2015: stepping up and looking back

2015 is drawing to a close. The world continued to get warmer, the Conservatives won the General Election, the House of Commons authorised airstrikes over Syria, people the world over were killed at the hands of terrorists... It's been an internationally frightening time. Yet, important political campaigns also started, there were also lots of amazing books, films and songs written and made, sporting events I have no interest in happened and people won them, same-sex marriage became legal in the USA and the Republic of Ireland, and scientists made amazing discoveries, including the first new antibiotic in 30 years. And the 'future' also became the past with Back to the Future day. What a year!

So, what have I been up to?

I married the woman I love and we went on an amazing honeymoon to Canada. We got some really bad news. We got some really good news. I sat with someone whilst they slipped out of life. I 'MC-ed' a funeral. I discovered that the reason we keep not having hot water is that the boiler was plumbed in with the pipes the wrong way round. I've taken THOUSANDS of trains, buses and tubes. I've done lots of jobs (old and new). I've made new friends.

Here's what I've been doing in my working life (this can now act as a crib sheet for my wife when I test her on where I work!) - in no particular order:

• Turning Point - delivering their bi-weekly 'Creative Space' for service users on an Abstinence Day Programme, who are all in recovery from substance addiction. I also recently ran professional training for the staff team on how they could make their sessions more creative, which I'm hoping will be rolled out to other teams in the new year. I got one of my favourite pieces of feedback of the year from a participant at this service the other week who, when 'checking out' at the end of the session, said: "Kate, you don't step back, you step up. And that makes us step up too." Gave me the feels. My other fav feedback that day was: "I thought I was going to fucking hate it and I didn't." 
• Attic Theatre Company - running weekly Drama workshops for young migrants to help them learn English and make friends, as well as developing communication skills, team work, mutual respect and empathy. I also delivered a week's summer school (for the second year running) for children who are preparing for the move from primary to secondary school, where we designed Drama-based activities to support them with this transition (such as a giant, interactive game I made up loosely based on Snakes and Ladders).
• Fearless Futures - a new job I started in the summer, as a 'Trailblazer', I first worked on their summer school and then worked with a small group of ten 16yr old girls to discuss gender inequality (locally, nationally and internationally), develop their leadership skills, discuss their aspirations and inspire them to be social activists. It was really moving to read their feedback at the end, as one young woman wrote that she had been being bullied since starting at the school and our work together had given her the confidence to tell her teachers about it. So definitely worth the early starts and three hour round trip to the school! 
  
• Equilibrium - facilitating a weekly group at Clarendon Recovery College with mental health service users, supporting them to produce a quarterly online magazine about wellbeing, with the help of our amazing graphic designer, Anthony. Check out our latest issue.
• 3FF - facilitating interfaith workshops in schools for their education team, including 'The Art of Asking', 'The Art of Empathy', and 'Encountering Faiths and Beliefs', where I facilitate the dialogue between our guest speakers and students; for example we might go into, say, a Catholic school and take a Muslim, an Atheist and a Buddhist speaker, and the students get to ask them questions about their beliefs (I love those sessions).
• Family Lives - continuing to work on their TeenBoundaries project, delivering Sex and Relationship Education in secondary schools - particularly focusing on sexual bullying, self-esteem, consent, sexting, porn, and healthy relationships.
• Future Creative - another new job, delivering Drama-based workshops, which has already taken me as far as Lincoln, to run a day of workshops on immigration, and Birmingham, for a Roald Dahl day.
• Inner Drive - another new one (one can't have too many zero hours contracts), running education workshops drawing on neuroscience to teach young people life-skills.
• 

  St Albans Arts - continuing to deliver Creative Writing workshops in St Albans. The project I'd started in 2014, first working with Mind in Mid Herts and The Living Room, then Albany Lodge (an inpatient psychiatric hospital, which proved a logistically challenging context to work in), culminated in May 2015 with the publication of an anthology of their work, Tell Me on a Monday. Then for the next phase of the project, I delivered 'Write it Out': workshops for people with/supporting people with Parkinsons, in partnership with Parkinsons UK (who are funding me to come back and work with them again in the new year - yay). I also presented at Creative Hertfordshire's 'Art of Wellbeing' conference and did some group writing with the delegates. I'm now really looking forward to working on an Arts on Prescription project in partnership with Trestle Theatre Company in the new year.
• The Living Room - after delivering Creative Writing workshops there funded by St Albans Arts, I was really pleased to be invited back for two sets of eight more sessions with the service users, all in recovery from various addictions. It's been really interesting working with people whose addictions aren't only substance-based, and has really made me reflect on my practice.
• Coopers Hill - I've been doing some consultancy in the form of Creative Direction and Partnership Strategy for the lovely Peter Rabbett, supporting the evolution of a new centre for Creative, Digital and Performing Arts at Coopers Hill in Bracknell. It also meant I got to meet one of my educational heroes, Sir Ken Robinson, at the Festival of Education.

  

  Me and my "new best friend", Sir Ken

• I've done a few more bits and pieces for the Southbank Centre, including running a two-day workshop for the Festival of Love, in the place of Jodi Ann Bickley (who was unwell), called 'one million lovely letters'. This is a project designed to send 'a hug in an envelope' for anyone who needs one, and so I spent a couple of days helping people write and decorate letters to strangers, old and young, near and far, who might need to know someone out there cares. 
  
  I also came back for a second year to do some early morning 'speed mentoring' in the London Eye for their International Day of the Girl celebrations, which was again a complete privilege. Watching the sunrise over London, whilst talking to young woman about their ambitions, worries and dreams, might be one of the very best ways to start the day. 
  
• Another little, but very moving, work-thing I did earlier this year was for Jennifer Lunn at Culturcated Theatre Company, when I spent the day at Evelina Children's Hospital with three other actors, performing stories the children on the ward had written to them at their bedsides. I got to be a giant bubble floating through the sky, a robot warrior, a naughty cactus, an Elven King, and plenty of other bizarre and amazing characters. It was such a wonderful and inspiring day; I really hope I can go back sometime and do it again. 
• In May, I made a brief appearance on CBBC's 'Vote for Me', a programme designed to engage children in democratic processes. I was doing a Shakespeare assembly in a primary school in Lewisham. I had a wooden sword. Next stop, fulfilling a life-long dream of being on Jackanory??

So, that was all the paid stuff (I think; I may have forgotten something). As a volunteer, I also did:

Talking to Yr6s in Lewisham about my wife

• Diversity Role Models - I've been volunteering as a 'Role Model' with DRM for four years now. They're such an inspirational charity, working tirelessly to prevent homophobic and transphobic bullying in schools. I've only volunteered in secondary schools in the past, but a few weeks ago was invited into a primary school to talk to the young people about being bisexual and my recent marriage, which was super fun and the children asked such brilliant and interesting questions.

One Yr6 child's promise after the workshop

Feedback from another Yr6 child

• Action Breaks Silence - this is such an amazing charity, working internationally to combat and prevent sexual and gender-based violence. I supported them in the development of their new programme for 7-11 year old boys, designed to build empathy and prevent abusive or violent behaviour in the future. Like them on Facebook if you want to watch the most AWESOME videos of small girls being empowered to kick the shit out of violent attackers!
• I helped make a Fun Palace in Streatham (and you should all make one where you live too next year!)
• Female Arts - continued as a reviewer for an online magazine focusing on female creatives
• Women's Equality Party - I started off as a volunteer Branch Maker (helping set up local branches across the UK) for this new and exciting political party, whose ambition of bringing gender equality to the mainstream political agenda is, I believe, hugely important and well overdue.  I spoke at the Youth Branches' first meeting (you can listen to it on Soundcloud) and am now supporting their education outreach group. I'm also planning on putting myself forward as a candidate for the GLA elections. Watch this space!

I think that's everything!! In other work-related news, I'm currently applying for funding for a PhD, and I'm also co-editing a book with Annie McKean (to be published next year) on the work of Playing for Time Theatre Company in HMP Winchester. I think January is going to be pretty full on.

The new year can be a good time to look back and reflect, as well as look forward and plan (as long as we haven't eaten too much cheese, spent too much time with family, and slip into a 'what am I doing with my life' panic!). Parts of this year have been truly amazing and other parts have been genuinely devastating; we never know what life is about to throw at us (sorry if I'm starting to sound like a motivational fridge-magnet) - so I only hope 2016 brings us some luck, a bit more money (being a grown up can be shit), and I keep getting the chance to work with amazing people in inspirational places. I'm going to keep stepping up...

Arts for All

Jennie Lee

Wednesday 25th February marked 50 years since Jennie Lee's white paper: A Policy for the Arts - First Steps. Lee was the arts minister in the 1964 Labour government of Harold Wilson, and it was the first (and is so far the only!) white paper that had been written on the arts. In it, she argues that the arts must occupy a central place in British life and be part of everyday life for children and adults, be embedded in our education system, recognised as an important industry, widely accessible, properly funded, and valued by society.

 

So, 50 years have passed. How far have we come? Mid February saw the publication of Warwick Commission's report on The Future of Cultural Value, which - although demonstrating that the arts are a significant contributor to the economy - also shows that arts and culture are being 'systematically removed from the UK education system'. Under our current government, the Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, has said that 'Arts subjects limit career choices'; we've watched  Arts subjects being devalued, undermined and squeezed out of the curriculum, and at the same time provision outside of formal education reduced and dismantled due to funding cuts (from a regime of austerity which consistently harms the younger generation). As Paul Collard, Chief Executive at Creative Culture and Education, recently said:

'What is clear now is that young people, especially those in the less affluent areas, are not getting any opportunities at all, because arts... access for young people has been swept away. And it will only get worse.'

Cheerful reading. So, what shall we do? Make some noise! Make some art! DO SOMETHING! That was the call of Devoted and Disgruntled, spear-headed by Stella Duffy. With a twitter handle #ArtsPolicy50 ready to go viral (which, YAY, on 25/02/15 it DID!), the mission was clear: mark the anniversary; let people know why you think it's important; make a fuss.

I think it's important, so I celebrated, discussed and responded with two groups I was working with that week: a group of adults in recovery from various forms of addiction, who I do Creative Writing with at The Living Room, and a group of young migrant/refugee teenagers in South London, who I do Drama with for Attic Theatre Company. 

With my group at The Living Room, I decided to challenge both them and myself, and worked with them to write a group villanelle. A villanelle is a poetic form that is supposed to be one of the very hardest to write, and I thought this would not only give my group a lift, knowing how capable and talented they are, once we had written one, but would also be a nice way of demonstrating that a community group, gathered together for the purpose of recovery (rather than because they had chosen to attend an arts-based class) could be damn creative, that the arts could be of value to ANY community. And they did bloody well, so I'm going to let their work provide all the evidence I need....

Arts for All

We feel as if we're up against the wall,

This generation is under duress.

Art is for everyone. Art is for us all.

So we shall answer our heart's secret call

With a tight grip or with a sweet caress.

We feel as if we're up against the wall.

We know we're got the gumption and the gall

The talent, deep inside us, to impress.

Art is for everyone. Art is for us all.

It's not as if the order's very tall,

We're tired of giving more and getting less.

We feel as if we're up against the wall

From Cornish coast up to remote Rockall

We will push for proper, fair access.

Art is for everyone. Art is for us all.

Inside our schools and every village hall.

Fifty year's since Jennie Lee's address,

We feel as if we're up against the wall.

Art is for everyone. Art is for us all.

Before they left, many of them said they had felt 'lifted' by the experience, that they were 'proud' of what they'd achieved, that they felt 'lighter', 'invigorated', that they'd had 'fun'. Arts for all. It does matter.

Then on the day itself, I ran our Drama group with my colleague, Rob Lehmann, at SCOLA, with the young migrants. Many of the students have very little English, and come from all across the globe. Some have come from war-torn countries, some have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, most are in foster care. All agreed the arts are a fundamental part of their lives. We we had some fun, took some photos, and celebrated the importance of the arts in all of their lives. 

Tell Me on a Monday

I've just started running a project, organised by St Albans Arts, at The Living Room (addiction recovery) and at Mind, and just had some super lovely feedback. Thought I'd be very un-British (talking about things we're proud of rather than the weather, urgh!) and share it with you:

'I wanted to say thank you for the impact you’ve had on the group at TLR, Kate. D-- (counsellor) is full of the great work you are doing with the group when I come in on Wednesdays, S-- tells me that it is a joy listening to the animated stuff going on and how you are engaging zest and enthusiasm (there has been little in many of their lives) but most of all I heard from the group themselves this morning. I asked a simple question – how did it go with Kate yesterday? The people who were at the workshop yesterday spoke about the work they had done for 15 mins – I heard about love and candles with flickering flames and grandfathers carrying children on their shoulders and ….. it was also said in a respectful and appreciative way that is even more significant than the actual words.  You really have made a big impact and I’m only sorry I cannot sit in on Tuesdays myself...'

Welling up.

EQUILIBRIUM - Summer Issue

If you haven't checked out Equilibrium: Magazine for Wellbeing's latest issue (Summer Issue 49), why not?

GET ON IT.

The Politics and Power of Words

Tuesday 16th was the launch of the poetry anthology I compiled for CoolTan Arts, Diagnosis: Hysteria? Prescription: Hysteria! - the final product of the women's poetry group I ran there last year. The event had the dual purpose of launching both our poetry book and also celebrating CoolTan's new venue. They're still on the Walworth Rd, but have just moved to the other side of the road, and have - drum roll, please - an INDOOR TOILET (luxury!) and other lovely things like windows and a view. 

I'll miss their old warehouse in some ways - it certainly had character - but think I can get over that in the face of not having to use a portaloo. Though I will miss the cat from the warehouse next door, who used to flirt with me whenever it was sunny. Meow. 

It was a great event, with fantastic artwork exhibited, and fancy guests, like the local GP/sexy TV doctor, Jonty Heaversedge. We also had readings from some of the women who contributed to the book. The Forward explains the title a bit (buy the book, buy the book!), but you can also check out CoolTan's newly launched online magazine, CoolFruit, where you can read an article by one of their members which takes a closer look at hysteria through the ages. Oh yeah, or buy the book.

In honour of the occasion, rather than reading one of my own poems from the anthology, as planned (I also read some of my students' poems, who couldn't make it), I instead read a poem I wrote on the tube on the way there, inspired by/in honour of the event. I feel quite strongly about some of the issues that surround our work and the lives of the country's most vulnerable - you'd never have guessed - such as the impact of political policies and the state of the mental health services - check out my article about how funding cuts, etc, are effecting places like CoolTan (after you've read my poem, obvs!).

Let me know what you think....

The Politics and Power of Words

Your 'skivers not strivers' rhetoric

Don't give a shit about our mental health

Disadvantaged for not having a dick

And not being born into wealth

I'm not hiding behind closed shutters

Don't believe what it says in the Mail

I'm doing my best, we're doing our best

Though it feels like you're helping us fail

We know the meaning of work

Have you pulled yourself up from the brink?

Have you hit rock bottom and started again?

Have you actually stopped to think

What your language is doing?

'Cos I'm not a 'hard-working family'

But that doesn't mean I'm not contributing

To this world, with love and integrity

So, I'll write emails like nobody's watching

Read the papers like I've never been hurt

Speak 'til people start listening

And believe in the power of words

Photos of the event by Amy Bradshaw

Art in Hospitals

Throughout the year, Apples and Snakes run a series of Artist Development Masterclasses. I've been to a few of them (they're FREE), as I'm always looking to develop my practice, meet new people and learn from other artists and practitioners - and these events never disappoint.

Today, I made my way through commuter hell to Whitechapel, to the Royal London Hospital, for a masterclass on Arts in Health: WORKING IN HOSPITAL AND HEALTH CARE SETTINGS. The morning was split in two, with the first half run by Rachel Louis of Vital Arts, who showed us some magnificently inspiring projects that she had co-ordinated and facilitated a Q+A with us, followed by some more practical work with storyteller Sally Pomme Clayton, who ran some writing exercises with us, as well as discussing some of her past projects.  

I wrote my MA thesis on arts in health - specifically using Drama in inpatient psychiatric settings. Indeed the title, colon and all (you've got to have a colon, other wise it's not a real title!) was: 

Stuck in the middle with you: 

How can Applied Theatre help build personal and social skills that could assist young people in the transition between adolescent and adult psychiatric services?  

It was really nice today to think about it again and it's inspired and motivated me to try and source funding to actually do the work I wrote so many thousands of words about. I really care about this topic, and - hey - I got a distinction, so the idea can't be shite!

The practical writing exercises we did with Sally were also really interesting; I enjoy being a participant, not just because it's an important reflective component to facilitation, or because I like learning new tools, but also because it's nice to be guided as an artist sometimes, and to think about my own work - my own writing, my own performance - and to indulge in that a bit. We did a series of writing exercise, some of them based on memory and some imagined, and then we edited bits together. 'Cos I'm feeling a little bit impulsive this evening, I've copied what I wrote below. Feel free to mock me that my being impulsive results in sharing a little bit of unpolished creative writing, rather than doing ketamine and texting all my exes... 

  

Hospital. The word hospital to me means a secret. A secret I have to be very careful about telling.

Orange and green. Why orange and green? They're supposed to be fun and bright and happy, but really they are forced jollity or colours like puce. What would make me happy? Cool blues, calming colours, dashes of turquoise, of the sky, of the sea. Something that spoke of freedom. Not primary school bedrooms. Not 'we're making up for it', secret punishments. Not matt and shiny floors, and walls that look wet, and fake glass, so you can't slit your wrists. 

I'm starting to feel well again. When I breathe in I taste air, rather than sickness. I never thought I would enjoy quiet like this. I'm learning to live with the world while it rolls by gently.

I'm well enough to walk to the lake. All the time I've been here I've looked out at it and felt it would mark the epitome of wellness to walk there. I'll collect some bread on the way in case there are any ducks. I'm disproportionately excited, like a child at Christmas. This is my present for being well. 

Feels a bit like the beginning of something I want to write. I must make myself write more. Doing the free writing exercise earlier, I discovered things I didn't even know I thought, and that my imagination was much more potent and fluid than I think it is. 

So, while I go away and muse on that-play-I-simply-must-write, I leave you first with a poem and then with a picture. A truly beautiful and powerful poem about hospitals and health. Written by someone who knew what she was talking about.

Tulips, Sylvia Plath

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anaesthetist and my body to surgeons.

They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep.
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage ——
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat
Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free ——
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down,
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their colour,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salty, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.

And here is a picture not of tulips, but poppies. And a girl I will never forget, who also knew hospitals and for whom health never got close enough.