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Lady Macbeth a woman who killed to preserve herself. Interesting on the current Deepening Creative Practice the only man and black woman were killed off. Power and control are not everything. I would say get a life.

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A working score card for Friday morning.

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A notice for everyone at DCP for Friday 19th Jan, Ambient Jam  

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A notice for everyone at DCP for Friday 19th Jan, Ambient Jam  

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Hello DCP !

Hope your New Year is unfolding gently and if not (as seems to be the case for many this year) , that you have little pockets of nothingness within the busy.

We are really looking forward to sharing a sensory pathway with you and joining together in the Tavistock space on Friday 19th.

This is a mingling of many archives: The Tavistock archive via Heni's explorations, your experiential archive within DCP, each of our personal archives that we carry unbeknown or consciously with us, and the Ambient Jam archive which is held within the long-term repeated connections between everyone - in the relational - which anyone can step into.

Practical request: In keeping with archive, we would love it if each of you could bring one personal object that will enter into the afternoon's immersive landscape - these can be as small as you want them to be. This object can be anything - a photograph, a line of a poem, a piece of clothing, a shell....whatever whimsically comes to mind. It's important that this object isn't too precious as it may be let go of, played with, or regurgitated as something else. For example, if its a precious photo or object then maybe take a photo of them, print that out and its the print of it that you bring in. Make sure these objects are not sharp - are safe. Nothing needs to happen to your chosen object (you won't need to explain it) - they might remain hidden even, or revealed in the improvisation , but they are there somehow. Everyone from Ambient Jam will also do the same.

Finally, we would love it if the communal cyanotype fabric you made (I saw a photo of it somewhere on the padlet) with Sam could enter into the afternoon improvisation too so that there is a mingling of all our identities via the landscape we co-create.

Wear comfortable clothing. It's a relaxed space. The invitation is to explore within your own natural abilities on the day, and to be physically comfortable.

Please do email us any questions via Emily.

Warmest wishes

Rebecca

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Hi all, wishing you all well as we begin the new year. I realised just before christmas that I hadn't been getting padlet notifications because of a new laptop, so have just been catching up on posts and enjoying reading your contributions.

Looking forward to the winter season with you and for what this might bring.

The photo attached was taken from a new cabaret venue, Underbelly Boulevard, in Soho. This blurred view is of aspects of old and new Soho up against each other - the scene resonated for me around what is seen at first glance, what is going on underneath, what gets in the way of seeing clearly, splitting of past/present/old/new and the beauty of a single raindrop.

Hope 2024 is a good one for you all, Heather

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Hi, this is Heni, as Rebecca mentioned, I’ll be joining you for the day on 19 Jan as a guest member of the Ambient Jam Collective. I look forward to meeting you all.

I wanted to write a brief introduction to the ways i will be filtering some of my practices through the AJC frame.

Im in a still-beginning phase of a Collaborative Phd (with Centre for Dance Research @Coventry University and TIHR) using creative embodied methods to engage with Tavistock Institute’s 70 yr archive. Im focusing particularly on how perceptions and attitudes to work and care show up, make sense, or produce conflict over time.

Hence we felt that including some of my thinking and practices with that particular archive - lightly, and perhaps peripherally - might have resonances with this season’s themes of archive and conserving, structure and edifice, keeping and letting go, transforming and transmuting.

About the archive:

The TIHR archive consists of governance and organisational records, reports on thousands of projects, field-notes, letters, applications, including failed ones, drafts and revisions. They can be seen as artefacts of time spent at work. They highlight what was considered important, and cared for by various people. Some of these documents bear the names of people who repeatedly show up as significant creators of Tavistock’s identity and legacy, having evolved practices, and driven ideas as well as tensions. Many of the documents could also be considered testaments to the hours of typing toil done by un-named secretaries, transcribing audiotapes.

My background is working as a dancer/choreographer and performance maker for 30 years, so my methods of archive research don’t follow very conventional rules of historiography. Here is a website archiving some of my artistic work. http://dogkennelhillproject.org.

Terms that are infusing my glossary of methodological approaches  include wobbling the archive, unpacking and repacking, masking, zooming and framing, sliding about, earthworming, decomposing and digesting. Im also practicing a kind of forensics with what Isabel Menzies Lyth describes as ‘evenly suspended attention.’  Im particularly interested in the inherent embodied activity of reading and studying, being attentive to time and rhythm, and Im enjoying creating collage type assemblages with copies of archive materials, so that they become repeating objects that reverberate out of the archive. Im hoping that this practice enables me to uncover some of the more hidden messages from the field of TIHR.

Ive had some previous experiences of the improvisatory and sensorial mode of Ambient Jam, and feel excited by this melting pot space and the quality of care with which it is held. It seems to insist that we rethink our rules of engagement with each other. Im grateful to the collective and to you for making it possible for me to float some thinking and potentially ‘objects’ into the 'happening' and see what happens.

And mostly Im really looking forward to meeting everyone and experiencing the evolving archive of your practices.

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"Music heard so deeply / That is not heard at all, but you are / The music / While the music lasts."

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"Music heard so deeply / That is not heard at all, but you are / The music / While the music lasts."

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— from T.S. Eliot

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Introduction to the Winter Season with the Ambient Jam Collective 

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Introduction to the Winter Season with the Ambient Jam Collective 

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Hello everyone,

Wonderful to wander through the padlet.

On behalf of the Ambient Jam Collective (AJC) here’s an outline of our day together on January 19th. Will drop into the padlet with further details nearer the time.

Rebecca

Sensory journeys towards a ‘happening’.

DCP winter themes are Archive & Conservation; Structures and edifices; Keeping and Letting go; Transforming and transmuting.

Our day together will be co-facilitated by a group from the Ambient Jam Collective (AJC) – an ensemble of differently abled/neurodiverse artists experienced at working in grass roots settings.

Ambient Jam is an evolving, long-term collaboration (33 years) and synergy between people who have PMLD (profound, multiple, learning disabled), musicians, visual artists, and dance artists.

We will be joined by Heni Hale, PhD researcher with the Tavistock Institute (honorary member of AJC) exploring embodied methods of enquiry into the archive.

Ambient Jam sensory-led improvisation celebrates and activates our ability to communicate without words and make things up as we go along. Within this landscape we can act from rest, tune into the senses, allow for uncertainty, and make choices in our own time, allowing for different notions of time to compose in situ.

Ambient Jam enables a letting go of accepted ways of thinking, allowing into view aspects of our human experience that are less valued and thereby cordoned off, yet potentially rich in helping us to re-visit what is important and re-shape what could be possible.

The day will be in two parts either side of lunch:

The morning session is an invitation to journey into the senses where primary communication is non-verbal. This session will be more structured and will include playing with choreographic and textural ideas relating to the winter season DCP themes. These ideas might re-enter the work in the afternoon improvisation.

The afternoon session will be a journey into pure improvisation where we co-create, mould and shape the landscape of time and space and ourselves in it. The unfolding improvisation is an experimental, often wondrously messy space in which we will naturally touch on DCP themes such as ‘keeping and letting go’. Artistic moments from the morning or coming left of field will bubble up unexpectedly and then dissolve. Objects, ourselves, interconnections, structure and edifice, will 'transform and transmute'. Like any artistic process there will be lulls and ‘nothing in particular moments’.

We are interested in how artefacts from your previous seasons, and elements within the padlet might be lightly woven into the day or brought to the improvisation. More to come on that. Heni will bring some of her embodied archival research into the improvisation to see what might transmute.

The day continued in more detail:

Morning session is 10.30 a.m. - 12.30 a.m.

Lunch

Afternoon improvisation 13.30 p.m. - 3 p.m.

Sensory evaluation/check in: 3 p.m. – 3.45 p.m.

Please wear comfortable clothing. Work within injuries, restrictions, and natural ability.

10.30 a.m.– 12. 30 a.m. Arriving, acclimatising and warm-up.

The morning will comprise a gentle warm-up to guide us into our physicality, sensory perception, and relationship to space. A series of creative exercises informed by people and situations within grass roots settings and the cross-disciplinary arts world will take us further into different modes of sensory connectivity. We will explore some playful, inclusive choreographic ways of working together which you can utilise later on.

The morning acts as a steppingstone in providing a sensory vocabulary for you to enter the afternoon immersive group improvisation.

All these explorations will enable us, maybe in small ways, to attune to our senses, connect with choice and spontaneity, navigate difference, move fluidly between followership and leadership, and between undoing doing and trying something out.

Afternoon improvisation: 1.30 p.m.– 3 p.m..

We will form an ensemble-in-the-moment to animate a multi-sensory ‘happening’ within the Tavistock space, which will be guided by a series of simple prompts. Non-verbally led (although words can enter into it) and sensitive to site and location. Non-instructional, without obvious leadership, but with guiding reference points. This experimental space will enable us to forefront our physical intelligence as a place from which to act or not act. The aim is to be in connection whilst letting go of our reliance on the visual, verbal world to access other ways of perceiving, being.

Sensory improvisation allows for moments of choice, chance, intimacy, cohesion & collaboration, whim and deep rest, not knowing, difference, polarisation, getting lost and finding things, and being alone in the presence of others.

3 p.m. – 3.45 p.m. A sensory check in/feedback

Our sensory check-in will be a chance to share feedback and perceptions about the day initially non-verbally through a choice of media such as movement, objects, drawing, sound, or part of the space. This can be intuitive, half-baked and unprecious. We will explore how we might then as a group translate our feedback into words.

A guide of prompts to help navigate through an improvisation. Ways you might join in:

- Take time to acclimatise. Be with your own choices, however tiny.

- You can simply sit there, eyes closed. It’s OK to fall asleep. Feel free to take your shoes off.

- Allow yourself to move in your own unique way.

- Use the ambience of the improvisation to rest and decompress

- Choose where you go; you can watch from a distance, move around, move through the improvisation, or take part directly.

- Enjoy spending time within thresholds and ‘in-between’ parts of the space.

- Connect with the textures and feel of the space around you.

- Tune into smell and sound.

- Take part and improvise vocalisation, sounds, stillness, movement, sculpting space and drawing.

- If you prefer, sit and watch people around you, whilst remaining within the experience.

- Legitimise awkwardness and struggle. Soften into opposites and chaos if they happen.

- You can allow yourself to be influenced by someone.

- It’s improvisation. Have FUN! It’s nice to see you!

That’s how we keep going. I won’t say anymore. Albert from Tower Bridge care home

On-going long term AJC enquiry-led objectives:

•       How can we be together in a sense-led landscape which isn’t output driven?

•       Exploring the hidden value in non-verbal /sensory modes of enquiry and navigation.

•       How acting from within our sensory intelligence might provide new ways of perceiving and realising our world.

•       When attentiveness to gestures, sounds, movement, texture, and smell, might create fertile ground for creative insight, left-of-field emergent ideas (hunches) or stories we can’t yet verbalise.

•       How inhabiting a different sense of time enables knowledge held within our embodied selves to surface and inform navigation.

•       Why ‘muddling through’, struggle, awkwardness, and messiness, are important qualities in discovering moments of attunement.

•       Celebrating the world within a grain of sand, data within the minutia.

•       Engaging with quality of care inherent within physical intelligence.

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Hi! Didn't know where to post our field-homework ... but this is what I've been experimenting with. It's in Dutch and I'll explain later in our online meeting. With many thanks to the artwork of Els Vermeulen, which I partially used as field information. Look forward to see you. Ciao, Linda

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Dear all, I watched the film "elemental" the other day. It's a film which encapsulates some of our discussions - about difference, and also elements. 

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The plot follows "ember" and her family, who emigrate from fireland, but they and the other elements struggle to find a way to live together. It was so interesting to stumble across it, and it's a beautfully made film.

Best Wishes

Katy

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I hope you are all well. I visited one of my favourite places yesterday, Dungeness in Kent. I recorded a fieldnote for you while I was there. You should be able to play the recording above.

I hope that your projects for Fieldworking in the bio are going well. We are due to meet again next Monday, this time online. The idea of this session is a sharing session; we will view and discuss the material gathered/ generated and collectively explore how it offers a response/ translation of the biome you have been working with, so please prepare an aspect of your fieldworking material for then.

Looking forward to joining you again.

All the best

Sam

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And here without the trees in front

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This reminded me of the video you shared Linda, and ways of being artful in simple ways

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Complexities of the situation in Israel and Gaza and implications for us with a rise in extreme right and left. Also globally.   Fracturing relationships between Islam and Judaism globally. The story of Cain and Abel comes to mind. Words from Andrew Marr.

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Complexities of the situation in Israel and Gaza and implications for us with a rise in extreme right and left. Also globally.   Fracturing relationships between Islam and Judaism globally. The story of Cain and Abel comes to mind. Words from Andrew Marr.

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The possibility of a wider conflict in the Middle East cannot be ruled out after Israel declared war following attacks by Hamas, Andrew Marr has said.

Speaking on LBC's Tonight with Andrew Marr, the presenter said: "The events in Israel and Gaza have been so appalling, so heartbreaking that I think the first instinct is to simply concentrate on what has already happened.

"The kidnappings, the deaths, the spiralling destruction and the quite extraordinary failure of Israeli and indeed American intelligence.

"But we can't just stop there," the presenter continued
Watch Tonight with Andrew Marr exclusively on Global Player every Monday to Thursday from 6pm to 7pm You can also listen to the podcast Tonight with Andrew Marr only on Global Player.
Andrew went on: "The whole Middle East is tightly wired and ready for detonation; and since Iran stands behind both Hamas and Hezbollah, the possibility of a wider regional conflict now can't be ruled out.

"That would hugely benefit Putin by taking the world's attention away from Ukraine."

Israel has said it will use "enormous force" against Hamas following recent attacks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said.

Mr Netanyahu has said his country's retaliation has only just begun, with 700 people killed in Israel since the suprise attack on Saturday.

Meanwhile, 600 people have died since Israel started striking Gaza.

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Andrew Marr: Israel-Gaza conflict could spread to the entire Middle East - which would be a huge boost for Putin

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The possibility of a wider conflict in the Middle East cannot be ruled out after Israel declared war following attacks by Hamas, Andrew Marr has said.

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I thought of this, since we talked about 'falling on the sword' and we did the duo-exercise on balance points ... Rest Energy is a 1980 performance art piece created, enacted, and recorded by performance artist duo Marina Abramović and Ulay in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Four minutes in duration, Abramović has described it as one of the most difficult pieces she has ever done, saying:

“I was not in charge. In Rest Energy we actually held an arrow on the weight of our bodies, and the arrow is pointed right into my heart. We had two small microphones near our hearts, so we could hear our heartbeats. As our performance was progressing, heartbeats were becoming more and more intense, and though it lasted just four minutes and ten seconds, I’m telling you, for me it was forever. It was a performance about the complete and total trust.”

ps message published 'anonymous' but it's from Linda ;-)

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A really interesting artist to read more about. He brought a lot of big themes together in his work.

https://blog.artsper.com/en/a-closer-look/10-things-you-should-know-about-joseph-beuys/

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A few links to information on making cyanotypes and where you can get materials (as least in the UK)

Good overview of the technique:
https://www.gathered.how/arts-crafts/guide-to-cyanotype-printing/

Fabric, paper and chemicals:

https://www.jacquardproducts.com/cyanotype-fabric-sheets

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Project: Fieldworking in the biome - organisations to organisms (from Sam)

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Project: Fieldworking in the biome - organisations to organisms (from Sam)

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It was wonderful to work with you all on Saturday. As promised here is the small project that will link our time from then, to now, to the 13th November. Please interpret this in a way that works for you...

Fieldworking in the biome - organisations to organisms is a site-specific project that builds on (and expands) the practices introduced in the autumn season. It allows the elements of time and duration to enter fieldworking practice.

It is an exercise in exploring fieldworking as a technique for sensing, noticing and responding to a biome of your choice. We take biomes to be biological communities that have formed in response to their environment, taking an expansive view that encompasses biomes at an environmental, organisational or molecular level.

Choosing a location/ site you can easily visit, between now and 13th of November make frequent visits, giving attention to any changes taking place. The choice and scale of the biome is up to you, for example, it could be an urban environment – a street corner, and intersection; or a natural ecology – a garden, park or field; or it might be the physical space of an organisation you are working with. It could be a place you are already familiar with or one you usually pass by without giving much attention.

Using some of the practices we have explored or using other techniques/ methods you like to work with, attempt to notice the interplay of human and non-human forces and dynamics at play in this biome. These could include atmospheric, industrial impact, gentrification, change of use, or the surfacing of particular histories/ past events, for example. Using fieldworking practices consider how this biome changes over time. Consider if you are also impacting the biome through the visits and interventions.

During your fieldwork, observed, gather, record using practices we tested out with in the October session. These could include making cyanotypes, written observations, sound recordings, drawing, video, or…whatever you feel allows you to know this place better.

In the November session we will view the material gathered/ generated and collectively explore how it offers a response/ translation of the biome you have been working with, so please prepare an aspect of your fieldworkingmaterial for then.

All the best
Sam

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 In memory of all those killed, who have died and in memory of brother Shahid whose birthday is today. May he rest in peace.

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 In memory of all those killed, who have died and in memory of brother Shahid whose birthday is today. May he rest in peace.

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I was re-reading this poem yesterday and it felt resonant to the times, something specific and universal about it - it could be added to Ways of Knowing perhaps

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Dreams how to relates to you to your social position.

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Dreams how to relates to you to your social position.

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Dreams, Groups, Fractals and Group Relations

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Join us to explore the ways we can use dreams in groups, hosted via Zoom. Vivian Gold, Ph.D., will briefly present her Doctoral thesis from over 50 years ago, a study of dreams and group process. Sanjiwan Boparal, M.D., will present a group which explores dreams from a social identity perspective. At the event we will welcome people to share their dreams and relate them to their experiences in groups. We will then examine historical and current uses of dream-work that may be new or different within the Groups Relations framework.

We hope to provide a space for exploration, deliberation, and possibly discovery regarding the use of dreams in groups. During the event we will have the opportunity to share dreams as a group, so we encourage people coming to note dreams they have been having they would like to share.

Sanjiwan Boparai is a Punjabi-American psychiatrist who has been avidly participating in Group Relations Conferences and organizations such as AKRI, GRI, Grex, and CCSGO for about twenty years.

Vivian Gold, Ph.D. Clinical and Consulting Psychologist.  M.A. UCLA, 1963, Peace Corps Panama, 64-66, Ph.D.Teachers College, Columbia, 1972. President of GREX, twice in S.F., twice in L.A. Former Board Member of AKRI. A Founding Board Member of OFEK, Israel in 1980’s. Fellow of AKRI.

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Introduction from Sam Nightingale, and details about our session on Saturday

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Introduction from Sam Nightingale, and details about our session on Saturday

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I am dropping by to say hello in preparation for our working together next Saturday, 14th October, which I look forward to. I also thought I would take this opportunity to introduce myself a little and give a sense of what stimulates my creative practice and how this might direct our first session next Saturday. We will also meet again (online) in November, but I will discuss that more when we are together.

Where is the field?

As part of my creative practice, I often facilitate ‘field-labs’: site-specific encounters that take place in situ responding to the particular environmental conditions of a site/ location. These field-labs are inherently speculative, and the unpredictability and uncertainty of what the site presents is a generative aspect of the work. It is just as much about the process involved as end results.

For me field-labs function as a critical-creative method to explore how human and more-than-human histories and events (from deep geologic time to the contemporary moment) are enmeshed within the organic and inorganic life of salt, soil, and plants. ‘Every contact leaves a trace’, the French criminologist Edmond Locard claimed, meaning that encounters between all forms of matter (human and more-than-human) leave a residual trace - though this trace is sometimes outside the bounds of human perception. Locard is credited with founding the discipline of forensic science; however, the principle of trace he proposed is just as relevant when taken into the field of environmental media/ media ecology, where my research is situated. Drawing on interdisciplinary methods from science, experimental geography and art, I find the field-lab process offers a speculative way to explore the visible and invisible histories and events embedded within a particular site and consider the material trace that those events still hold today. If you want to see what some of this looks like, there is more about my research and artwork on my website.

Saturday - Practices for fieldworking

Earlier this year, I published a co-edited book about the fieldwork that artists do, called Fieldwork for Future Ecologies: Radical Practices for Art and Arts-based Research. Using the introduction to the book as a starting point (proposed as advanced reading), on Saturday, I would like us to explore  what an expanded notion of fieldwork might be and how we might practice that fieldwork. A central question for us in writing the book is how to practice, and how to research, write, examine, listen, see, feel and pay attention to… in ways other than those already habituated. I thought this might echo some of your own questions. With this in mind, I thought we could undertake and test out a series of practices for fieldworking. The endeavour will take us out of the office and into the ‘field’, in this case, Bunhill Fields, a historic burial ground and important site for nature conservation that is about 15 minutes walk from Gee Street.

These practices for fieldworking will include walking, situated listening, experimental photography (cyanotypes) and collective reading and observation practices that attempt to attune to the micro and macro human and more-than-human worlds around us. We will look beyond what ordinarily slips through human perception, and instead direct attention towards the worlds that exist at the bounds of human experience/ perception.

There will be a small fieldworking project to take place between next Saturday and 13th November, when we meet online, allowing the elements of time and duration to enter our fieldworking practices.

Practical matters

We meet at the Tavistock Institute office in Gee Street at 9.30 am

Please bring an object from home that you would like to accompany you in your fieldworking practice.

Your object will be used in making a collective cyanotype. This camera-less photographic technique involves laying things on sensitised material and exposing them to sunlight. Ideally, the object should have some level of transparency or an evocative shape to allow light to form a silhouette around it (ie a book would appear as a rectangle).

If you want to know more about cyanotypes:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanotype

We will be outside for around 1.5 hours; please bring warm/showerproof clothing. At the moment the forecast is for sun but cold! But in fieldwork, we have to be prepared for all eventualities!

I look forward to meeting everyone on Saturday.

All the best

Sam

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My work as a social worker involves a great deal of thinking about race, religion, culture, diversity and working with others who are less privileged. This why I was attracted to social work as I felt it was so much easier to think about such issues. The sad fact is colonialism has played a such a big part in our lives and the legacy of colonialism continues. This a reality for all of us.
I acknowledge my own privilege as I had access to education. However many of us were taught a one sided history and the death of George Floyd created a revolution across the globe at the time of a pandemic . I have posted the contribution of a wider range of thinkers/artists/ activists and those working with the mind and how the issue of race has been in their mind. There is no fragmentation here as there are the views of many, but the message is the same there is inequality and disadvantage and the world is being destroyed through global warming.  This has grave implications for our youth and children. It is about what we are leaving behind.
I have found the use of art as a medium can help to think about these issues in a profound and hopefully creative way. I would also say some higher institutions thinking about the mind in the UK do need now to move forward quickly in addressing how to think about these issues. There is great learning from what is happening in schools in the England. I cannot speak for any other country.
I am attracted to artists who are able to pull all of these issues together in a profound way to have an impact and to reach out to many. If you speak to these artists the end product would not have been an easy one as these issues are not easy to talk about. There will be feelings of anger, shame, guilt, loss, sorrow and many more. I have posted so many things to help us to think collectively and personally. Regards Dr Rukhsana Farooqi.
The learning never stops.

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EasternEye - Britain's Number One Asian Weekly Newspaper

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After a successful run in 2013, the play is back on stage this year
under a new production and is set to open in Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon
By: Pooja Shrivastava
A play - set in 1887 and exploring the lives of Indian ayahs, sailors and servants in the heart of the British Raj - still has a lot to say about modern society, playwright Tanika Gupta MBE has said, as her work is set to return this July.

After a successful run in 2013, Gupta's The Empress is back on stage this year
under a new production. It is directed by Pooja Ghai and is set to open in Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.

This time, The Empress follows the journeys of five characters during the final 14 years of Queen Victoria's reign - Rani, a 16-year-old ayah (nanny), Hari an impoverished lascar (sailor), Abdul Karim, the Queen's servant who rose through the ranks to be her munshi (teacher) and Dadabhai Naoroji - the first Indian (Liberal) MP elected in 1892 to represent the constituency of Finsbury in north London.

In an interview with Eastern Eye, Gupta said while it was still the same play, she
had updated the script.

"We have a different director, a different production. It feels more political this time. Since the play is about colonialism and about British Asians in the 19th century, it makes a statement about how the British empire affected Indians in this country," she said.

"Since I first wrote it, quite a lot of things have happened in the world. But in a weird way, the play still feels relevant to the day. It's a good story - there's a love story in it - so it's not all doom and gloom and desk dumping politics."

Gupta agreed the story of The Empress could also be seen through the lens of modern slavery in 2023 - where many migrant women endure abuse and have little hope for justice - saying the situation has not improved much.

She said, "Women still get trafficked. They are still abused by men in the family, where they're looking after the children. And, of course, racism in this country is also very much present; so, yes, the play is very universal in that respect.

"This is a very important story and I think the play has a lot to say about the present circumstances," said the 59-year old playwright.

The Empress stars Raj Bajaj as Abdul Karim, Tanya Katyal as Rani Das, Aaron Gill as Hari and Simon Rivers features as Dadabhai Naoroji.

Writing the play in 2013 involved a lot of research, with Gupta looking at archives in the British Library.

The irony was that a lot of the working class Indians - on whom the play is based - were illiterate, so they did not write letters or journals, said Gupta, revealing that it was quite difficult to find information.

"I took my inspiration from a book written a long time ago, in the 1980s by Rozina Visram, a schoolteacher in London who got really fed up with teaching the usual history. A lot of her students were Asians, and there was nothing about them - as if they didn't exist. So, she wrote this book, which is basically about people from the Indian subcontinent, who came to Britain not just as domestic servants, but also as lawyers, and politicians.

"Reading her book, it struck me that I had not seen a play about these people before, particularly ayahs and lascars. They worked very hard to build this country in many ways, yet got totally ignored and that's how I got really interested in them."

While writing the play, Gupta got an insight into the British Raj, but what she found was not surprising to her.

"It was exciting when I was finding more and more stuff, but I don't think it changed my outlook. I was brought up in a family who had a very deep and close understanding about colonisation. My great uncle was Dinesh Gupta, an Indian revolutionary, who was hanged by the British
in 1931. So, my research and whatever I was discovering wasn't exactly opening my eyes. My concern was how I can tell this story in an interesting and entertaining way which shows the lives of these people."

The Empress is now on the GCSE curriculum, and Gupta described it as "real blast of life" for young diverse students who were until then only coming across "plays by dead white men".

"I get quite a lot of Instagram messages from 16-year-olds who are studying the play, asking me sometimes very complicated questions. A few of them have said

'we feel as if we've been seen, and our stories too count,'" said Gupta.

Her family migrated from India to the UK in 1961. With a singer father and dancer mother, she was brought up in an artistic household.

Her earliest memories are seeing her parents performing dance dramas by Rabindranath Tagore with a cultural group across Europe.

"As a little child, it was very exciting. When I became a teenager, it all became a big bore for me, but I always felt very connected to my roots," she said.

Gupta's growing up years were marred with racism and name calling and the whole experience made her

"very much aware" of her race, she said. "When I was very young, there was a lot of racism. "In my school, there were no other Asians, so I felt very isolated. I was very aware of my race.

"Things, however, changed when I came to London in my secondary school years. That is what is great about London - that it had diversity and all kinds of people - Jewish, Asians, Chinese and Japanese," she said. At an early age, Gupta decided to be a writer. She joined various workshops and was told her prose was "really not very good, but her dialogues are great". She switched to playwriting. Her parents were always supportive, which was quite "unusual", she recalled, because most of her Asian friends at school were being told to become a doctor, lawyer, accountant "as nothing else will do". Gupta said of her parents,

"They were only worried that I wouldn't earn enough money - which is true. It's quite difficult to earn good money in the arts, unless you write big, blockbuster films." Having been in the arts for more than two decades, Gupta, a mother of three, recalled juggling her responsibilities at work and home.

"Having children led to a strong work ethic in me - working only between nine and five. My kids sometimes had to sit through endless plays, but my husband and mother always pitched in to help.

"Between my plays and the work I have written for radio and television, I feel like I've been doing it for a long time. It's funny how the years just go, but it never gets easier. I am better at it than I was 25 years ago, but it still feels nerve racking whenever my play is on, and the audience starts coming in," said Gupta. She likes to observe the audience's reaction when the play is on and often

"sneaks into the washroom during intervals to hear their conversation".
As more Asians make their mark in the industry, Gupta said things have improved, yet there is a lot to be done.

"But it's much better than when I first started out," she said, adding, "big organisations need to step up their game and put on more plays by much more diverse writers. "The Royal Shakespeare Company, where The Empress is going on, have barely put on any plays by Asian writers; I'm probably one of the second there."

Gupta's advice for young Asian writers was to find their passion and stick to it.

"Write what you're passionate about. Also, don't be afraid of politics. We only write to reflect the world we're living in and there is a lot going on in the world right now."

Gupta said she wished she was a bit easy on herself.

"I felt wounded by rejections and bad reviews. I used to get really offended by anything negative. (But) criticism doesn't mean much to me now," she said.

As an Asian female playwright, Gupta said her experience in theatre "has been a little bit frustrating", though she quickly added she got to work with some "reallyamazing people" at the same time.

"Sometimes, I often thought if I was a white man, I would have been more advanced in my career. But now I feel there's no point getting angry, because then you get bitter and twisted. Ultimately, people are interested in hearing different stories," she said.
The Empress is on at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon from July 7 to September 15. It then transfers to the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre from October 4 to 28, before heading back to the Swan to finish its run from November 1 to 18.

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Tanika Gupta: Colonial play 'The Empress' still relevant and more political now - EasternEye

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A play - set in 1887 and exploring the lives of Indian ayahs, sailors and servants in the heart of the British Raj - still has a lot to say about modern society, playwright Tanika Gupta MBE has said, as her work is set to return this July.

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Tanika Gupta interview | The Empress | Royal Shakespeare Company

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Akademi make vibrant, fascinating, and meaningful South Asian dance. We use the compelling power of its storytelling, rhythm and gestures to create deeper connections with each other and our wider world, one mudra at a time.

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Choreography as Climate Action: Inspiring the Environmental Movement Through Dance

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A Cultural Ecology seminar led by Subathra Subramaniam—choreographer, dancer and educator.

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Indus Blues | Award-Winning Musical Feature Documentary | Pakistan | Director's Cut

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Ghar Aa - Orchestral Qawwali | Rushil | Abi Sampa

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Hi All,
I've been wondering where to post this. It is a possible addition to the Autumn reading list where we get into notions of liminality and the womb and tomb of transformation and ritual.  It also seems to relate with the funeral of creativity idea.  So thought I would share here in follow up to the last post.  The core of the book is that modernity and all that makes it is broken and dying and the need to address  'humanity's wrongs' as palliative care towards a new future.   Hope you are all well meanwhile.  Best wishes as ever Juliet

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Hi all,
Ive been musing about how to do an exhibit which gets all our voices/points heard, and also thinking about what other groups have done.
I wondered about a mockumentary, with perhaps a level of parody. We could either have it about our own experiences, or perhaps do a mockumentary about being a ministerial group (or similar) planning the funeral for creativity.
Just a thought, but i thought then we could have everyones themes running through it in their character in the mockumentary

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This drawing evolved from the dream I had during the Summer season of DCP incorporating themes and images from our social dreaming matrices and bringing in the water which pours out of drawers and is a flood in counter to the flames.

The greenery is the plant known as cleavers which clings to clothes. We use it to explain valency or the familiar roles we take on in groups which can alternatively be explained as feelings that belong to the group and the work it is doing.  Or when we behave as vessels for the whole system and wider society.

There’s also something chemical and elemental.  I thought of calling it The Periodic Table and another possible title is Archive Alchemy.

I see it as a possible metaphor of a complex and uncontainable container to human history as it faces the consequences of colonialism, our pasts and the parts of ourselves as they are woven into that and appear in our presents.

Then I wonder what container we can make to work together as an interweaving of our diverse practices and relations as the creative work.

What will this involve for us all? Finding a rhythm and repetition, thinking of curation as care,  reevaluation of objects of organising, enabling difficult conversations.

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SDM #3, Summer SeasonThursday 15th June 2023

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SDM #3, Summer SeasonThursday 15th June 2023

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9 people in the room, 1 online

4 dreams were presented.

14 associations

Dream 1

Two dreams last night. Both about weddings. First one about forgetting to go to my friend’s wedding. Something with sausage roll. No alcohol at the wedding. Strange meet not attractive. Red meat on white plate. Don’t know why I missed the wedding.  Looking at the text trying to work out if I was going or not. Second one is the groom killing his wife on their wedding day. It looked nice and happy. No wow or veil. Not in a violent way. Looking accidently but it was by purpose. Someone looking for DNA. Thinking of dying hair black. There were bloodstains and her eyes were red.

Aassociation1: Sweet meatball. Idea of weddings and unions – fear of getting lost in groups.

A2: I had an association with feather meet.

Dream 2

I was in a shop/store. My daughter took off her underwear. I was distressed about this, but she was different. Inside the shop, I found a bin with books & papers inside; I started to look through the bin. I found my old papers inside the bin that I had surripticiously disposed of. I also found an envelope with disintegrated money. I found out that it had no value; in my mind, losing this money, that had no value, was not my fault.

Then I was at a family vacation house. Uncle B showed up. He had been in a very bad car accident, and so he had very poor mobility. We saw a huge buck deer at the same time, but no one else noticed. Uncle B looked more fit – he had some remote – controlled vehicle that was really futuristic. He was maneuering really fast&recklessly& it really stressed me out. Then I discovered that I had a young husband that I had forgotten about. I was so busy agonizing over how to divorce Andreas that I forgot about this guy, who I also did not love.

A3: Like a performance and a hunting rituals and hunting scene

A4: it is not husband’s fault. It is not my fault. I sounded strange.

A5: something about union and splitting. Sitting next to books with that topic.

Dream 3

I woke up this morning, but it was the day before. I was preparing opening of DCP. But on my way, I had a dream within a dream. Like sleepwalking. Lost track of time and space. I came too late to start the opening. (Doorbell rings) – a dream within a dream

A6: Something abort staircase in the iconic scene in the film Vertigo.

A7: I would destress if I was 20 min late. I had a similar dream. I felt disappointed someone was letting me down. Waiting for the bus 20 min. late. But there was no destress about it. 40 min after the bus came, I went a musical

A8: Reminds me of being late with a number of projects letting people down. I am doing my best, but I provokes anxiety.

A9: Dream within a dream. Reminds me of a film with animation-feeling on the set. Colours and the visuals a flat.

Dream 4

I dreamt that I couldn’t find this place because all the doors looked the same.

A10: Reminds me of buying a train ticked yesterday. I had to try 7 or 8 times and was fucked because it should be simple.

A11: Many doors – which’s are right? Which’s are wrong?

A12: Time is different. Time and quality. Clock - not being on time.

A13: The man who killed his wife – like creativity and destruction, they were close together.

A14: prison for murder – everyone finds the right person.

Social Dreaming Matrix Review

-       I had a psychoanalytic gig with the splitting. All the bullshit, but I love it too.

-       Iconic classical dreams – contemporary images

-       Books and building – concrete, workers in them, the whole experience

-       Destructive and creativity

-       Creative processes – not knowing which door. More dreams come to mind, not. Being able being seen. Taking risk, that’s ok

-       I had dream but the feeling that is that could not be expressed.

-       Several interruptions. I had dream but I can’t remember what it was.

-       Skype call during the session – a dream within a dream, unreality play.

-       Starting relationships – there were not time and space.

-       Featuring the wedding. Food not good enough. I was invited but did not accept invitation. Like nightmare

-       (Alarm bell goes on) practise – way of distractions.

-       Training with social care. Social dreaming – training room – window out to skiing down the slopes.

-       Bom-bom – flashy meat – everything’s going to be all right

-       Eating balls to get balls.

-       Tried day – yesterday really a good day.  Good sleep

-       Boris Johnson is costed – what is unfolding in UK.

-       Fantasy and reality - lots there is going on in the world.

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Just a screenshot, but a lot going on on twitter whether Rosie Jones should have used an ableist slur in the name of her show. Will be really interested to hear Debbies thoughts next time

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DCP / Social Dreaming 4 | Saturday, June 17th 2023 - 7 participants

DR1

I had a dream about a week ago. I was facilitating a meeting with my partner. A situation of not eveything being perfect. I felt a little spaced out but at ease, so I guess just being human. In the building was an elevator; big, iron, old brown, heavy & metal kind of atmosphere with high ceilings and I was waiting for it. People came in it after me. There was this young woman, androgyn, appealing. A very clean, smooth, lean genderless and ‘not flirting’ person. But still the expression was: I want you, very intense. As co-facilitator I really tried my very best to keep this woman out but felt overcome and overwheled. It was quite a pitying feeling. Trying to keep everything smooth and under control. I said “how old are you”she was in her late teens and i said “you’re really young so this would be abusive, when I was young I was mistreated”. She looked over the course of the dream more futuristic, asian. Supervisor coming to save the day.

DR2

In this dream I was the younger woman with an intense desire. There was some flirting and something complicated. Ending up in like … go away! This was 4-5 years ago. In the dream I was offered analysis and chose the midday-timeslot. Because that was the more appealing slot.

AS1

Makes me think of the varing and the reparative. Love is the running towards.

AS2

This makes me think of fire. A painting. And a fire that was in my dream the other day it was near a fire station.. We’re also containing the fire, this season. And there’s something about the DCP work and the rule breaking. Ans maybe the worries of the rulebreaking being too destructive and whether the container is strong enough.

And another association about being the facilitator in the room. And then stumbling in recurring dreams. Performing and not knowing the lines, not having the plan, knowing the play or knowing the meaning. A full audience and the need to know what I was doing.

AS3

Rule breaking becoming too destructive … freedom of speech can also become destructive. What about the freedom of listening?

AS4

Going on stage. And the inbuilt desire to succeed. We all want to do something good and not the discomfort of it not being good. And the innate benevolence related to the container … what is the meaning of this ’not sterile’. I see a simple clear plastic bin, like the ones you use when moving. The world benevolence, it’s a force.

AS5

In my country there are Seed containers being used as houses because of the housing problems – build units from them. Too little space to live.

AS6

We can close our eyes, but we can’t close our ears. We can listen … hear what we want to hear. It is about how we listen. Just as the exercise “Chinese whispers” … whispering to the neighbour … and tot he next person … and then the story changes very quickly.

Q Do we have anymore dreams?

AS 7

I think of this dream of my partner relating to the last association. He was trying to speak. His voice didn’t come out. Really trying to use his voice, but it didn’t work. Then all of a sudden it did work and it was way too loud, too much. He woke up screaming. I also woke up, being really afraid.

AS8

I also remember my partner had a nightmare. He sat u sharply and looked like if he was going to punch me in his dream he had taken me as someone going to attack him. This was really scary!

AS9

I always watch my dogs dream. Love that! When they have nightmares, I wonder what they’re about.

AS10

Pets are living with us, staying in our groups. The pick up the anxiety of people. They skip the long verbal ways … by dreaming.

AS11

I think of dog shows … mockumentaries … as the dogs show things about dysfunctionality in the group. They put everything on the dog all the projections. It’s brilliant.

AS12

Makes me think of an important and famous book. I bought it and it was completely different then what I expected. It (Cyborg manifesto) turned out to be about training dogs.

I like the cushions of dogs paws, cats as well

AS13

The same author also wrote … staying with the trouble.

REVIEW

P – a lot about the power underneath

P – an open feeling and then very tight

P – it was holding many themes; breaking rules, performance, politics, in/out, fantasy/reality. And something about ‘saying the right sentence’

P – There was an invitation to say more dreams …

P – also a lot about partners, pets, jobs. Longing for the familiar.

P – is was Bion who states out the pair as defence; to do the work fort he group. And people not being here … what work might they be doing for the group. Or what space are they taking in?

P – will there be enough, will there be more, now in this little group? It is very different now. And there is something missing.

P – there is also the thing about the constant feeling of the doorbell that will ring. Because a member is late and coming in any minute.

P – A staff member is also not here. She told us (at the party Friday) about her dream; that she would have loved to bring it in. We sort of joked: can we buy this dream from you? She said she would make a drawing of it. It was about the Tavistock archive. Old setting, many drawers etc. All kinds of containers.

P – and there’s ageing containers. What is it? Can we really explore what it is to work creatively? Are we really open … who’s in or out … can we breathe? Or interweave?

P – this plastic box … what would have been in it? How would this look like?

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https://medium.com/@plugwerk/carrot-fingers-703e1e3377d0

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In a land absurd, where vegetables roam,
There lived a creature, oh so bizarre, known as Carrot Fingers,
With hands of orange, like carrots…

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Windrush at 75: books that shaped the black British experience - The Guardian

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David Olusoga, Bernardine Evaristo and David Lammy are among the leading writers, artists, politicians and broadcasters who have chosen 75 books to mark the 75th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush

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through letting go of shame

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After losing her legs, Marie-Hélène finds freedom in scars and in dance

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20. Weyes Blood - Something to Believe (2019)

From its cover shot of a submerged bedroom down, 2019's Titanic Rising feels like an album informed by the climate crisis, but the lyrics seldom address it explicitly. Something to Believe is the perfect example: a plea not to feel overwhelmed by or nihilistic about the challenges faced, beautifully steeped in the lush sound of early 70s Los Angeles.

19. David Axelrod - The Warnings Part 1 (1970)

The 1970 album Earth Rot wins the award for the most idiosyncratic environmental protest record ever made: a 22-minute orchestrated jazz-rock song suite with a choir singing lyrics from the Bible and Najavo legends. Opener The Warnings Part 1 is simultaneously luscious, chilled and disturbing, propelled by a funk undertow and like nothing else.

18. Common, Malik Yusef, Kumasi feat Aaron Fresh, Choklate, Laci Kay - Trouble in the Water (2014)

Hip-hop isn't big on environmental protest (see Pitbull's album Global Warming, the title track of which is literally about how great Pitbull's private jet is) but Common's collaboration with, among others, Kanye West's producer Malik Yusef is terrific: military beats; smart, witty lyrics; harsh electronics; a chorus that's forbidding and catchy.

17. Dead Kennedys - Moon Over Marin (1982)

Musically influenced by the Sex Pistols, but venturing into lyrical areas where the initial wave of British punk seldom stepped - Crass's anti-nuclear Contaminational Power notwithstanding - Moon Over Marin imagines a nocturnal swim on a polluted California beach, frontman Jello Biafra sounding bug-eyed with horror at the unpleasantness of it all.

16. The Beach Boys - A Day in the Life of a Tree (1971)

An environmentalist strain runs through the Beach Boys' 70s oeuvre, from Don't Go Near the Water to Dennis Wilson's River Song. But it never yielded more peculiar fruit than this, an impossibly sombre song memorably described by the late Ian McDonald as "so radically at odds with pop's now ubiquitous irony that you either laugh or become humbled by its pained candour".

15. The Weather Station - Atlantic (2021)

Like Weyes Blood's Titanic Rising, the Weather Station's Ignorance is an extraordinarily beautiful album inspired by impending ecological doom, rather than directly about it. Gentle, but twitchy, Atlantic finds singer-songwriter Tamara Lindeman gazing at the loveliness of the titular ocean, wine in hand, trying and failing to forget impending disaster.

14. Cerrone - Supernature (1977)

Perhaps the weirdest disco hit of all: 10 minutes of Giorgio Moroder-ish synths, mock-classical keyboard flourishes, four-to-the-floor beats and ... a lyric (by Lene Lovich) that appears to predict GM farming, cautions against mankind's arrogance and hubris, and ends with the human race being slaughtered by "creatures from below". It made the Top 10.

13. Talking Heads - (Nothing But) Flowers (1988)

Its music influenced by Congolese soukous, (Nothing But) Flowers is a typically complex, witty examination of a post-apocalyptic "Garden of Eden" where nature has taken over: "If this is paradise," protests the narrator, who's previously wished for precisely this scenario, "I wish I had a lawnmower."

12. Hawkwind - We Took the Wrong Step Years Ago (1971)

Amid the motorik space-rock and experimentation of Hawkwind's In Search of Space lurks this: a psych-y ballad, heavy on the 12-string guitar and fatalistic lyrics - very much in line with the era's sobering ecological tracts Limits to Growth and The Closing Circle - that thrillingly bursts into frantic synth-assisted jamming midway through.

11. REM - Fall on Me (1986)

Fall on Me sounds gorgeous - mistily autumnal, ringed with lovely counter-melodies and plangent guitar - but its lyric shifts from oblique to incisive. Its best line perfectly sums up the still-ongoing desire to avoid the seriousness of environmental issues that face us: "There's the progress we have found: a way to talk around the problem."

10. Anohni - 4 Degrees (2015)

On the face of it, 4 Degrees appears to be straightforward condemnation, written from the perspective of a climate crisis denier: in fact, its author said, it was about her, "not my aspirations but my behaviours, revealing my insidious complicity". Either way, it's really potent: battering rhythms, ominous electronics, triumphant strings.

9. Spirit - Nature's Way (1970)

Apparently inspired by Cleveland's polluted Cuyahoga River bursting into flames in June 1969, Nature's Way is haunting: harmony-laden west coast acoustic rock turned deeply uneasy and foreboding ("something's wrong"). The 1991 cover by This Mortal Coil - beautifully orchestrated, sung by Alison Limerick - is also worth hearing: radically different, equally powerful.

8. Gojira - Amazonia (2021)

Always fond of an apocalyptic scenario, heavy metal might be the most environmentally conscious genre of all: everyone from Ozzy Osbourne and Architects to Metallica and Napalm Death has addressed the subject. Amazonia, a highlight of Gojira's acclaimed Fortitude album, is a ferocious example: the destruction of the rainforests excoriated to a monumental riff.

7. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Up from the Skies (1967)

Ecology didn't really establish itself as a topic in pop until the early 70s: there's something almost eerily prescient about this jazzy single, on which the sci-fi obsessed Hendrix had aliens return to Earth for the first time in thousands of years and note the "smell of a world that has burned" - "maybe it's a change of climate".

6. Childish Gambino - Feels Like Summer (2018)

Feels Like Summer is a fabulous bluff of a single: a hazy afternoon slow jam - gently strummed guitar, falsetto vocals, flute, released alongside the more straightforward Summertime Magic - that gradually reveals itself to be about a subject noticeably bigger, darker and more fraught than lazing in the heat.

5. Funkadelic - Maggot Brain (1971)

Maggot Brain opens with a monologue by George Clinton - "Mother Earth is pregnant ... for y'all have knocked her up ... rise above it all or drown in [your] own shit" - but its power as a protest song is all about the next 10, instrumental minutes and Eddie Hazel's incredible, desolate guitar solo.

4. Pixies - Monkey Gone to Heaven (1989)

A compelling and very Pixies take on environmentalism, in which the ozone layer and ocean pollution somehow get bound up with Hebrew numerology, the latter provoking a burst of Black Francis's patent, never-not-thrilling screaming. Elliptical enough that late-80s indie disco-goers might have missed the point, Monkey Gone to Heaven has rightly endured.

3. Neil Young - After the Gold Rush (1970)

Neil Young is one of rock's most dogged green campaigners but he never wrote a more affecting song on the subject than After the Gold Rush, a fragile sci-fi parable, imbued with a shattered morning-after-the-60s atmosphere and home to his most famous line on the subject: "Look at Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s."

2. Marvin Gaye - Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) (1971)

A litany of woes informed the song-cycle of What's Going On - Vietnam, racism, police brutality - but Marvin Gaye saved the album's loveliest tune for the song about environmental destruction: there's something almost disconcerting about the way the melody's airiness and the subtleness of the backing clashes with the lyric's hopelessness.

1. Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi (1970)

It's not a protest anthem in the vein of We Shall Overcome or Give Peace a Chance - you don't hear people chanting its lyrics on marches - but the most enduring song about what came to be called "green issues": covered by Bob Dylan, sampled by Janet Jackson, still a radio staple 50 years on. It was written on a late 60s trip to Hawaii - home to the Foster Botanical Gardens, AKA the lyrics' "tree museum" - and partly influenced by Rachel Carson's anti-pesticide tract Silent Spring, or at least the furore it caused. Mitchell's anti-globalisation/industrialisation/corporate message transcends its era, partly because of its buoyantly sweet melody but mostly due to the timeless simplicity of its key line: "You don't know what you got til it's gone."

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The greatest songs about the climate crisis - ranked!

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As Cop26 opens in Glasgow, we provide the soundtrack, ranging from Gojira's metal fury to gorgeous environmental paeans by Childish Gambino, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell

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Climate justice can't happen without racial justice | David Lammy

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In Rotterdam, ‘Moments Contained’ will be part of a collection of outdoor sculptures by internationally renowned artists.

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Since a few weeks there’s this  beautiful talk lady standing before Rotterdam Centraal Station. The fictional black woman in relaxed sportswear simply stands on the pavement with her Nikes. Young, confident, curious and open-minded.

The maker, British artist Thomas J Price, would like the people of Rotterdam to recognize themselves in 'moments contained'. That people embrace the artwork as part of our public space. It creates moments of deeper understanding, connection and empathy.' The work is also about the experience of being put away as 'the other', about the power of the individual, despite prejudices about status and value.

The young woman in bronze is not a heroine, not a character with an impressive past. She has the future. She is the future. And this city is her home. I hope there is time to meet her tomorrow on my way back when I transfer to the train to Apeldoorn, my home. If not, then sometime soon the coming weeks. Wishing you all a great summer!

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https://open.spotify.com/track/1Sm3U3B5XoidYQEZQZrh3i?si=FSITSkpCQzaYqTYAgbDZBw

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A half pipe to mark the death of (creativity) the self.

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Observing public space - De facto inclusion... Transience is inclusive.

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https://youtu.be/SqcF_GI3mOA

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RYE LANE | Official Trailer | Searchlight Pictures

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https://open.spotify.com/show/6BL7LWzXRdmwa0JVXOChQL?si=0FJXERLiRqyx1OEdJrLQYg

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Really interesting exhibition of Pilvi Takala's work exploring how we behave at work, the processes and social structures in place, and what comforts/discomforts us.

Unfortunately, only for those in London (closes on 4 June), but I wanted to share it with you anyway in case of interest.

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A Podcast series that I've been enjoying and this episode reminded me of our explorations in Spring.  Finding shape and form exploring with conscious awareness.
Juliet

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Giving Shape to Strange Things with Eugene Mahon

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Listen to this episode from Voices from ROOM: A Podcast for Analytic Action on Spotify. This week, Aneta and Isaac talk with Dr. Eugene Mahon about the magic of metaphors in action, play as a point of entry, and the place where psychoanalysis and poetry meet."Serious daring surely comes from serious thought, which brings us back to psychoanalytic thinking and its multiple determinants.

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At the Workshop: The Language of the Goddess

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At the Workshop: The Language of the Goddess

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At the "Language of the Goddess" workshop, we had the opportunity to tap into our creative potential and explore ancient goddess figures through our own artwork.

During the workshop, we also reflected on our Social Dreaming Matrix, where we uncovered images of pregnancy, chopped heads, mothers, fear, creativity, and potential. These subconscious associations likely influenced the symbolism and meaning that emerged in our artwork, deepening our understanding of the themes explored in the workshop.

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Before I try to recall Dasein... Here is Zeitgeist. 

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Before I try to recall Dasein... Here is Zeitgeist. 

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This is Zeitgeist. He watches over me in my office/studio... He's so hard to read, you know... But, I always feel a wink and a nod somehow.

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Today anniversary of the death of Stephen Lawrence the pain still remains for his family

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Today anniversary of the death of Stephen Lawrence the pain still remains for his family

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Stephen Lawrence's father says he will "never forgive the police" three decades after his son's murder.

Today marks 30 years since the 18-year-old was murdered in a racist attack while waiting for a bus in Eltham, southeast London, on 22 April 1993.

His death changed the course of British history and shone a light on racism that permeated through police, public bodies and society as a whole.

But for his father Neville, the anniversary marks "30 years of pain and suffering for me and my family".

He told Sky News: "Remember this is my first child. The memories I have of Stephen will never go away. I will never forget them, never."

After Stephens death, the Lawrence family's lives were turned upside down in their fight for justice, after a police investigation tainted by racism meant it would take 20 years for the killers to be sentenced for murder.

David Norris and Gary Dobson were jailed while three others who were arrested were never prosecuted.

Norris and Dobson have never confessed.

At a parole hearing next year, Mr Lawrence may have the opportunity to face one of his son's murderers and hopes it may be a good opportunity for him to ask a question that's been on his mind for 30 years.

"Did you actually kill my son?

"I want (them) to say yes, I killed Stephen Lawrence."

He added he has found peace and has been able to forgive the men that killed his son.

But the police, well that's a different matter.

In 1999 a report looking into the police handling of Stephen Lawrence's case found the investigation had been marred with incompetence and institutional racism.

"I would never forgive the police. As long as they can't accept what they're doing is wrong. Because if you don't accept it, its not going to change," he said.

In 2023 a review by Baroness Casey found the Met Police is "institutionally racist, misogynist and homophobic".

"I am so disappointed.

"We are still facing the same kind of attitudes.

"Twenty years later for somebody else to come along and say the same thing. That shows you they have no intention of changing their behaviour."

He says his trust in police is so strained he wouldn't even consider calling them if he needed their help.

"If something happened to me tomorrow morning, who do I call? I wouldn't be calling a bunch of police because I know I wouldn't get the satisfaction of them treating me the way they are supposed to."
Read more:
Met Police chief admits 'we have let black communities down'
Stephen Lawrence's mother effectively 'gaslit' by Daily Mail, court told
He hopes the new report will create a shift in culture which is needed to finally address institutional racism in policing.

When asked about society as a whole, Mr Lawrence was much more optimistic.

Lots of young people weren't even alive when his son was murdered, but many know of the legacy Stephen behind.

He said: "It feels good to know that I'm here talking to the younger generation.

"For them to do things differently from the ways some of their parents were doing it. I feel grateful for that.

"The only thing I am not too happy about is that it had to take the death of my son for anything like that to happen."

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Stephen Lawrence's father says he will 'never forgive the police' as he marks 30 years since son's murder

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Stephen Lawrence's father says he will "never forgive the police" three decades after his son's murder. The memories I have of Stephen will never go away. After Stephens death, the Lawrence family's lives were turned upside down in their fight for justice, after a police investigation tainted by racism meant it would take 20 years for the killers to be sentenced for murder.

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SDM #2, Spring Season, Saturday 22nd April 2023

11 people in the room

6 dreams were presented, 22 associations.

Dream 1: With my boyfriend having dinner with many people, some of them were important.  One of them was a singer Ultimo which means the last one.  My boyfriend asked me to go and ask him if he would buy some of his artworks, He gave me a pen to take with tiny little animals on it. I went to the singer to speak to him to invite him to meet my boyfriend. He came to our table which was fun and stayed with us for a while.

D2: My belly was swollen. I wondered if I might be pregnant.  I went looking around town for pregnancy tests. My mother said she thought I had put on weight but good that I would have a baby and then lose it.   I got the pregnancy test and was pregnant and happy about it.  I thought I will need to speak to my new boyfriend about this as it is a new relationship and maybe too soon?

Association 1: The younger generation who rally against the generation who make judgements about weight.  I went for a long 30 mile walk recently and my mum said - if you had lost weight you would have done it faster.

A2: Speed, tempo, timing. Is it too soon.  Can the changes be pushed too hard?

D2:  A dream that went on and on.  A woman going out with someone.  A dysfunctional relationship.  She cut her own head off but she wasn’t dying.  We were annoyed, kept having to attend to the cut off head.

A3:  Are we ready for the entrails that will come out or do we need to push them back in?

A4: Relationships and death

A5: Things that start to grow, relationships or belly, possibility of ending that process.  Looking in the mirror recently at my belly and remembering my mother-in-law saying ‘Look at your dress are you pregnant’.  I had been working with body and menopausal change and was very proud of my belly. I had been working out, making space and enjoying the looseness of it.

A6: The laughing Buddha and the belly laugh.

A7: The Dalai Lama and the recent joking with the child to suck his tongue. Reading both sides of the story, so ambiguous.

A8: Losing your head.  A great phase in the film Spirited Away, the three green heads that are bouncing around.

A9: I have started reading a short novel where a women has the head of a child, a floating head in her house.  I am not sure yet what this relates to, maybe she has floaters in her eyes.  It isn’t clear but she is enjoying having the company of the child’s head in her orbit.

A10: The ambiguous Cheshire Cat and Jiminy Cricket.

A11: The hydra monster, you cut off the heads and more heads come back.

A12: A buddhist temple. Great god at the entry of the temple who has big head and eyes to protect the temple.

A13: The dog at the gates of Hades Cerberus.  I can’t remember what he is there for.

D4: In a theatre, participants on stage.  There are several holes and participants fall into these.  In every hole there is a maze inside.

A14: Reminds of a performance in a disused bus station.  There were different sections and corridors, and the performance took place in different areas around the space.

Interjection from host: I have a sleep app that I use at night.  It records me and last night I screamed and I have no memory of the dream or screaming either. I wonder if there are any other dreams.

D5:  A theatrical house.  A Bilbo Baggins house, lots of little doors. People banging on the windows,  Drunken men with faces like some of the recent descriptions.

A16: To the Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go.  The little animals.   There all these people who have been created to have their organs harvested.  If they are creative they will save themselves from the fate of having their organs harvested.

A17: To a friend who is a Furry.  A group of people who like to dress up as animals. He asked someone to draw his character and they drew him with lots of children. He was concerned about what this would do to his character.

A18: A virtual reality game.  Everyone becomes a sweet character. In the centre there are many doors that lead to different games where you can become different things under the sea, flying in the sky.

A19: Doors, scale. Big things, Alice in Wonderland.

A20: Being immersed, immersive theatre, what is real, not real.  Being forced under.

A20: Radiohead, Thom Yorke he opens one door, opens another, then another.

A21: Parallel doors, a door that is in two halves.   As a marker of bliss and status.  It seems a great privilege to be able to have the door open and close the door to stay safe at the same time.

A22:  The chopped off head of a Roman emperor as part of a theatrical piece.  A french teacher getting his head chopped off.  The critical thing about the belly and the babies.  Something wrong about being in the belly.  If you get things wrong, do you get your head chopped off or can you express something, focus on the belly, is that OK? Rather than from the head.

D6:  An area with logs, working with someone who was a signwriter and writing signs.  Further away there was another area with a tree, where they also needed to write a sign.  There was a time frame for this and it was marked with a digital clock saying 30 something seconds.

Social Dreaming Matrix Review

-          Lots of images from children’s books saying dark things and they kept on coming.

-          Elon Musk’s response to climate change and how he will need to train his bodyguards so that when he has to retreat to his bunker they will not kill him.  Why not allow them to like? Having all the money.

-          Dreams in theatrical spaces.  The theatre as the space for illusion. In the theatre the door represents a dramatic change.

-          The space of illusions.

-          The matrix about potential, the baby, the door.

-          Some brutal things. The heads. Some kind of power we cannot control.

-          The children and the Dalai Lama. Is this something that is abusive or not, it reminded me about conversations yesterday about The Tavistock Institute and whether this space it provides can be supportive.

-          The conclusions of the report on bullying of UK civil servants by Government ministers and the possibility of making political change in a way that takes care of people. Connecting this with the BBC as it tried to make systemic sense in the aftermath of Jimmy Saville and how the unleashing of story might reactivate previous trauma.  Balancing this tension.

-          The trust in my work, people let me into their rooms and thinking how exposing that is. I take that for granted.

-          An image of pregnancy and decapitation.  I’ve swallowed a lot of stuff in the matrix.  Last one I was on the edge which made me feel free and in the middle this time, felt I was holding more weight, may be the dreams.

-          Harsh mothers, judgemental mothers, expectations of mothers, mothers in law.

-          Relationships with own mothers, ambivalence and ambiguity, maybe more history.

-          Material and bodily experiences. Sculpture, mass, water.

-          Competition between mothers and daughters where that judgemental-ness comes from.

-          One man in the group.  My relationship with my father was competitive too.

-          Someone new to the group, bringing the dream about the baby.

Hosts’ notes

Still full of the water talked about yesterday and the strong imagery of water on the Padlet.   Water as contained, water as spilling over.   Drought, thirst.  DCP as a container and how the early work, the work of Spring is repeated, experimentation with safety and danger with breathing, spluttering, dehydration.  What monsters and demons lie in our actions?  What the learning held within the programme and within our multiple interactions might mean for our emerging knowing of ourselves.  Can we open up to our own fears and what are the collective fears that might be societal fears held in the temporary organisation and how can we work with them safely?

Are the Elon Musk’s bodyguards Cerberus guarding the door to the underworld?

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Ways of Knowing - Secret News by comedian George Carlin

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Ways of Knowing - Secret News by comedian George Carlin

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George Carlin Secret News - YouTube
I got to thinking about anxiety around knowing difficult things and recalled how George Carlin nailed this in 44 seconds.

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Change your life at Sea

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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DCP 23/24

SDM #1, Spring Season, Thursday 20th April 2023

7 people in the room, 2 people online

9 dreams were presented, 23 associations

Dream 1: Fragments of a dream. A man living secretly in a loft above a theatre, dating someone but they’re wanted dead. The father of the girlfriend said the man can’t see his daughter, so the man went off. Posters are up in town, they’re not nice, like a missing cat poster but about the man (and maybe a cat too). It says he’s unwanted in the town, with EXTRA – like the chewing gum label – the EXTRA is derogatory though.

D2: The dreamer is in their hotel room in London and there’s an earthquake. They and their boyfriend (who is at home really) wake up. Big houses near the room that move a lot. But not feeling so scared. Asking what to do while boyfriend is sleeping.

D3: The dreamer is scaling a simple wooden ladder, same as steps, would get on. IN an abstract space, a stone wool. Reaches a window with no glass. The last step is onto the window threshold, it is too high. The dreamer stands on the top step of ladder, with a sinking feeling, have to take the step but legs are like jelly, trembling.  They said ‘I can’t do this to my son’, though he wasn’t there, was addressing the statement to the son.

Association 1: To dream 3, reminds me of walking on North East coast in UK in horrendous weather. I came across a stream, had to navigate across slippery stones, not knowing its stability. I pulled on a flimsy twig to help me across, with my friend holding onto to it as well to help me across the stream.

Association 2: To a rock formation, on Dartmoor, with friends, but was up there on my own. There was a bit where I had to jump across rocks and didn’t trust my ankles, to scramble down.  Went to go back but realised I had to go up over the rocks to get back down. So went back and still couldn’t jump across the rocks. A man on a date asked me if I was OK and he straddled across the rocks to help me get down.

A3: To rocks and caverns, sound earthquaky too

A4: Remember when young travelling across South America, on a hike with a good friend. Came to a small river and needed to cross but it was too harsh. We tried to walk into the water but had to return as it was too slippery and too hard to cross. At one point my backpack went under water and I was worried my analogue camera would be damaged (it was OK). Went to the shore but couldn’t believe the locals used this crossing on a daily basis, they couldn’t understand why we two young fit men couldn’t couldn’t cross. We asked an old man and he helped us with a sack and with a line hidden under the water and we were able to cross in five minutes. We were happy but confused.

D4 - I don’t usually remember dreams. The other night in dream, I was putting rubbish outside the house and saw a tiger, was worried about my cat, completely old and deaf. Tiger was an adolescent, chasing but not hunting local animals, couldn’t work out whether it was playing or serious.

D5- dream fragment – a man wearing flamboyant clothing. Threw himself on the bed.

A5 and D6 – Dream of a White Tiger - in a busy building, I went upstairs and entered room, shocked to see on the floor a baby white tiger, I went back and left the room.

A6: Reminds me of a book on the table next to my bed in the hotel – The Tiger Awakens – about body experiences from trauma.

A7: Wind gas from turbines causes mini-earthquakes. An area with turbines where people don’t want to live for fear of this. Uncommon that it happens, but it happens.

A8: The tiger reminds me of the novel, The Life of Pi.

A9: To the man in the loft above theatre, and the film of the Life of Pi – the element of surprise. And a sense of dread, the unknown thing, the wanted and unwanted.

A10: To Naples, under Mount Vesuvius, people living there saying everyone loves it and if the volcano erupted, they would go away and then come back. Different perspectives to danger – ambivalence about disaster.

A11: To the paper raft made in yesterday’s opening plenary.

D7: With a friend making meat stew, life is funny, we have a pile of money but choose to live at home until the age of 35 and living with the brother as a partner, but at the age of 28, the brother decided to shoot himself.

A12: My son was 1, we were living in the centre of the country and we saw everything moving. The stairs were moving.    When I realised it was an earthquake, took my son and our orange cat. Ran out of the house but not feeling bad. Me, the dad of my son, my son and the cat – like a tiger and a big baby. I was laughing thinking I had a tiger and a baby.

A13: To running out of a house, I know the feeling of wanting to run out of the house.

A14 & D8: In dreams I often am running, being chased, in danger. The other night, was going across a grass common, and there were groups of young men, knives, danger, but I managed to avoid the danger, just walked by.

A15: Like in organisations, do you keep away from danger? There’s a moral judgement, about whether to be a scapegoat, stand up for something or avoid/turn a blind eye. Integrity vs safety.

A16: To the analogue camera, caring for survival. Organisations – whether it is possible to really see what is dangerous. People can’t bear things that are not seen and have to leave. If it’s not seen, there will be another scapegoat, a returning pattern. Material to watch closely, like through a camera.

A17 & D9: A dream of having run the London Marathon. I told my sister and was full of achievement. Had a piece of paper. My sister said to go online, look at the time I did. It was very slow but we discovered the footage and there were people in water, dolphins.

A18: Of dolphins, playful, acrobatic, artful, accompanying, not dangerous.

A19: To dolphins. I and my sibling have dolphin tattoos, in honour of our sibling.

A20: Knowledge of time, running, being slow, connecting to slow dialogue of yesterday and work in Psychophysical space yesterday. Be able to feel, see, express…. Running besides Dolphin, artful, strong image.

A21: Being in the present, not running away, not to preserve health, nice image.

A22: Dolphins hunt in packs, they get prey. We put stuff on animals and people, can be very one-sided. Either really good or really bad. A memory of a youtube video – a polar bear meets a dog, The dog goes into play mode, the polar bear, though thin and hungry, plays rather than eats the dog.

A23: Association to marathons. A woman on the train near me was watching the documentary on the Boston marathon bombing. There was an interview with subtitles, film showing the bomber’s graduation photo from high school. The interviewee was talking, questioning how the person became animalistic, dangerous.

SDM Review

·         Vivid imagery in matrix

·         A fast pace, lots of dreams

·         DCP – thinking of creative energy and destruction, generativity – this tension between the two in society

·         I find creative connections when going through something, processing. If life is nice, can it still be creative?

·         Connecting to conversations between psychoanalysts and artists – the idea that from an artist if they get themselves in order, will their creativity go?

·         Book – Society and the arts. Expressed a lot of creativity, anxiety around order and disorder.

·         Matrix felt close, warm, colder as we moved into review. Hearing voices from those on screen, pleasing, clear. Appreciated the quiet of the matrix and the voices.

·         Last night, went to a Musical, had a great time, it wasn’t sad, art might not be profound.

·         Myths of creativity – around trauma being necessary, to be damaged - though some research shows this as a myth.

·         Small society – way it works, the dark sides of working in the arts.

·         Standing up, showing up, scaling the ladder in dream – trusting oneself, one’s ankles, trusting each other?

·         The image of the man above the theatre – artists during economic crises, create dynamic work. Where they live because it’s cheap become places most wanted to live in. Most people who go to the theatre are rich.

·         What art does, why artists are in poverty when they should be paid more, being wanted. Really need to bring something, what are we doing here? Creative practice and how to work with it – organisations are not so open.

·         A reflection on trust – felt terrible being late but felt integrated. Experienced a ritual quality; respect; trust. Currency of trust – trying to take care of other things whilst here, it’s difficult.

·         Theme of what is it we make here together, can it hold the difficulty, risk, shadow, the steps as we go along?

Review ended.

Hosts’ reflections

On Day 2 of DCP, and of spring season, the SDM seemed to express some of the fears, anxieties, some hopes and desires perhaps inherent at the start of participating in any new creative risk-taking, learning programme.  The taking of leaps and the transitional artefacts that might support us, whether to jump, whether a person will be caught, or supported, whether the creative process will be contained or not, whether the ‘tiger’ will be friendly or attacking – questions perhaps around each other as participants, the container of the programme as a whole, the faculty, artists, directors and perhaps of the organisation? There were many words spoken, dreams shared, associations made and few silences, though the silences present had a sense of calm to them. The matrix had a lot of creative energy and also held a sense of dread – linked to the first dream perhaps, which also seemed to hold an echo of the diary of Anne Frank. Perhaps speaking to some of the experiences in contemporary society around totalitarian regimes, a question of whether one is an accepted or rejected part of society, and whether this might lead to being welcomed for what one might bring, or whether one might be destroyed for one’s existence. Can we tolerate each other to be?

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Ive found a written version if you dont have instagram, although i liked it read by the artist

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Just saw this amazing poem, and seems to fit with translation of organisational understandings to art

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Just saw this amazing poem, and seems to fit with translation of organisational understandings to art

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https://www.instagram.com/reel/CqosQHUJN58/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

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Michelangelo Pistoletto | Rem(a)inders 2010

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Michelangelo Pistoletto | Rem(a)inders 2010

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Society as a bee colony? Each with its own story, sometimes zooming, sometimes poking. Performance artist Jeroen IJzinga was left with about 30 stitches from this meeting. What courage! The search for what happens when you let go of all fear, judgment and uncertainty.

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Beeswax Work in Progress:  Juliet Scott 2023

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Deepening Creative Practice with Organisations and the practices and traditions of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations suggest a CO.  Co-creating, co-curating, co-eating.

Being and doing together  - COllectively as a temporary organisation.

We enter this field holding assumptions about what this means, about what the traditions are and what expertise is in working with groups and organisations, we know ourselves in a particular way.

In doing that we might neglect the question of singularity and how a singular vision is a part of the whole, miss attending to every word and movement - what each signifies and what deep attunement as practice might lead us towards as part of the organisational and societal systems we are part of.

How will each of us come into this organism of different parts and inter-dependencies and what kind of structure will we create to enable our journey and learning together?

This is a welcome message from the core faculty.

Juliet Scott and Heather Stradling, the Programme Directors.  Rachel Kelly, Director of a Psychophysical Space. Maria Markiewicz, Curatorial Assistant.   It is to everyone who will be involved in the programme.

We look forward to working with you on the above and more over the coming seasons and manifestations.

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'Toren van Babel', Thomas van Klaveren (2008)

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Makes me think of this variation, Katy :-).

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'Babel', 'Cockaigne' by Gayle Chong Kwan (2004)

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I'm looking forward to meeting you all for the next week workshop: The Language of the Goddess
Wednesday 19 th April 14.45 - 17.00 &
Saturday 21 st April 10.15 - 12.15.

The workshop will explore the themes and ideas in Marija Gimbutas' book "The Language of the Goddess" and the role of goddess worship in prehistoric cultures. We will learn about symbolism and iconography associated with these ancient concepts and create our own artwork.

On the first day, I will start the session by introducing my dream related artworks(20mins) then the workshop will begin with an introduction to the book and creative exercises to tap into our artistic expression.(20mins) We will then create a sculpture using terracotta clay incorporating symbols and motifs associated with the ancient goddess figures.(95mins)

On the second day, we will have a group discussion about the meaning and significance of the artwork created(20mins), and we will finish the sculptures by painting with pigments.(100mins)

By the end, we should gain a deeper understanding of the role of goddess worship in prehistoric cultures and how it can inspire contemporary expressions of the collective unconscious.

In preparation for the workshop, I would like to request to wear casual clothing that you don't mind getting dirty while working with clay. Additionally, I would like to encourage to bring any additional tools or materials you may want to use during the workshop.

See you all next week!

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'Still Life over Object Relations Card' by Juliet Scott

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'Still Life over Object Relations Card' by Juliet Scott

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Still Life over Object Relations card AG5 2019

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Welcome to the DCP 2023-2024 creative scrapbook!

Feel free to share quotes, books, images, reflections on sessions, and more - whatever is going on in your head!

The space will also be visited and populated by our participating artists - we're hoping that you will find it productive and inspiring!

Maria