Favouring contemporary dance, music, and editing in her videos and performance works, Park collaborates with choreographers in an attempt to physically manifest the cerebral realm.

We produce vibrant and important cultural programmes, created by and for the communities we work with, namely isolated older people, those living with profound and multiple disabilities, and those living in care home environments, enabling them to play an active and visible role in the creative life of their community.

Oh Wilfred, Wilfred what did you do
 For them to name this room after you?
 A holding space to dissect our group,
 A container to take a different view.

Oh Wilfred, Wilfred what did you say?
 Contrasting this space with the one where we play.
 Discomfort of silence, how long will we stay?
 Will the group bond together or will fault lines fray?

Oh Wilfred, Wilfred if only we’d met!
 You could share the experience, you’d love it I bet!
 I’d thank you for the space to which I’m in debt, 
 And for time to explore that I will not forget 😉

I have revisited a multi media image I created (pastel, ink, paint and paper) inspired by William Blake's poem: 'The Sick Rose'.

-Ink is the worm, ink is the healer, staining and blotting, blanking and blotting out.
-Pastels are the smudge and adaptability, moving and changing.
-The rose is red, blood not crimson.

O Rose thou art sick
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out they bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does they life destroy

If an organisation or group is a 'bed of crimson joy', what does it mean when the worm 'flies in the night' to destroy it? What does it mean to be known in a group and then not to be known? What does it mean for all of you to be accepted and then for part of you to be hidden? Can the group survive the 'howling storm'?

As the Director of our newest area of practice, Art and Organisation, my work at The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR) means moving amongst the visual, performing, embodying arts and social science; an inter-disciplinary role that involves working (psycho)dynamically from within to outside the organisation to open up spaces for conversations of arts and culture at work. As part of that, I am pleased to be launching and co-leading with Heather Stradling the new programme Deepening Creative Practice, which transcends boundaries of art and science and weaves them together in search of new ways of interacting and intervening in and with organisations.

In my consulting practice, I offer arts-based organisational and professional development interventions exploring the role of the artist as a societal change agent. I work with concepts and methodologies from the arts, researching around questions of design, aesthetics, new objects and the meaning of space and place.

The TIHR is dedicated to the study of human relations for the purpose of bettering working life and conditions for all humans within their organisations, communities and broader societies and to the influence of environment in all its aspects on the formation or development of human character or capacity; to conduct research and provide opportunities for learning through experience for this purpose; to publish the results of such study and research; to train students in or for any branches of the said study.

Deepening Creative Practice (DCP)
DCP a unique trans-disciplinary programme weaving together the arts and social sciences: nurturing experimentation, curiosity, reflection, working with difference and practising taking risks.

Leslie draws on his personal experience and his work directing international Group Relations events to discuss leadership, authority and identity in our turbulent times.

Deborah is known in disability arts for playing a significant role in the implementation of disability equality legislation (Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and Equality Act 2010) in the cultural sector, and promoting diversity and equality advocacy; this has included representing London Disability Arts Forum and Arts Council England (ACE) across the EU.

What image does our mind create

To translate the unknown.

Our need to make sense

The sound of rain on a dry day.

An alien life form.

Static electricity.

What a worm sounds like.

How little we like to sit

With the 

Discomfort

Of not knowing.

Insecurity of feeling stupid, out of our depth, being 

Found Out.

The safety of the familiar.

The space we take up as humans.

Our own

Self 

Importance.

Is the other more wise?

In circumstances different from those present; or else.

In other respects; apart from that.

In a different state or situation.

Burn

Bright.

Head touches heart.

Sparks fly

Ignite.

 

Is there so much difference

Between heart and head?

d

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In my other life, I am a freelance mezzo-soprano and have worked with companies such as:

I've been reflecting on power, arts and activism. What are the limits and what are the possibilities? 

Alongside her work with Nimble Fish, Samantha was awarded an International Placement for Creative Entrepreneurs from the British Council in 2009 to develop an arts programme of activity working with young people affected by leprosy in New Delhi.

Present: Heather, Maria, Bernie, Elizabeth, Claire and 20 participants

9 Dreams & 11 Associations

Co-hosts: Elizabeth Mc Court and Bernadette Kennedy

Dream 1:

My dream from last night.

I couldn’t make heads or tails of it; We didn’t know if all the students had their visas. I had all the stuff. My staff were doing nothing, I was doing everything . We just couldn’t organize it and that was the dream

Dream 2:

A dream a few days back my foster mother who is around 74 years old she gives me a gift for my birthday.  She draws something, a memory for my birthday, a greeting card. She has drawn it. I see the goddess Durga at the top and one at the bottom.  The top Durga has multiple hands and is dark in color. The one on the bottom is lighter. I’m struck and baffled by Durga coming into my dream.

Dream 3: 

I think it was daytime and outdoors and I’m walking on the pavement its not a very bright day. I am between the edge of the pavement  and a stall and people are selling goods - they are selling warm socks and gloves. A man, an Asian man, who is not dissimilar to me, early 50s a bit younger than me , I asked him about the gloves. Then we walked about 50 yards, to a little driveway, something shared with an opening, an Aladdin’s cave. He’s got piles of goods and he sifts through them and finds a pair of gloves, excellent leather and says, ‘you’ll really like them.’ .Similar to a pair I have already. What struck me was how friendly he was.  Then we crossed the road, he was so hospitable and I wasn’t cold at all. I had a light jacket. In the dream we are walking down a shared road and we recognised we were from different class. It was very lovely yet lonely .  

Association 1:

When I walked into my organisation after a time out - I hadn’t been back in a while. I stepped in and as I walked up the stairs I stopped and looked at my phone and a stranger came down the stairs.  She said, ‘you have lovely colors.’ I looked at the mostly pink shades I was wearing and said “thank you”  and also that she was “very kind”, She said,” no, you have lovely colors” and it was a beautiful moment between two strangers.

Dream 4:

With my dream from 2 nights ago, I’m in a desert, I’m escaping and helping a woman to escape. I’m sitting first then on a toboggan going down and shes with me sliding down the sand dune slope. It’s exciting and not scary and then we are in a truck in a queue of traffic at a check point.The traffic is flowing but I find myself out of the truck and walking to a bizarre and there is a man selling dried fruit , a bounty of it, all laid out on the floor for selling on a white sheet. I gingerly run across the sheet trying not to stand on the fruit. I had to run to find a solicitor , who is already talking to the woman I helped escape.He yet she is saying “according to the contract, you did kill that person”

Dream 5:

I think I was in that time between asleep and awake - I dreamt I was in the pool and I was on the far side of the pool when a tall man carrying a long back case came. He was dressed, he had a long black case and I was very afraid it was a large gun in there.

Dream 6:

One week ago I dreamt I was at the gynecologist for my annual checkup- every year you must go to test. I was in the room with others waiting  and there was a new protocol , we had to prepare by injecting an antiseptic, from bottles of water. They gave us a short, white and thick bottle. I was stressed that the bottle wouldn’t fit into my vagina. I was stressed about  how I would be able to follow the process.

Dream 7:
Last night, I think it was pre-sleep. I find myself near a body of water facing it and there is a building  on the other side of the water. But I could and couldn’t recognize it. It did seem possible to get into the building.I could see myself swinging on a rope - I was coming down. But at the same time I was standing on the other side of the water looking at the building from the shore .I wanted to get somewhere. It felt unsafe and I felt rising panic.

Association 2

I have an association with the gloves and the building and I see a Bazaar with lots of goods: gloves and food and people. I’m looking at it from the street wondering if I’m going in.  

Dream 8:

I dreamn’t last night that  I’d gone back to work in Social Services and was ½ my age at the beginning of my career. I was trying to be organised and I had to make up my own case studies . I couldn’t decide where to start and what decisions to make on the case files. I couldn’t decide where this family started and where it ended. I was trying to get the genealogy right .I knew this family but I knew them all as children yet I knew the grandparents and the families disposition. I am trying to get it right but there is nowhere to put it 

Dream 9: 

Last week I was in a deep sleep in the dream I felt breathless. I was seeing the best events of life - from my childbirth onwards - I see myself as a child trying to catch dreams  - I see things that happened to me. I woke up and saw myself sweating. I had a glass of water .

Association 3: 

Of a fox, scavenging for food in a dust bin. It’s  just been disturbed and looks around.

Association 4:

I keep coming back to the students,how to get them into course and  the bottles into the vagina. The goddess and how I am seen and how I am connected yet celebrated . These thoughts are swirling around inside of me.

Association 5:

The association is of the students of the fresh new energy and the vagina is power of the woman and the goddess is appearing to say ‘own your strengths’

Association 6:

I had an association regarding going from one thing to another , of the difference and the people in a vulnerable place, it can be dangerous going from one to another or thinking  how one thing is to another. Reminds me of a child, being out in my garden and someone brings themselves into the garden by opening the gate. Then my dad appeared.  Crossing one space to another and being vulnerable. 

Association 7:

With that and the fox. I was on a train in a part of London that I am not familiar with and I got on the train and it was dark and I was the only person in the carriage. Then suddenly a young man in a hoodie stepped in from the connecting carriage door. I had a moment that I felt scared when he stepped in. In the moment he walked down and further into  the car. We locked eyes for a moment and I wondered where I had seen those eyes before. The same eyes as the fox I’d seen before. The big fox was outside my house - I saw him in the dark - he was more scared of me than I was. In my moment of my  own fear on the train  I didn’t recognize this in the man.  I sensed the man  came in and saw an older female and he felt safe . We got off at the same station, I said, ‘hi yet good day’ and he looked embarrassed - it’s a powerful image now.

Association 9:

From the story, some images from the stories, the first, the images of fruit, green, pink, yellow, striking red. Such color and image in my mind. Also a picture of danger, associated with the dream. Also, more gloomy colors, dark . This story  spoke out the dreams from somewhere yet Summer.

Association 10:

Watched something about emancipation of men with my son. A cartoon god character smashing a hammer yet woman  on the table with anger.

Association 11:

Suddenly I’m filled with fear I was associating all the colors, gloves and bright food and objects on the market and the color and beauty. Then the story and the struggle of getting into the building- I see in black and white. Holding this image between a goddess and a violent god. I’m struck. I’m feeling fear and vulnerability.

Matrix closed:

REVIEW:

The notes have been written up by the co-hosts who have decided, in keeping with the rich matrix content, to embrace the duality that surfaced in their individual text versions,-to hold the tension in the  differences using the connecting word “yet” and to share it openly with all who attended acknowledging there is not a right and wrong. As with the social dreaming we propose that there are no attempts  to interpret this, just to notice it and to allow it to belong to the matrix group  via padlet. We recognise that this is a step beyond the usual practice for social dreaming - a  “calling out” and celebration of our differences but also an “opening up” of ourselves and the notes about the social dreaming matrix in order to facilitate a further  discussion forum via padlet. 

We leave you now and thank you for participating in the final DCP Social Dreaming.