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...

Foxes and Feminism

I was brought up by parents who were (and still are) feminists. They taught us that no-one should be limited by their gender (or class, or race, or disability status, or sexuality, or all those other tick boxes you see on forms) but that, world over, they are. We were dressed in gender-neutral colours, we cooked, we gardened, we climbed trees, played football, played with Sylvanians... We wore clothes that were handed down from my sister, our baby-sitters, the boy down the road, the girl across the field - they were just clothes (I mostly favoured a heady combination of orange leggings and a lime green t-shirt). 

When I cut my hair short with the kitchen scissors behind the sofa, my dad neatened it up and I chose never to grow it long again. When I was seven, I decided I didn't want to wear a skirt or dress to school, so they bought me some trousers and shorts. I was the first girl at my primary school ever to wear trousers; people teased me but I didn't care. A couple of years later, a few more girls were wearing trousers. I bet if I went back now any girl who wanted to would be wearing them without question. What can I say? I'm a trend-setter. 

I went into a primary school in London quite recently and asked the pupils to divide the list of jobs I gave them into 'Jobs for Boys' and 'Jobs for Girls'. I felt like I had been transported back to the 1950s when they wrote:

BOYS

Farmer

Doctor

Lawyer

GIRLS

Nurse

Beautician

Receptionist

In a secondary school the other day, we discussed what words girls who are perceived to be sexually active get called. They said:

Slut

Sket

Whore

Hoe

Slapper

Slag

Thot

[700 more....]

I probably get new ones every month. Then I asked them what boys get called:

Player

Legend

Man-whore, man-sket, man-slut...

One of the girls looked at me and suddenly her pupils went big and she just said: "But that's not FAIR!" I looked back at her: "Of course it's not". And then I taught them the term 'double-standard' and we talked about why it might be there and how we could try and get rid of it.

What can I say? I think (I hope), I'm making my parents proud. Certainly my Dad's eyes went equally big when we had a conversation recently about to what extent gender was essential or socially constructed; he had a light-bulb flash the next morning and turned to me over breakfast and said: "I could wear a nice dress if I hadn't been socialised not to". Yes, Daddy, yes, you could.

A couple of weeks ago I got married. I heard afterwards that my mum had gone around telling the guests it was a 'feminist wedding'. Was it? I don't know - I'm not sure what the criteria would be. It was an excellent wedding. It was excellent because I got to marry the person I'm in love with. The WOMAN I'm in love with. And because it didn't cost too much, the food was great, we made it ourselves, people danced The Snake like children and sang 'She'll be coming round the mountain', getting sweaty and kicking off their shoes. We used, ignored, altered and borrowed traditions, based on if we liked them (no-one 'gave us away' *shudder* and our mums walked us down the aisle, but my father still gave a speech because he's ace at speeches). It was excellent because everyone there got to bear witness to our love and commitment to each other and to celebrate it with us. And because my beautiful wife made a speech about same sex marriage which made half the room cry (men and women), and we toasted Equal Love and sent our hopes and our love across the world to those who aren't as lucky as us and are punished for 'doing nothing more radical than loving each other' (as Gem said over the noise of tissues being madly scrabbled for). 

Posers.

Laura Bates, of Everyday Sexism Project fame, wrote in her article 'How to have a feminist wedding' in the Guardian last year: 'Until I told my friends I was getting married, I didn't know marriage and feminism could be considered mutually exclusive'. Marriage has been branded an out-of-date, patriarchal institution (cue comments about property, chattel etc), and although when I was little I used to design wedding dresses with a particularly artistic babysitter, I'm not sure if I ever thought I'd wear one. A friend of mine recently said, "I don't know why anyone bothers getting married any more. Unless it's a right that's previously been denied to them." Could I use this as a handy Get Out of Feminist Jail Free card? Should I need to?

For me, equality is about opportunity and choice, having the right to choose. Cool if I don't want to get married, but if I want to then why should my genetically identical twin be allowed to marry her boyfriend if I'm not allowed to marry my girlfriend? And people might say we're 'aping' heterosexuals (I found Straight Expectations a really grating read), but a) there's nothing like a really animalistic term to degrade someone, and b) why should commitment be considered 'heterosexual' anyway? Equality is partly the right to legal recognition, and although that might not sound sexy, I like that my wife and I are now legally family.

Growing up, my mother always said, on the topic of changing your name: "It's one man's name or another". She'd changed her name when she married, no biggie, no desperate attachment. Yet over the years her views have changed and she has now begun expressing her disappointment at any of her daughters changing their names upon marrying. I think my view has secretly always been more based in vanity than politics and I'd always thought I'd just go with the better name. Massey-Chase isn't super hard to beat (although some people have, in recent years, bizarrely expressed their love of it, when I was younger it was a bit of a yoke/joke). My mum also hadn't anticipated our rather unique situation. It's not one man's name or another. My wife, Gem, doesn't have her dad's surname. Or her maternal grandfather's. Her dad is a massive shit, so she changed it a few years ago to a name of her own choosing. And who doesn't like Fox(es)? I don't know whether I would have changed it or not if this wasn't the case. I quite like Massey-Chase now. As a freelancer, generating and collecting my own work, it is also my currency, my reputation. So - solution: I'm using both. 

I am Kate Massey-Chase for work.

I am Kate Fox at home. For me, Gem and the extended skulk. And, hopefully, one day we will have fox cubs and we will all share our own, chosen, name as a family.

So, yes: I am a feminist fox. 

It's amazing what you can find in google images...

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. 

Men: Sit down for your rights

One of the many hats I wear (figuratively in this instance, though I am lucky enough to rock a good hat) is as a reviewer for the wonderful Female Arts, a website 'promoting women in the arts and business'.

I wrote this article back in March about Grayson Perry's lecture for the wonderful Women of the World Festival. Thought I would share it on here too, as it had such an impact on me. 

Grayson Perry Lecture: Southbank Centre - WoW Festival - Review

Submitted by Kate Massey-Chase on March 16, 2014 - 20:18

Men: Sit down for your rights

It’s a Sunday evening in March at the Southbank Centre and the last event of their Women of the World (WOW) festival, celebrating International Women’s Day. Over two thousand men and women have gathered in the Royal Festival Hall to listen to the musings on masculinity of a Northern transvestite potter: the one and only Grayson Perry. A great pull to the festival, a quick show of hands confirmed that many people had joined the celebrations just to see the ‘national treasure’ himself, alongside many who had bought day passes or been celebrating the festival all week.

Introduced by Jude Kelly, artistic director of the Southbank Centre, although for most of the audience he needed little introduction, we were listed the many accolades afforded to Perry over the years, from winning the Turner Prize in 2003, giving last year’s Reiths Lectures, to his recent visit to the palace to be award a CBE in the Queen’s new year’s honours. Kelly gave her usual poise, confidence and excellent timing to her introduction, and explained Perry’s lecture in the context of the WOW festival, asserting: ‘There’s no such thing as a world made equal by just one side’. Perry had previously given this lecture earlier in the year for the Southbank’s first ‘Being a Man’ festival (this is the fourth time WOW which has hit London’s Thames-side cultural hub), but, as the lecture would go on to explicate: the rights of men and women are inextricably entwined.

Perry’s lecture was titled ‘Men: Sit down for your rights’, with a subtitle in parenthesis: ‘but please don’t whine’. There was no whining, but plenty of whopping on Perry’s entrance, as he did not disappoint in a little girl dress with, what he later described as ‘crack cocaine frills’. Although his attire speaks panto-dame-meets-Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang-dolly-meets-Meadham-Kirchoff, Perry’s manner is never grating, flouncy or camp. Indeed I think he might be the most insightful, witty and honest person I’ve ever heard speak.

Regarding his title, he explained that there are losers as well as winners in any power imbalance, and – for example – gaining equal gender representation in parliament necessitates some male MPs stepping aside. Men need to ‘Stop getting up on one’, and his talk called for a softer form of masculinity, not just for the benefit of women, but for men as well. The current conception of masculinity and the standard of the Modern Man is not succeeding in its current form. Three times as many men commit suicide as women; in US fertility clinic where you can choose the gender of your child, 75% of parents choose a girl. Sometimes ‘it’s unhealthy being a man’. Of course this comes from Grayson Perry, who has ‘in some deep psychological way...difficulty with the symbols of being a man’. Hence the frilly dresses and bows. But the facts and stats remain the same, and increasing attention to crises of hypermasculinity and the role anxiety/ambiguity many men face today highlights the need for discussions such as this.

From birth, we are gendered and this role is rigidly policed. With brilliantly drawn and wittily annotated illustrations projected behind, Perry took us on a multi-layered journey through the history of this process, the complexity of the male brain, and the socio-historic context of changing conceptions of gender roles. A recurring theme was the problem of the ‘Tower of Power’ from which everything else is Other: the White Middle-Class Heterosexual Male Gaze. Hidden in plain sight, this is the ‘voice of society that’s ringing in our heads, whether we like it or not’. And as the least challenged group, they are also the least self-aware. Other issues and conflicts Perry explored were men’s sexual drives (they are ‘shackled to this incredible, powerful imperative to fuck everything’), adrenaline as the ‘great unspoken addiction of our age’, and MAMILs (Middle Aged Men In Lycra). He also expounded his excellent theories on the rise of the beard, how we are probably already past ‘peak beard’, and his diagram of ‘Bike knowledge to beard ratio’ (essentially the longer the beard, the greater the knowledge, until you reach Gandalf-style where he’d noted ‘probably a wizard, no need for bikes’). This incisive break-down of modern trends – with illustrative cartoons – is emblematic of Perry’s greatest gift, bring together the amusing, the current and the context in a way that is accessible, enlightening and entertaining all at the same time (did you know that there was a rise in beards in the nineteenth century, as the male role became threatened by mechanisation? I do now). Indeed he said so many excellent and erudite things, that it’s hard not to relay the whole lecture. He also taught us the term ‘skeuomorph’, which is an excellent word. The crux of his message was that men need to learn to be more vulnerable, flexible and move away from the symbolic, cosmetisized and ultimately redundant version of masculinity that has become pervasive in the West. His brilliant, male-friendly analogy to explain the purpose and importance of a softer masculinity was through the image of the contact patch of a tyre against the road: softer tyres are stickier and safer; you get better traction.

Perry is really just after a ‘Cheesy Happy Everyone’ and a rainbow-coloured, diverse Tower of Power. To get there, here is his Bill of Rights for Men:

We men ask ourselves and others for the following:

1. The right to be vulnerable

2. The right to be weak

3. The right to be wrong

4. The right to be intuitive

5. The right not to know

6. The right to be uncertain

7. The right to be flexible

8. The right not to be ashamed of any of these things.

Perry noted: ‘I’m not a spokesman for all men here, as we can see’ (note love of frilly dresses), but it is this lack of generalising, the open hypothesizing, and the integrity with which he exerts his ‘right’ to be wrong’, that makes Grayson Perry such an important voice for our time.

(C) Kate Massey-Chase 2014.

---

Author's Review: 5 stars

Grayson Perry's Lecture

Men: Sit Down For Your Rights

Southbank Centre

WoW Festival

9th March 2014

Web: http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/grayson-perry-82530

Twitter: @southbankcentre @WOWtweetUK #WOWLDN

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.

Say it in song

In case they've not crossed your cyber-path, here are two songs you should listen to. They make the points themselves, so I won't say too much, just take a look/listen - why write an essay when you can say it in a song?! Socio-poitical comment with sexy beats.

The only context you need for the first is the original song by Robin Thicke. Watch that, feel your soul swiftly destroyed, then watch this version and feel your heart lift again with its fucking brilliance.

Next up Amanda Palmer sings a letter to the Daily Mail, after their article about her 'wardrobe malfunction' at Glastonbury. What a legend.

(skip to 2.28 if you're time-limited and want to jump straight to the song)

Enjoy!!!!

EQUILIBRIUM - Summer Issue

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

GET ON IT.

Volunteering with Diversity Role Models

With the next issue of Equilibrium about to come out, here's another one of my articles for it, to whet your appetite!

Volunteering with Diversity Role Models

I first discovered how volunteering could warm your soul in 2007 when I spent a good portion of my week at the Oxfam Bookshop in Winchester, whilst trying to sort my life, health and head out a bit. And it genuinely made a massive impact on me; I felt honoured to be giving my time for free there. It wasn’t completely selfless; in that little bookshop on the aptly named Parchment Street, I made friends, found a sense of purpose, and co-invented our Sunday game: Shop Cricket (and got ‘caught out by Proust’ for the first time).

Now I’m living in London, freelancing my arse off to pay my rent (doing a job I love, though, so can’t complain too loudly) and working for free is something I hoped was consigned to my student days. But volunteering and working for free are two different things: one a social problem of glass ceilings and a devalued sector, and the other an act of giving to a society you want to be an active part of. So when I heard about Diversity Role Models, I knew I wanted to volunteer as a Role Model (hard to say without following the term with some kind of witty, self-deprecating remark, but I’ll resist).    

Set up in 2011, Diversity Role Models is a charity that helps schools to eradicate homophobic bullying and provide an inclusive and safe environment for their LGBT students and families. Through high-quality, interactive workshops involving role models and discussions that allow young people to explore their views and understand difference, DRM hopes to tackle the prejudice that leads to homophobic bullying. ‘I firmly believe that by providing role models for LGBT young people, we can have a positive effect on the negative statistics’, says Suran Dickson, CEO and founder of the organisation, who was prompted to start the charity after witnessing the impact homophobic bullying had in the schools she worked in. And the statistics are shocking: LGBT youth are six times more likely to commit suicide and two thirds of them suffer bullying at school. Furthermore, as they say on their website:

            …it's not just LGBT young people. Straight students are terrified of being called 'gay'.   Girls drop out of sport and boys hide artistic talent to conform to gender roles and avoid being labelled gay or lesbian.

Anyone who’s been into a school recently will know that this is an issue that affects the wellbeing of all young people, whether implicitly or explicitly.

Since its conception, DRM has delivered their workshops to over 5,000 pupils and the results speak for themselves. Over 90% of young people indicated that they would treat LGBT people better and use the word ‘gay’ as a derogatory term less in the future. Teachers and pupils that have attended the workshops have seen a significant shift in attitudes and behaviour in their schools and would urge other schools to seek their help. ‘Fabulous - should be part of the national curriculum! This workshop should be offered to all year groups', enthused one teacher who attended a recent workshop. I know I agree. I am proud to be a Diversity Role Model. The biggest payment is knowing that you’re making a difference. 

The next academic year will see DRM delivering workshops across the country, as well as continuing to work across the capital. For more information on the workshops and to enquire about booking, contact info@diversityrolemodels.org

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

Compassion

In anticipation of our Summer Issue of Equilibrium coming out in the next week or so, here's a sneaky peak at my little article on a lecture on compassion. Enjoy (and if you don't, be compassionate and put yourself in my shoes before you comment)...

Compassionate Living, with Karen Armstrong

Sitting in the marvelous Conway Hall on 18^th April 2013, I attended my second Action for Happiness lecture of the year (see the Spring issue of Equilibrium for my write-up of my evening with Jon Kabat-Zinn), this time to see the magnificent Karen Armstrong. Introduced by Mark Williamson and Lord Richard Layard, Armstrong’s lecture provided a historical, theological, scientific and cultural exploration of compassion and its fundamental importance to our world.

Armstrong explained how liberty and the pursuit of happiness are a modern ideal, and how happiness often gets confused with emotions like tiredness, hunger, and hormones. In an oxymoronic world of  'must-have accessories' and post-modern pressures, happiness has become something actively sought, yet still elusive; it is a mirage on the horizon.

Armstrong contextualized her ideas on compassion with a scientific breakdown of the human brain’s different parts: the reptilian brain (the deepest and oldest), the mammalian brain, and the neo-cortex. Now, you’ll have to excuse my schoolgirl knowledge of science (blame me not Karen Armstrong if this isn’t right!), but she essentially explained how the reptilian brain is the one that is egocentric: all about me; it is only concerned with the four ‘F’s – fighting, fleeing, feeding and…reproduction(!), and was not designed for an age of plenty. Next we have the mammal bit of the brain, which came next and developed in line with their new needs. So, whereas reptiles laid eggs, which they could then abandon, mammals give birth and care for their young, and they started to learn that they were stronger as a group. Thus we can see the need for compassion starting to creep into the evolutionary process. The last brain-section (I have no idea what to call it!) in Armstrong’s codification of the brain is the neo-cortex, the newest part, wherein we find the ability for rational thinking, where we can stand back from our instinctive drives. She also posited a very sobering idea that, historically, the worst human atrocities – such as Auschwitz and 9/11 – happen when the first and third brains (base instinct and objective thought: what do we want and how can we do it most effectively) are used without the second: compassion for another’s suffering.  

Armstrong suggested that we need to think globally if we want to be happy, that the trick is ‘to live with suffering’, kindly, creatively and peacefully. If we are caught up in the endless prism/prison of the self, preoccupied with our own thoughts, feelings and small lives we can never be happy. Happiness, with the essential component of compassion, comes from 'dethroning yourself from the centre of your world and putting another there'. Author of A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Armstrong also brought theology into the debate, reminding the audience that the ‘Golden Rule’ of all religions and ethical traditions is to treat others as you would like to be treated.

In her new book, 12 Steps to a Compassionate Life, she suggests that we exercise compassion through remembering our own pain and refusing to inflict it on others, that we use our own feelings as a guide. This doesn’t mean that we literally treat others as we would like them to respond to us, as it is far more nuanced than that; we need to use our knowledge of that person as well, and not assume that their desires and responses would mirror ours. For example, the sentence, ‘Well, I would have wanted to know’ encapsulates this, as it does not encompass the crucial question: but would they want to? It takes a constant effort of imagination to put yourself in other people's shoes, but is all part of compassionate living (and why I think Drama – active empathy! – should be recognised as an important part of the National Curriculum – but I’ll save that article for another time).

Her allusion to the ‘12 Steps’, commonly associated with recovery from addiction, is no coincidence, as Armstrong suggested that we are addicted to our likes and dislikes, to our need to compare, to bitch even, and to say things like 'the trouble with her is...' – trying to ‘sum up the mystery of a person in a single phrase’. It makes us small, narrows our horizons, and does nothing to aid our own happiness. We need to let go of our opinions and take responsibility for the world's pain. The pain ‘needs to break our heart, so we reach out into the world in compassion’. This sat slightly uncomfortably with me, as I just feel that there is simply too much pain in the world for me to take on – how could I even process it and, if I did, how would my heart ever recover? But I can do my best, and I will sign up to her Charter for Compassion as I do believe we need to make compassion 'a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world’. Will you do the same?