Arriving : Session 1

If you are a mum, could you imagine being hands children free for a couple of hours?  Could you find your way through demands of home and children, to just be in a relaxing supported space, to perhaps make creative stuff if your energy levels allow.... to be with other mums, eat biscuits and sip endless cups of tea! The current sessions explore individual and collective storytelling using journal pages and storyboxes.  We explore ideas, allowing time to arrive and just be.  I chat and we consider ways to interesting material, mags, papers, stamps, inky messy, gluey stuff, small curiosities and odd stuff.   It is always hard to arrive initially, but everyone feels very welcome.  I explain you don't have to have to be arty, being a mum is the most creative thing ever! 

A gift of a concertina journal and the white space is slowly and quietly taken away.

At each of the two hour sessions, the tables are set out in the large warm meeting room, covered with beautiful fabrics and papers and arranged with collections of pens, pencils, pots and boxes of seemingly creative gear, together with fabulous lengths of wallpaper and materials rich with birds, flowers and colour...There are some concertina journals which a friend kindly helped make, together with some storyboard cards.  Everyone starts worrying about having to be creative, and then they surprise themselves with making stuff.

"It all looks a bit creative, I am worried I won't be able to concentrate" she said quietly.

 What is the colour of pressure?

A small cut out tree and a scribbling ...
 of how we felt, a number out of ten, 

and what we needed too.  

Everyone started to make their own journal or storyboard pages, a process which opened out a discussion..the organiser talked about her BURNT CHEEKS, the artist a BROKEN FINGER NAIL, the health visitor (proper) the reason why she was wearing flip flops, a BRUISED HEEL, the health visitor (trainee) BURNT ROOF OF MOUTH...a mum with a hair straightener situation BURNT FINGER.  Our tree is listed with just some of these concerns, and I realise when taking a photograph of my page that I have noted my energy levels 2/10, OMG what if someone finds out!