Blog Posts

Arts in Health: Moving Pieces Theatre Taster Workshop

12/13/2018

On Tuesday December 13, I had the pleasure of working with ‘Moving Pieces’ founder and director, Charlie Blowers. Moving Pieces is a unique arts in health theatre company, offering an innovative approach to devising physical theatre and building emotional resilience. The theatre company combines performing arts with the containment of psychotherapeutic practices and emergent ideas relating to neuroscience. Charlie and I delivered a taster workshop to staff from The Royal Marsden School, which specialises in cancer care and training for healthcare professionals. Through embodied awareness and play, the workshop encouraged participants to explore personal stories and share their creativity in a safe and nurturing environment.

Do have a look at Moving Pieces upcoming courses and workshops.

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University of Arts London: Short film

9/29/2018

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This short film speaks to the formation of the London Institute in the 1980s and its’ evolution to become the modern day University of Arts London (UAL), from the perspectives of former and current rectors, deans, heads of college, governors, professors and other members of staff. The film features excerpts from interviews conducted by oral historian Rosa Kurowska-Kyffin and I, as part of the wider University of Arts London Oral History Institutional Memory Project, and was edited by Margarita Novikova and the UAL Archives and Special Collections Centre.

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Older people’s engagement workshops: In partnership with Kiln Theatre and Henna Asian Women’s Group

9/4/2018

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All the topics made me think about things…I hadn’t thought about for a long time… We saw our own and each other’s journey through life and got to reflect on them… Here we think deeper, we often look at things on the surface and this has opened my eyes to so many other societies… This has been a chance for listening and it makes you feel noticed. Us, as women, sometimes don’t get noticed but here we have listened to each other.
Kiran

We express feelings and we listen to others and we think thank goodness for our life, and we see how strong ladies are, it’s amazing to learn… And it was good because we learnt to listen and hear what each other have done in their life. Each session we get to talk and to listen, we got listening and talking skills.
Rukhsana

I enjoyed every session and the exercises… I enjoyed everyone’s stories and listening with all of my friends and learning about their stories.
Sudha

I enjoyed everything, especially to socialise, talk and…to share our past lives.
Rabeya

I liked talking about children and grandchildren. I liked talking about the past.
Samine

These comments convey the value of participating in a recent life story workshop series, in collaboration with Kiln Theatre and Henna Asian Women’s Group. Over the summer, I have had the pleasure of facilitating a series of creative sessions for members of the Henna Asian Women’s Group, a diverse and spirited group of women from India, Nepal, Pakistan, Uganda and Iraq. Henna Asian Women’s Group has been providing women only services to residents in the Kilburn area and immigrants for more than 30 years.

Each life story session focussed on a different theme such as arriving and settling in Britain; childhood; becoming young women; work; marriage; motherhood; cultural and religious identity, among others. Participants were invited to explore and express their memories through storytelling, theatre, drawing, performance, writing, ritual, dance, music and song.

It was exciting and enriching to plan and lead the workshops tailored to the particular interests and needs of the group. And it was a great joy to witness the openness, generosity and willingness of participants to take risks and jump into theatre games they’d never tried before, and to share deeply about their personal life experiences.

These workshops formed part of Kiln Theatre’s wider heritage learning programme,
‘A Friendly Society’, which takes its name from the Foresters Friendly Society. The Foresters were the original inhabitants of Kiln Theatre’s building, and aimed to help people in need as they ‘walked through the forests of life’. The broader programme encompasses a wide range of opportunities for participants of all ages and backgrounds to discover the heritage of Kiln Theatre and the history of care in the local community through in-depth archival research, the collection of oral histories, engagement workshops, exhibitions, and a community play.

It has been a privilege to be involved in this project, and wonderful to work with Kiln’s Creative Learning Manager Heritage and Community, Nick Gibson; Kiln’s Creative Learning Officer, Rio Fry; Henna Asian Women’s Group’s Project Development Officer, Rafat Kiani; and especially, the inspiring women who participated in the workshops.

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Re-Vision: Poetry, Politics & Psychotherapy 30th Anniversary Conference

8/11/2018

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I am very excited to be offering a creative workshop at Re-Vision's upcoming 30th Anniversary Conference with counsellor and dramatherapist, Haydn Forde. Drawing on story, movement, guided imagery and dialogue, our workshop will encourage participants to connect with a sense of the great mystery of life on earth. We will acknowledge and express feelings such as grief, despair, fear and rage in relation to our planetary crisis, and consider ways to go forth and take action with a renewed sense of resilience and hope.

This conference is for psychotherapists, counsellors, art therapists, trainees and anyone interested in how psychotherapy influences and is influenced by politics and the imagination.

The conference both celebrates 30 years of Re-Vision and looks outwards and forwards. At this point in the history of both our profession and the planet, it is clear that other, newer ways of looking at integrative practice are needed – just as ‘the personal is political’ was a way of seeing individual issues within the context of a wider political field, so we now need to see that ‘the personal is the planetary’ and work to develop an integrative approach to suffering, to speaking to the soul of the world at this time of crisis.

Our current world situation, with its challenges of climate change, of wars and refugees, politics of gender, fake news and more, impacts all of us with increasing force. Whilst they may regularly arise as issues in the therapist’s consulting room, treating them as an individual psychological distress, to be addressed at that level, is not necessarily sufficient, and may even compound the ‘cult of individuality’ that many see as underlying these phenomena in the first place. The need to attend differently to the woes of the world, at a collective as well as at an individual level, is the principal theme of this conference. To move therapy beyond the window of the consulting room and into the world may require us as therapists to become more ‘political’. Here we are drawing on the origins of the word politics: the Greek concept of Polis, or state. We ask how we can find our role, and the role of therapy in the political life of our communities. To sustain ourselves in service of our clients and our communities we need the nourishment of the imagination, and we need imagination to help us re-vision the work of therapeutic practice.

This conference brings together three keynote speakers:
Author Jay Griffiths, whose books including Wild: An Elemental Journey, and Tristimania: A Diary of Manic Depression give close attention to humanity’s relationship with the world.
Internationally renowned Poet and performer Lemn Sissay MBE; Lemn draws on his experience of growing up “in care” and uses his performance and poetry to challenge perceptions and to raise awareness.
Lawyer Marcia Willis Stewart , leading civil rights lawyer who represented 77 of the Hillsborough families and who won Black Solicitors’ Network lawyer of the year 2016 .

For more details and the booking booking form click here: Re-Vision Poetry Politics & Psychotherapy flyer

Afternoon workshops
Conference participants can choose one of the following workshops for the afternoon session:

Workshop A: ‘The political in the everyday.’ with Anna Wright and Sarah Van Gogh
In many industrialised countries, there are high levels of apathy and cynicism about beng able to effect meaningful change though manistream political channels.
This workshop will explore:
– what we might mean by ‘being politically active’
– how we see ‘Politics with a capital P ‘ having an impact on our everyday experiences
– what gets in the way of us feeling that we can take action to effect change in local, national and international arenas
– what helps us feel resourced and hopeful about playing a part in bringing about the changes we believe in.
Anna Wright is Deputy Director of Healthwatch Camden and is a Labour Councillor in the London Borough of Camden. She has many years of experience working for the United Nations, including for the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNAIDS where she worked on multi-partner programmes of research, negotiation and policy development. She has a Master’s Degree in Health Policy, Planning and Finance from the London School of Economics where she was awarded the Brian Abel-Smith Prize.
Sarah Van Gogh has worked as a counsellor since 2001 and is a member of the Re-Vision training staff. Before working as a counsellor she worked in the fields of Theatre-in-Education, Montessori teaching and community health outreach. She also worked for many years as a counsellor and trainer for Survivors UK, a charity that supports men who have experienced sexual abuse. She writes a regular column for the BACP Private Practice Journal, and her book, ‘Helping Male Survivors of Sexual Violation to Recover’ is published by Jessica Kingsley.

Workshop B: Dialogues Across Borders: A travelling exhibition with Elena Boukouvala and Mary Smail
‘Dialogues Across Borders’ is a travelling, interactive exhibition and performance event which uses photography, poetry, music and art produced by and with refugees, volunteers and members of the public as a catalyst to transcultural exchange. Workshop participants will be invited to enter into a conversation with the creators and make their own art in response which will then travel onward to the next exhibitions. The group will be supported to engage with the theme through a series of embodiment, imaginative activities before we start creating the exhibition, working with a range of different media.
Elena Boukouvala is a Drama and Movement therapist (Sesame), Psychologist, Counselor of Children and Young People, Consultant and Performance Activist. She has been working with young people with histories of migration across Europe using performance to create opportunities for integration and cultural exchange.
Mary Smail is is an HCPC registered dramatherapist a UKCP registered psychotherapist. She has trained therapists for 22 years and runs a CPD course ‘Psyche and Soma: Soul through the arts’. She co-authored Dramatherapy with Myth and Fairy Tale in 2013 and is presently researching soul-making, death and the after-life.

Workshop C: Responding to ecological crisis with Dvora Liberman and Haydn Forde
Drawing on story, movement, image, guided inquiry and dialogue, participants will be encouraged to connect with a sense of the great mystery of life on earth. We will acknowledge and express feelings such as grief, despair, fear and rage in relation to our planetary crisis, and consider ways to go forth and take action with a renewed sense of resilience and hope.
Dvora Liberman is a storyteller, oral historian, researcher and educator who believes everyone has stories to tell.
Haydn Forde is a Re-Vision qualified counsellor currently undertaking Re-Vision’s psychotherapy training, He is also a Sesame-trained Dramatherapist who currently works in dramatherapy in adult psychiatry for the NHS. He is author of River – Cultural Experiences as a Trinidadian Dramatherapist with an evolving practice in the UK.

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University of the Arts London, Institutional Memory Oral History Project: Interview with painter, printmaker and book artist, Professor Eileen Hogan

3/13/2018

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I recently had the great pleasure of interviewing Eileen Hogan, British painter, printmaker, book artist, and Professor in Fine Art in the C .C.W. (Camberwell, Chelsea and Wimbledon art schools) Graduate School, University of the Arts London. It was fascinating to learn about the evolution of her career; the dominant themes that have threaded through her work; and her innovative arts practices.

Eileen discussed her interest in exploring the relationships between presence and absence, and people and places. She spoke about her love of green urban spaces and experimenting with perceiving a garden through different lenses, such as a sanctuary; a place to play; a neglected place; and a wilderness. Eileen explained how she uses oral history as a methodology for painting portraits which she developed with Cathy Courtenay, oral historian at National Life Stories, British Library. She described her lifelong appreciation of lettering and book art, and her vision for establishing Camberwell Press, and the first conferences and MA course in book art in this country.

Our conversation spanned many other subjects including Eileen’s role as Trustee of the Rootstein Hopkins Foundation; the research group she leads called ‘About Face’; her artistic choices and approaches to painting portraits of D-Day veterans Tony Leake and Alistair Urquhart for the Last of the Tide exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace; as well as her experience of painting the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall. She is currently working on a solo exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art which will open in 2019. These were just a few highlights from Eileen’s interview. To view the entire interview recording, or to read a transcript or summary, contact the University of the Arts London Archives and Special Collections Centre.

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Teaching oral history research to secondary school pupils

1/17/2018

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For the past three years I've been designing and delivering courses in oral history research in secondary schools in London. This term, I’m very excited to be introducing oral history to Year 9 and 10 pupils at Seaford Head School.
At the heart of oral history is the interview encounter between interviewer and interviewee, and the primary focus of the course is how to conduct ethical and effective interviews. Through the process of conducting their own interviews, pupils will develop valuable communication and interpersonal skills, particularly in listening, speaking, observation and empathy. The course aims to enhance their self-awareness and ability to think critically. Pupils will be able to apply the knowledge gained throughout this course to analyse and interpret interviews more broadly and in other contexts, particularly in the social sciences, journalism and popular media. Core questions we will consider are: Why is it important to tell our life stories? What’s important to capture about history? Whose stories matter?
This programme is in partnership with the Brilliant Club, an award winning charity that places researchers in schools and seeks to raise the aspirations of young people from under-represented backgrounds.

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Stories of not knowing: London Playback Theatre

11/25/2017

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This Friday night, November 24, London Playback Theatre performed stories centred around the theme of living with the unknown. Audience members shared a wide range of personal experiences and expressed the exhilaration, terror, and confusion that is often stirred at times when we are on the cusp of change and something new. Stories spanned facing challenges and uncertainties in intimate family relationships and in relation to the current global political scene. The storytellers were brave and inspiring, and dared to speak aloud complex and unsettling aspects of their lives that had previously remained unsaid. It was a rich, evocative evening with many moments of laughter and tenderness. The audience stayed on long after the performance ended to continue the conversation.

Join us again for our next performance at Essex Unitarian Church, Friday February 16, 2018, 7.30-9pm, 112 Palace Gardens Terrace, Kensington, London W8 4RT.

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London Playback Theatre Performance: What Happens Next?

5/6/2017

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Last Thursday night, London Playback Theatre performed stories that spoke to the theme, What Happens Next? We invited audience members to share their personal stories with us, and we spontaneously enacted them back. The stories told were deeply poignant, sad, humorous and reflective. I am always struck by how willing our audiences are to share so openly and freely with us. There was a lovely, warm atmosphere and the conversation continued long after the show ended over many cups of tea.

Last week was our final monthly performance at The Artworks, Elephant and Castle. We are continuing to perform at special events and conferences for a number of different organisations and we will be resuming our public performances after the Summer at the New Diorama Theatre. Please be in touch if you would like further information about our future shows.

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London Playback Theatre in collaboration with Sparkle and Dark Theatre Company

4/4/2017

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On Saturday April 1st, London Playback Theatre teamed up with Sparkle and Dark Theatre Company at Fisher Theatre in Suffolk to explore the subject of grief and loss.

Sparkle and Dark performed their award-winning physical theatre show, I AM BEAST, which they devised in response to the questions: What strategies do we use to escape when our present reality is too hard to face? What happens when the wilder and darker parts of our imagination take control and transform our realities? The creation of I AM BEAST was informed by the views and experiences of psychiatrists, drama therapists, neuroscientists and bereaved teenagers.

After the show, London Playback Theatre offered an improvised performance. We invited audience members to share thoughts, feelings and memories that I AM BEAST had provoked in them, and we spontaneously enacted their stories and reflections.

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London Playback Theatre and the Women's Therapy Centre

2/25/2017

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On March 30th, London Playback Theatre will be teaming up with the Women's Therapy Centre for a special theatre performance for mothers.

The event is an invitation to mother's to share personal stories about their babies. We will then improvise and spontaneously perform these stories to the audience. For more information, see the flyer below.

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