In the first week of January 2022, Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking in Stroud opened its loving arms to me and two collaborators, Dominique and Chez. We spent four days in and around a grand old Victorian stone built house, diving into my continuing exploration of body-based and nature-inspired approaches to writing, which formed the backbone of my Arts Council funded ‘Developing Your Creative Practice’ project in 2021. 

For our Hawkwood retreat, we added our shared practice of “Fooling” into the mix....The following blog offers a peek into our process.

In January 2021, I received a 'Developing Your Creative Practice' (DYCP) grant from Arts Council England, to pay for support, inspiration and time to focus on my writing practice. Having come to the end of this project, here's some reflections about what I've learned.

Hello dear reader, well, have I got some stories for you?! I'm fresh from a soothing and enlivening wild women woodland retreat on the lush green hilly Sharpham Estate in Devon. I've been meandering, river swimming, meditating, moving, singing, chatting, laughing, crying, eating and howling with a pack of incredible women with astonishing stories, under the gentle and powerful guidance of Nina Jankelson and Shoshana Moskowitz.

This blog tells the tale of my solo day and what it taught me about surrender. 

After three days of developing a toolkit of mindfulness techniques, sensory exploration, nature reflection and ritual, each of us were given a packed lunch (yay!) and invited to cross a flowery threshold onto the vibrant, undulating beckoning land, solo, guided by our chosen intention.

Trigger warning: miscarriage, grief, swearing

Clear blue sky, warm sun, cool breeze and a cacophony of birdsong. I'm sitting on the balcony of my tiny Holly-sized converted garage apartment on the south coast of Cornwall in the midday sun (I might regret this decision later when I'm lobster red). I rode three trains, a bus and a ferry to get here, to walk and breathe and BE for a week. As I gaze out at the frenzy of blossom, the cornucopia of plump rhododendrons and the swarms of frantic dancing bees, I think, “Oh Fuck Off!”

For the last four weeks, I've been running The Mindful Play Sessions on Zoom, for a carefully selected group of wonder-beings as part of my process of writing a Handbook of Mindful Play for group leaders. This blog offers some of my reflections on the past 4 weeks and a collection of poems capturing the essence of Mindful Play written by the group during the sessions.

My first intensive writing week was supposed to be a retreat in Arvon, a beautiful rural writers haven in Yorkshire, where writers of all disciplines are supported to steep themselves in their practice. There'd be uninterrupted time and space, delicious food to eat, other writers to talk with and Mother Nature to soothe and inspire. The plan was to use this time to explore ways of letting nature and body-based play infuse my writing.

Coronavirus had other plans.

Ever since I received the email telling me I'd been successful for an Arts Council Developing Your Creative Practice Award to work on my Mindful Play Handbook, my Inner Critic has had me in a strangle hold: "Who the hell do you think you are, calling yourself a "writer"? How could YOU be a writer? You have no brain and nobody wants to hear what you've got to say anyway."