervous about it. I needn't have been, it was a tremendous experience. The tutors were marvellous, the content was brilliant and the delivery was spot on. And now today, I find that I am reflecting and taking time to holistically process the experience.

It has made me realise that this new disability has given me a gift, the ability to very quickly sense the empathy levels of other human beings. As if I have been tuned into the nature of quintessence.

Quint Essentia is a latin word meaning 'fifth element' and according to Plato, the fifth element is related to health, to knowledge, the heavens, the essence of living things, that travels in great circles to create the cycles of life.

For sure, my 6th sense is awakened in terms of sensing the whole of a person in an instance, sensitive to their kindness, reassurance, understanding, acutely aware of when they are being accommodating or showing concern, their patience, tolerance of difference, the whole myriad of qualities that are the building blocks for empathy.

I found a depth of these qualities in people's auto- reactive body language, in the shine of their eyes, in their facial expression, even in a glance, a slight nod, tones of voice, speed of speech, physical positioning,  the sense of a human knowing.

And  by the same token, I found I was able to instantly to pick up when people were uncomfortable about my hearing loss, when they needed support in opening up to the qualities of empathy, that to my mind, make us beautiful human beings. 

And it has set me wondering, how do we impart the nature of empathy to those that do not express it? The most obvious answer  is that we teach empathy by embodying it, by being it. I am reflecting upon it most deeply because it is a great learning. Not only understanding the gentle nuances of empathy but how we pass these on.

Heartfelt Human Rights

The Declaration: 1948

Having started making a Collection of my Heartfelt Books to Celebrate 100 years of Votes for Women, I decided to experiment with the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Could I fit the entire Declaration into a tiny book?

The picture shown was my first sketch, if you like and I am very pleased to say that this morning, I managed to fold the smallest, longest concertina book I have ever made. I can't wait to show you it. If I get time tomorrow, I'll take a few shots. I have handwritten it and yes, I did manage to get the entire 30 sections into its little pages.

        Monica Ross: acts of memory at Platforma Festival

I have long admired the work of the late Monica Ross and her 'acts of memory' live performance art, whereby she learnt the entire Human Rights Act and performed it. It became an interactive piece with people learning and joining her in what cascaded into a mighty tour of 60 global dates. On the last night of the tour, Monica died of cancer.

Here is a link to the 'acts of memory' website where you can find advice as to how you might hold your own acts of memory event. I held an acts of memory session on International Women's Day at the University in Lampeter 2 years ago. It was very moving experience. www.actsofmemory.net/

I love that my heartfelt books, though tiny, are able to convey such deeply important messages.

Special Thanks: to a friend who would prefer to remain anonymous. She wondered if I would be able to fit the Act into a tiny book and this led to me making a Heartfelt Book for Human Rights. And thanks to Márta Minier at The Atrium, Cardiff, who introduced me to the work of Monica Ross in one of her inspirational lessons when I was a student on the MA Drama.

100 Years of Deeds Not Words: Celebrating The Suffragettes

I have started Research for a new Collection of my Heartfelt Books entitled 'Deeds Not Words'. 

The tiny heartfelt books will contain the names of suffragettes, thanking them for their determination and strength in securing Votes for Women which feels very important in 2018, given that it is 100 years since the first voting. Then, on my website, I will write about each of the women listed in the tiny book.

I am making tiny little felt wallets for the books from the colours of the suffrage ribbons and sewing them with some 1940's stocking yarn that I found in my late Mother in Law's sewing box.

I am not sure what I will do with the finished books, it just feels important to make them and I am certain the Universe will sort out what happens to them next, though hopefully they will be ready for International Women's Day in March.

I would like to thank two friends  (who I think would prefer to remain anonymous) because it was the evening after a wonderful afternoon of chatting and laughter and sharing of ideas that I thought to create Deeds Not Words Heartfelt Books. And that's the wonderful thing about sharing and exploring with other creatives, you never what sparks might fly.