Category: Kindness is Radical

Community, connection, creativity, Family, Joy, Kindness is Radical, Playtime, storytelling, Wonder More, workshops

Scrapbook Storytelling

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Like stories, beginnings are important. We are often asked

“How do we start a project? What approaches do we have? What attitudes do we foster?”

So this is how we unpack the beginning of things, how we establish relationships and cultivate joy and wonder.

Joy Seeking

If we support folk to discover joy and curiosity, they are more likely to connect with meaningful creative activity. The word glimmer entered our vocabulary from the trauma informed community. For those who don’t know, a glimmer is considered to be the opposite of a trigger. While a trigger may cause trauma, stress or anxiety to surface, a glimmer is considered to be micro moments that induce happiness. Once we become aware of those glimmers, we can start to build upon them and make more time in our life to do the things that generate those glimmers. 

However, some of our participants are not ready for glimmer hunting. They are so bogged down in the stresses of life that even a glimmer is beyond them. So we will look for a Spark. If a glimmer is a micro moment, a Spark is a nano second. A flashing twinkle that may fizzle out before the participant has even recognised that jot of joy in their body. As facilitators, it is our job to seek the Spark in our participants and build upon it. 

This is a very watchful practice. These Sparks might be a widening of the eyes, a satisfied sigh, a flicker of a smile or a leaning into the work. It cannot be achieved if we are too busy teaching a refined artistic skill or aiming for an explicit finished piece of work. In this stage this is how we establish a relationship, we want to connect to the human before we connect to the artist. This early stage of creative collaboration is built around accessibility and appropriateness for the participant. We call this Scrapbook Storytelling.

This could be a prompt sheet to encourage words or drawing their favourite things or telling us about their favourite character from a film, TV or book or collaging an object that they use everyday. From this moment we can really start to tailor the creative offer to match the common interests of the group. This is where the glimmers emerge and the participants begin to recognise the joy they are discovering in their creative practice. With our encouragement, we as a group start to seek the joy out. 

This is done authentically. We, as artists, are also seeking joy. Instead of commenting on whether someone’s outcome is ‘Good ‘ or not, we give feedback on the approach:  “I can see how you have made those dots using the pencil” or “You look happy. Is it the colours that you have used that are making you so happy?”

Wondering

Once there is a collective feeling of joy seeking amongst the group, we are ready to access the next level of an artistic practice – Wondering. Wondering is our way of describing a creative curiosity that is born out of an artistic practice and exploration of an idea. It is not just about the participant wondering, it is also about the facilitator providing high quality artistic stimulus to provoke wonder. It often begins with a Wonder Box. A Wonder Box is a vessel filled with objects to provoke conversation. The box should reflect the conversations and interests that have been discovered in the previous sessions, curated to provoke a more in depth decision. This may evolve into something more specific like the inside of a carriage clock that houses clues to a secret character or a piece of audio that invites inspiration.

The Wondering stage is also there to encourage and cultivate creative skills. In this stage of the process the facilitator should begin sharing techniques to enhance the participant’s creative practice. In the previous stage, we may have used materials that are available at home – lots of recycled card, scrap paper, colouring pencils and pens. In the Wondering stage we will begin to elevate the materials on offer, Aqua markers instead of felt tips, Fineliners over pencils and introducing clay or acrylic paint pens. There is also some creative risk taking that comes with this practice. So we will scaffold this to reduce risk. If making a mark is too overwhelming for fear of getting it wrong, we will incorporate time and materials to practice.

As we work through the group’s Wondering era, the artist starts to see what the outcome could be. This is gently fed back to the group and feedback gathered about whether this idea is exciting to them as a collective.

Artivism, Community, creative writing, creativity, Kindness is Radical, Schools, storytelling, workshops

Movements for Change

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Inspired by the rich history of social movements in the UK, our Revolt Artivism Workshops aim to empower Key stage 2 and 3 students to create change through drama, storytelling, songwriting and poetry. Below you can read about some of those movements that shaped our nation when ordinary people asked for change.

Peterloo

On 16th August 1819, around 80,000 people gathered on St Peter’s Field in central Manchester to demand democratic representation.

Most of them were industrial workers from Manchester and its surrounding towns, who had suffered from an economic depression and left without support from the government.. They peacefully came together to demand the right to make their lives better.

Under colourful banners hand stitched with slogans like “Unity and Strength” ,and “Liberty and Fraternity”, they listened to radicals like Henry Hunt speak up for their rights and democratic reform.

It ended with the government cavalry – instructed to keep the ‘peace’ – armed with swords, charged the crowd of men, women and children. 18 people were killed and 700 people were injured.

Masque of Anarchy

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) wrote this in the aftermath of Peterloo. Due to government censorship and fear that the poem would lead to greater civil unrest, the poem wasn’t published for another 13 years. It was never actually published in Shelley’s lifetime.

Henry Hunt

1773 -1835

Henry “Orator” Hunt was a British radical speaker and pioneer of working-class radicalism and an important influence on the later Chartist Movement. He campaigned for parliamentary reform. He was the first member of parliament to advocate for women’s right to vote.

Hunt, encouraged people to attend a meeting at Peterloo on the 16 August ‘armed with NO OTHER WEAPON but that of a self-approving conscience’.

After the massacre at Peterloo, Hunt and nine others were charged with ‘unlawful and seditious assembling for the purpose of exciting discontent .’

Hunt was found guilty in March 1820 and sentenced to two and a half years in Ilchester Gaol. In prison, he wrote his autobiography and two book titled “To the Radical Reformers, Male and Female of England, Ireland and Scotland”.

‘I am determined the Working Classes shall have the reform they want.’

Henry Hunt

In 1830 he became a member of Parliament for Preston. As a consistent champion of the working classes, He gave speeches addressed to the urging them to press for full equal rights and hold politicians to account.

The Chartists

The Chartist movement was the first mass movement driven by the working classes. It grew following the 1832 Reform Act which didn’t offer voting rights to people unless they owned property.

In 1838 a People’s Charter was written, it had 6 demands:

  • All men to have the vote
  • Voting should take place by secret ballot
  • Parliamentary elections every year
  • Constituencies should be of equal size
  • Members of Parliament should be paid
  • You shouldn’t have to own property to be become a Member of Parliament

Chartist Anthem

Here’s Flick singing the Chartist Anthem (1847) by Ben Boucher which dates from the Chartist struggles of the 1840s. Ben Boucher (1769-1851) was a miner who turned to making a living by selling his poems at a penny each in the streets. He died in Dudley workhouse.

You can read all about the different creative Revolt workshops that we offer here

Communication, Community, connection, creativity, Joy, Kindness is Radical, storytelling, workshops

Let’s Gather Together

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Let's Gather Together 
In any way we can. 
Whether we are collectors or a collective
We could be powerful.

Let's Gather Together
And discover the joy
That fills each of us.
We could be curious 

Let's gather together 
And listen with open ears.
For such an act of kindness
Is the grassroots of change and growth.

We are gathering in the soft glow if our screens, our virtual circle looks like a series of square windows. Perfectly aligned. We can see each others homes. Our plants, our pets, our pictures. Sometimes a child drifts in to say good night. We are a jumble sale of people. The colours of each small window vary. We are not all the same. We have different tastes, different drive, different experiences, but we all here to listen. To lean in and be taken by poem, prose or song to a world away from our perfectly aligned windows or the hum of our computers working, or our plants, our pets and our pictures. Our minds are filled with images of family roof tops dinners in India or a photography studio in Conwy or a a vibrant wedding party outside a registry office.

Flash forward to another gathering. We are in the room with parents and toddlers. There has been hushed moment with a book, a lively togetherness in song and now there is the gentle hub bub of noise as parents swap tales of the weekly challenges and children scrawl pens across pages mark making and mapping their wonder at how it works.

Flash forward to a group of teenage girls, stretching out on a quiet gallery floor. They are drafting poems about changing the world. They whisper ideas to each other. Every now and then their eyes light up at a great idea and an a smile unfilds hidden under their face masks.

Flash forward to the entrance to a community hall, 3 generations of a family arrive at the same time. The youngest aged 3 and 7 and filling a postcard with drawings and words and commitments of kind acts tomorrow. Granny is writing a message of thanks to the NHS and the parents are sharing what they love about where they live. They all hang their creating in a christmas tree amongst twinkling yellow lights. The children walk away with a chocolate coin and a sparkling wish bag that has come all the way from the North Pole. A thank you gift from Father Christmas for spreading Christmas cheer.

No one in any of these experiences was undeserving of the opportunity to express themselves. All were welcome to share something of themselves and a connection tonothers. All left, feeling a little brighter and a little comforted.

In a world if division , don’t minimise connection.
In a world of suffering, stop minimising joy.
In a world that can be cruel, stop minimising kindness.

Moments of connection, joy and kindness may be fleeting, but they should be celebrated. They are the ground work of curiousity, strength and resilience. That is our work as community artists, to generate a space to gather together.