This is part two of a two-part reflection on the Fool and Somatic IFS week that took place in Bristol on 16-20 February this year. 

The following piece was written by participant, Helyn Wilder, after spending time by the pond in the Easter Gardens, up the road from our training space. Photos are by fellow participant, Lucie Wild.

From 16-20 February this year, I ran a 5-day training / lab for 8 Fools, exploring where Fooling meets Somatic Internal Family Systems. 

This Blog

This blog offers a glimpse of what we got up to in our 5-day group journey. There’s a section offering some context, an outline of some of the activities we did and photos of the participants at play. There are excerpts from one of the participants' creative journal, some poetry that I penned in the room and a letter I wrote to my future self. The blog ends with some more descriptions of the course by the participants.

I recently got some of my words published in an actual real life book!!! Author Emma E. Redfern was writing a user-friendly guide to Internal Family Systems (IFS) when she stumbled upon one of my blogs, where I was dialoguing withy my parts on the page. Tickled by the unfolding internal conversation, Emma asked if she could lift a section of my blog to include in her book and I gratefully agreed. 

After that, I had a request from a reader to make a “how to…” guide to help them have a chat with their inner voices on the page. So we go!

This blog gives a little background about my daily writing practice, before offering you a handy 6-step guide to help you dialogue with your parts on the page. I hope it’s helpful to you!

I will be appearing at Counterplay International Festival of Play, in Denmark in May! Come along! It sounds like it's going to be A LOT of fun.

CounterPlay ’26: And so we play…

Dates: 7-9 May, 2026 

Place: Kolding School of Design, Ågade 10, 6000 Kolding, Denmark

This is a guest blog written by Lucy Heard. Lucy invited me to facilitate a three day artists' residency for her and her collaborator, Bee Golding, at 101 Outdoor Arts centre near Newbury in February 2026. 

This blog describes some of what we got up to in our residency, in the context of Lucy's year-long Arts Council funded research project - How To Live In A Queer Dying Body. The photos were all taken by Bee and me during the residency. 

Over to you Lucy!

I will be presenting a session at The Dramatherapy Southwest conference in Exeter on Sunday 22nd March. 

Hot off the press! I am delighted to announce that some of my words made it into a new, fresh, accessible and relatable introduction to Internal Family Systems (IFS), written by Emma E Redfern and published by Sheldon Press.

On January 10th 2026, I gave a semi-improvised performance-lecture at the British Association of Dramatherapists’ annual conference in Glasgow. It was my first time performing in public for a very long time. I got a standing ovation. Fancy that! 

This blog charts the process leading up to the performance, offers a glimpse of the performance itself and explores the aftermath and key learnings from this project.

The photos get increasingly random as the blog goes on. Enjoy!

A couple of weeks ago, I had a chat with Collaborative Vocal Improvisation (CVI) legend, Briony Greenhill, exploring what might happen on our upcoming 5-day 'Performance and Parts' workshop. Here's the video and a loose paraphrased outline of what we discussed.

2025 was a year of facing down my demons and finally settling down in Bristol, opening to support and learning to receive more of it, diving deeper into Internal Family Systems (IFS), recommitting to Fooling, continuing to explore where Fooling meets IFS, Fooling in Nature, Fooling and The Body, Fooling and The Voice, running longer, deeper courses and residential retreats, developing my creative facilitation training, beginning to offer training for therapists, councillors and coaches, continuing to offer one-to-one support online and in person, exploring collaboration, co-creation, being an equal member of a group, peer support, becoming visible again in the media, stepping back onto the stage and remembering that I am a performer, musician, singer, Fool and public speaker!

Here follows a breakdown of my 2025 projects with some thoughts around how they might develop in 2026.