The Joy of Being Still

When you are being still and quiet, you never know who is going to walk through your door next. First visitor of the day was Katie Louise Phillips. She lives a few doors down. 

Since having fibromyalgia she has found herself at home more and more. She started to make things and opened an online business called Katie's Homemade Store.

Katie is renting an Exhibition Box at Quiet Space Studio as it gives her the opportunity to show her work to the local community, to direct people to the window to see what she has made and enables her to connect with the community, rather than be totally online.

My next visitor was Prue Thimbleby who is the Co-ordinator of Arts in Health and a Co-Organiser of the International Storytelling for Health Conference. I have been part of her team as the Creative Digital Developer for the 6 months running up to Conference. This was our final plenary meeting. 

She came with a HUGE bunch of flowers from the Storytelling Team. How wonderful.

Then a chap called Robert popped in. He makes music apps for schools around the world. 

He had seen 'The Tethered Fairyring' in Quiet Space window, a piece of music I composed which Welsh harpist Susan Berry kindly notated & was launched in Lower Normandy, France. He is bringing his business partner in to chat with me next week.

Then Pete Barrett called to introduce me to his son. Pete is a wonderful kirtan musician friend of mine and his son is following suit having also become a kirtan musician.

I never realised that being still and quiet could be so much fun.

The Voice of the Navajo Stones : Is there such a thing as random?

In my last blog I showed you how I made a set of Native American Story Stones. This evening I have been pulling the stones randomly from the little bag and writing whatever story comes. 

I think there is such a beauty to the simple nature of the story but I am intrigued to know if this process truly is 'random'. 

What if there were some deeply spiritual connection to me, as the maker, the ancient rock from whence they came, the rolling seas that smoothed them, the mystique history of the symbols themselves. What if  within these little stories, lay ancient paths? What an exciting thought.

Tomorrow, I will look up the spiritual significance of these symbols to the Native American peoples.

For now, it is time to dream of new adventures and sleep in the knowledge of loving kindness from the Earth. 

Native American Story Stones : Unleashing the Story Telling Child Within

As the Creative Digital Developer at Stories for Change / the Storytelling for Health International Conference, I have found myself completely reconnected with Storytelling but I spend most of my time on the project indoors, sat at my computer, online designing the website, managing the Group page on Facebook and devising creative evaluation techniques.

So, when the sun came out today, I decided that I wanted to do something storytelling based outside and completely hands on.

I looked up some Native American symbols as a basis for a storytelling prompt. I thought I might like to make a little bag of stones decorated with Native American symbols and pull them out of the little bag randomly, to see what stories the stones tell on their own.

We were very lucky because the sun was shining and even more lucky because we live half an hour from New  Quay, West Wales.

Jeff sat on the rocks living dangerously, eating his chips while I went onto the beautiful beach to find potential pebbles.

It was such good fun choosing & then washing the sand off in the sea, whilst chanting to the waves. It really felt as if I were unleashing the storytelling child within.

There was plenty of evidence on the beach that other child-like souls had been dancing on the sand here today.

I wrapped up my precious treasure and when we got home, I couldn't wait to draw the symbols onto the stones. I'm not very good at art but it was such fun drawing them all from the chart and then pulling out stones from the bag and listening to them.

I then took photo's of the stones and on the computer put the story words with the image to create an illustration.

This activity is such a lovely thing to do as a grown up but I couldn't help but think how wonderfully educational it would be for a group of children and/ or young people. 

• Multi Cultural Symbols and Language
• Storytelling Oracy
• Literacy Skills
• Environmental Awareness
• Information Technology
• Artistic Expression

But most of all, great fun. So much fun they may never even notice the skills being taught.