Week Ten: The Allotment

After nearly two and a half years of being on the waiting list, I got the keys to my allotment! Over the next year I will be turning this space into a natural colour garden - growing flowers, plants, vegetables and herbs that can be used to make natural dyes, paints and photography developers. There is alot of work to be done but I’m looking forward to seeing how this space transforms through the seasons.

Front Section

The allotment has a couple of greenhouses and a large shed at the end of the space. There is broken glass and ceramics hidden amongst the overgrown plants, and the raised beds are somewhere beneath the grass. It is very easy to get overwhelmed when looking at the allotment and the amount of work to be done. The first task will be making the allotment safe so that my friends and family can come along to help out. I’ll be splitting the space into four sections: the front, the greenhouses, the back, and the shed. I’ll be starting work on the front section first before moving my way through the rest of the sections. I’m imagining raised beds in the front section and a wilder layout in the back section leading up to the shed. There are tools that have been left behind and I can’t help but think of the person that this plot had previously belonged to. I found myself wondering who they were and why they had left the allotment behind.

Back Section

I hope that one day I can turn this into a space for the community to learn about natural colour making. I would like to replace the shed with something that can be used for workshops and artist residencies. I'm imagining large windows and a warm place to dwell and look out onto the allotment plot. A space for artists, creative practitioners, and the local community to come together and connect with the land.

Week Nine: Unlocking the Unconscious

I am now coming to the end of my course in 'Creative Health and Wellbeing through Artmaking' at UAL. This week we explored Joseph Campbell's concept of 'The Monomyth' and the steps of 'The Hero's Journey'. We used this to share stories of overcoming difficulties in our lives using mythology, fantasy and symbolism. I really liked this approach as I felt removed from the story I wished to share and so it became easier to tell. Listening to the stories of others was easier too and I felt focused on the meaning of their stories as opposed to the gory details of their lives. Over the next couple of weeks I am tasked with developing a short Creative Health activity to deliver to the rest of my group.

I am starting to think more in depth about my own approach to Creative Health as a practitioner. I feel strongly that creative activities should be restorative, transformative or a mixture of the two. I am so deeply interested in the role of materials and processes in unlocking the unconscious mind but also the ethics of holding a space for pain and trauma to resurface and heal. I am questioning what boundaries need to be put in place to ensure the safety of the participant and the practitioner.

The Road to Freedom

I have thought a lot about the times when creativity has helped to give me strength when I have felt a sense of injustice, restriction or have been silenced. How symbolism has helped me to tell a story at my own pace, often in a humorous way that is open to the interpretation of the viewer. I have thought about musical instruments and the way they have helped me to regulate my emotions through a rhythmic form of meditation. How tap dancing has provided an opportunity to connect with my body and to feel the present moment. How ceramic processes have acted as a sensory form of anger management. I have thought about the things that have helped me to unlock my own intuition when faced with a situation where the odds are stacked against me. I have thought about the things that have brought me peace.

I have reflected back to an activity that I completed earlier on my course that involved cutting out words from a newspaper and arranging them to create a poem. The idea is to cut out words that stand out to you without thinking too much and then to arrange them in sentences to form a poem. I was fascinated by this process and how without intending, it revealed some of the things that had been on my mind. The more I look at this poem, the more I understand that it was helping me to establish my own values and approaches to Creative Health in a professional manner when my development is so deeply rooted in lived experience. I started to wonder if this would also be the case when collaging with pictures. I have thought about oracle cards as a tool for unlocking the unconscious mind, trusting your intuition and helping you to decide your next move. I am interested in the connection between oracle cards and collage as a surrealist technique and will explore this further over the coming weeks to design and develop an activity for my group.

Week Eight: Therapeutic Interventions in Art & Horticulture

This week I've been exploring the difference between art therapy and art as a therapeutic activity. I've been questioning the ethics behind art as a therapeutic activity and the boundaries that are needed to ensure the emotional safety of both the participant and facilitator. This is helping me to define my own approach to Creative Health as I re-establish my work within the arts and cultural sector.

Self Portrait

One of my favourite activities this week was drawing and painting a series of self portraits without being able to see. It involved drawing with both the right and left hands, and painting whilst wearing a blindfold. At times this felt a little uneasy as I was unsure if I was even making any marks on the paper, let alone having any idea of the colours that I had mixed in my palette. The perception of how big or small the drawing is changes and the big reveal of what you have created is a moment of humour and joy. I am thinking about cathartic exercises that bring the right balance of vulnerability in a participant, and the emotions that are experienced when embracing this and truly letting go of getting things 'right'. Artmaking becomes a playful process to self discovery.

Seeds of Hope

Also this week, I have started some training with the Eden Project on Community Action and was asked to complete a Story Canvas. A Story Canvas is a powerful storytelling tool that helps you to focus on your own life journey and how this has influenced your vision and goals for the future. We were asked to present an object that represented us and I learnt how the simple act of holding an object can help us to tell our own stories. I chose to talk through the seeds that I had produced in the growing of plants for natural colour over the last year. I thought about the sowing of seeds as the starting point of a project or idea. I reflected on the fact that sowing just a few seeds had resulted in the production of hundreds more seeds to grow in the future. I reflected on the stepping stones to creating bigger projects and the way things can naturally evolve at the pace that it requires.

At the same time, I have been continuing my studying in Social & Therapeutic Horticulture and have found it particularly interesting to learn about the emotional qualities that horticulture can bring. I have been learning about the recovery model of mental health and how actions such as the sowing of seeds can help us to think of the future. I've been reading about the restorative nature of horticulture programmes and the role that they play in supporting individuals with PTSD. I've been thinking of my own journey with this diagnosis and the hopes that I have to use this lived experience to help others in the future. How the seeds once sown in my own mental health recovery have gone on to produce so much more than just the flowers that bloomed this summer.