Download PDFs for the RE: MAPPING project by clicking here and here.

Staple Hill Week Two

Fri, 03/04/2016 - 19:15 Staple Hill 2015

WEEK TWO

We started the session with a few name games to warm us up and once everyone was laughing the performance began:

An un-named individual clad in metallic blue spandex raged through the library performing lewd sex acts, wrestling (in what can only be described as amateur in style) and littering, before storming out the building and setting off a dangerous weapon in the doorway (a glitter cannon none-the-less).

 

Staple Hill Week One

Fri, 03/04/2016 - 19:12 Staple Hill 2015

Week one at Staple Hill library was a revelation. Wonderful friendly staff and an another engaged community made us all feel welcome from the moment we arrived and calmed our first-day nerves beautifully. 

As you might have come to expect, much tea was drunk and cake eaten and much to our surprise, our participants were ready to jump straight in with some wonderful group sharing. Liz Vivi and I felt very humbled by these stories – not least because they will help to shape the structure of next week's work and allow us room to develop our ideas quicker than expected. Superb stuff.

Memory Cafe

Fri, 03/04/2016 - 19:08

I was delighted to have been invited to the Memory Café at Winterbourne last week. The empty tables beautifully adorned with blue flowers (the forget me not is central to the Alzeimer’s Society Dementia Friends campaign) soon filled up and the hall was alive with conversation, jokes and general hubbub.
I was providing a taster session for RE:MAPPING, our new arts based project which starts again this September (Tuesday 15th at 1.30pm) in Staple Hill Library. The afternoon sessions are aimed at people living with dementia, their families and carers.

Yate Week six

Fri, 03/04/2016 - 19:03 Yate 2015

A big pile of soil, some glitter, some photos, various gems, various textual gems that we have shared and some coloured feathers all put together on a world map. … What on Earth?

This week we said goodbye in the nicest possible way to our first group's devised character Eddie who came into being in week five as an excellent example of a 'life well lived'. We saw him off with a fond wave after asking each other what we would like to ask him and composing our answers on his behalf.

Yate Week Five

Fri, 03/04/2016 - 18:59 Yate 2015

We can’t believe we are on week five already. We have met some amazing people and been privileged to hear some of their incredible stories. We’ve been around the world many times in these sessions which have naturally had a theme of Wanderlust.

Today was no exception; today we created a map of a Life Well Lived and transposed it onto a stranger’s face! From studying the lines, creases and contours of a face we mapped a journey with troughs, peaks and plateaus. We marveled at how tiny pieces of visual information could change our perception entirely. 

YAte Week Four

Fri, 03/04/2016 - 18:47 Yate 2015

This week we asked our groups to make further explorations of storytelling and to share 'significant journeys' with us without words. We used our bodies to exchange emotions and then - sitting on our hands - we conveyed everything from moments of 'letting go' to real tears in order to transport other group members on our personal journeys.

 

We also made a physical map of the emotions in the room, allowing participants to create an expression of themselves from whichever media to hand they chose.

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