Women, Walking and Wellbeing

Women, Walking and Wellbeing

Last Monday I held the first of my walking workshops. This one, ‘Women, Walking and Wellbeing’, looks at our attitude to walking, here in the UK, and includes exercises on creative way-finding and place making and introduces the art of Psycho-geography.

Woman walking.

Colourful and textural detective work.

It went well and everyone enjoyed themselves, the venue worked and the coffee and cake was appreciated. On refection, I find that it is only when I am actually running workshops that the content and engagement can be improved.

 

Finding landmarks.

I went to see Germaine Greer at a new arts venue, The Quarterhouse, in Folkestone last week and found her talk ‘The Disappearing Woman’ interesting but quite sombre. What I decided I would take home from the talk was a determination to make more women visible. So, let’s get out there, get walking, see and be seen!

Some interesting 'clues' to navigate by.

Everyone on my course said a main part of the enjoyment of the day was meeting other like-minded women.This is important.

Learning by Doing

It is through doing courses that they evolve into something quite inspiring for both the facilitator and the participants. I have now changed the time frame and the subsequent costs, tightened up the content, added more dates (next date is 30/03/15) and created a workshop package for each participant to take away with them.

Using modern methods and post-it notes!

I am away next weekend at The Eden Project in Cornwall. I am really looking forward to it, it is a ‘Big Lunch Extras’ event and it supports people ‘to bring about positive change in neighbourhoods right across the UK’. There will be ‘an interactive and varied timetable of workshops, activities and inspirational speakers alongside time to explore and network with others.’ This feels to me like the perfect timed opportunity to participate.

Foreshore detail: low sun, tide running out.

Foreshore, larger view.

I am getting a clearer vision of how my MA Design research and subsequent work is going to evolve into a far reaching and positive ‘movement’ for many. I want my work to be improved by attending courses and events such as this one, but I am also keen to make a living by it. I haven’t applied for any funding yet, as the actual vision needs to be very focused and clear on who it is for, where it will be, what it is exactly and how it will be applied. I feel that I am so close now.

Writing

I am starting with a book which will be finished by early May and the writing of it will be funded by a crowd-funding campaign. I have been researching about crowd-funding for a while and followed some very successful ones on social media. It is not easy but it is possible. The campaign also identifies the market and is therefore very useful if/when approaching a publisher.

On of my paintings was published in last years 'Earth Pathways Diary'.

I have been looking at the possibilities of self-publishing too. There are many online options; one that has been recommended to me is ‘Lulu’. The initial problem I can see of using this ‘platform’ is that they only produce books with glossy covers. Strangely this bothers me, I expect my book to be beautiful to look at, I have a wealth of images that I can use which include photographs and my own and others original artwork.

Beautiful Books

Even when I used to get my photos developed back in the day of processing labs, I used to prefer the matt finish over the glossy one. So I realise that the aesthetic of the book is as important as the content, to me. I have been looking through many of my own books at home and others in libraries recently, pondering their shape, style, weight, layout etc.

Even the form of the words on the page can be evocative and beautiful.

Page from a 1950's book of the countryside, showing page border detail.

There are many that I own because how they look appealed to me first. There are others, but few, that have comprehensive and valuable text, but are a bit clumsy in their look.

One of the shop displays showing some books back in 2014.

I think the feel of a book and its content are both important. My friends own a shop called ‘Number Seven’ in Dulverton, Somerset and I know that they are persuaded by this too.

A wonderful book that I am working through at the moment. I don't know whether Number Seven stocks this one.

This book I know is stocked there. Such a beautiful cover.

Their bookshelves are full of the most exquisite books, colourful, beautiful and precious. Davina also organises a ‘Walking Book Club’ that takes people out into the surrounding wonderful wild countryside, to discuss the book that they have all been reading.

Photo by Davina Jelley, taken at one of her walking book clubs, a couple of years ago.

The club is open to all, the books are available from the shop, to buy and there is a welcoming atmosphere to all that join in.

So next time I will blog, it will be after my Eden experience. Hopefully I will come back inspired and enthused for setting up more local projects, engaging others and connecting people to place.

(I completed my MA in September 2014 and recorded the last two months of it in another blog called www.thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

Please feel free to look at that anytime, as it is from that, that I am where I am now.)

Getting Real

Getting Real

With all the doom, gloom and terrorist horror in the news at the moment I have felt great solace to walk, to get outside and enjoy the reality of my life, at this moment. Who knows what another day or week will bring. Walking out there is real and allows me to count my blessings.

Getting out in nature is 'getting real'.

I listened to a BBC Radio Four Programme last Thursday that reiterated the benefits of the great outdoors. ‘Open Country’, featured the Wiltshire Wellbeing group, who I understood to be a group of individuals brought together by a prescription for ‘forest days’ by their doctors. The days were spent outside in the wood, working together in a community fashion, gaining awareness and skills that allowed them to connect more with each other and themselves. The skills included fire making, green woodworking and nature identification. Many of them said it had changed their lives.

Long shadow, short days; Winter Walking.

I ventured out today with some good friends for a very wet and windy walk. It was worth it; we stood sheltering by a copse of trees and watched the rain blowing across the fields in waves. The bare skeletons of the trees in the near distance were clear enough to identify their species but as we watched the rain swirling around us, the trees further away became shrouded in a deeper mist. Birds wheeled above us and still the wind and rain blew. Lunch was made even more special by this experience and changing into dry clothes we ate as if at a feast.

English Magic

This was the name of the most recent exhibition to show at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. Jeremy Deller created the work for the British Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale, it has been touring during 2014 and this was its final showcase.

I have loved going to see it on two occasions. Yesterday we managed to get to see it one last time as it is due to be dismantled today.

‘Deller uses ‘English magic’ to explore mysterious acts and ‘magical’ transformations in british society- its people, myths and folklore as well as its broad cultural, socio-political and economic history.’

Turner Contemporary.

This may sound serious, but it was fun. He had created a film which can be downloaded here. 

It has music on its soundtrack from Vaughan Williams to David Bowie, artfully arranged and played by the Melodians Steel Orchestra. This means the music is still recognisable, it has been given an unfamiliar but surprisingly upbeat flavour. I liked it so much I bought the vinyl record, which is as thick as some early gramophone records that I have stored away somewhere in my house. The soundtrack was recorded at Abbey Road Studios and released by The Vinyl Factory. I think that this attention to detail, to create something long-lasting, sturdy and ‘proper’ is in itself a sense of English magic. We were once renowned for, amongst other things, our manufacturing plants and inventiveness. English eccentricity can lend itself to open minds and new ideas. This exhibition was a great example of this.

Motion

There is a main section in the English magic film that shows birds of prey flying, landing and taking off in ultra slow motion. Every flake of snow falling, every feather and its ruffling in the breeze is shown in its intricacy. Viewing this on the large cinema screen in the exhibition (whilst sitting on a podium type seat manufactured from one of the crushed Range Rovers shown in the film), was impressive. The birds showed such grace, power and beauty that it astonished me. I would love to feel that movement of taking off, to have the power to rise and glide.

I am bound.

But I will only be able to achieve this in my dreams and journeys, as a human I am grounded by my heavy frame, but given the anatomy to walk, run and dance.

That is something I want to explore. I have a meeting tomorrow where I shall be able to share an idea I have about movement in the landscape. I want to research the theme of human movement, specifically that of women in the landscape as an art project. I developed a design system during my MA study that looks at the integration of people and place. This is constructed using appropriate tried and tested way-marking and place-making methods from an ever growing ‘toolbox’. The idea is to create community engagement, sustainable tourism etc. I believe the art project will feed into the existing work creating a more dynamic and less preconceived model.

Music

I loved the music from the film, listening to it, very loudly is great. Speaking to a friend this week and discussing our attempts to ‘keep up’ with current ‘sounds’, I was recommended, amongst others, Bonobo. I looked on youtube for some more information and came across their song ‘Eyesdown’. The video is pretty mesmerizing in a similar way to English Magic. The woman in the video seems to awake in a forest and wears a costume of rags, (similar in style to the powwow dress of a Native American), she moves in motion to the music and eventually becomes a bird and flies off, out of the forest. Yes, the music is good, the idea behind the video is even better. This, I think could be a starting inspiration for the movement, women and land project. It needs a name. I would like music to be part of it. I will enjoy thinking about this, the meeting tomorrow should further clarify my thoughts.

 

Walking in the shadow of nature.

 

 (I completed my MA in September 2014 and recorded the last two months of it in another blog called www.thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

Please feel free to look at that anytime, as it is from that, that I am where I am now.)