9 minute read
Meet-up #6
Activity: Armchair Time Travel
“Run away, even if it’s only for a little bit.”
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Nour’s meet-up had us bring to life a moment in our past, by extracting elements from a memory and representing them using different techniques before working them into a composition.
You will need:
• A memory or photograph • Pens or pencils • Paper • Collage materials • Scissors • A random material from your kitchen • A cardboard box (optional)
My memory: Step 1: Find a memory you want to relive
You might have a photograph of it, or it might just be in your mind. Close your eyes and pretend that you are in that moment, in the present tense.
Step 2: Explore the memory
Follow the prompts below to explore this memory, taking notes in the box below:
Where are you? What are you doing? What can you see in the distance? What’s right in front of you? What does the ground feel like? What’s the weather like? Who else is there? How does your body feel? Anything else to note?
Step 3: Pick features of your memory you’d like to represent
Read back over your notes and pick eight elements from your memory.
Step 4: Finding Form
Now match these eight elements to a different method of representation below. Write each one in the green space. Then take a few minutes per method to give each element from your memory form.
Step 5: Composition
Find a way to combine your elements into a 2D or 3D composition in a way that honours your memory.
Katie
Instagram: @slee_katie Website: katieslee.co.uk
26 The question I came with:
How can making bridge our inner and outer worlds?
The question I leave with:
How can I be a good Host?
How would you sum up your Makers Marathon in 3 words?
A beautiful constellation.
How would you define making?
This was a big question for me when recruiting for the Makers’ Marathon. In October 2020, my definition was quite reductive - MM participants would make things with their hands. As expressions of interest came in, my mind opened up and, as well as those hoping to explore making objects and images, our peer group formed with musicians, writers and a gardener. As we reach the end of our journey, my definition is as inclusive as possible: to make is to bring something into existence. It doesn’t matter how.
What have you learned from this process?
I find it easier to make with purpose than to make for making’s sake. Intergenerational spaces are healing. It’s hard to host and hold a Learning Question. My hosting style is maternal and attentive. My instinct to scoop people up and soothe doesn’t always help them to grow. Discomfort is part of growth. I can be reliable, I can hold relationships for a sustained period of time. A plastic wallet is a printing plate.
Peer group counters
Tell us about something you’ve made.
The question I’ve held during this process is ‘how can I be a good Host?’ I have found myself running through the peer group in my mind or in notes, checking through our initials in alphabetical order, trying to work out who might need support, who might need space. ABCIIJKMMNST. To make this more visual, I made little ‘counters’ to represent each of us and our questions from clay. I keep them on my desk, they help me feel connected to the group, and that makes me feel calm.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to connect with their inner maker?
You can’t pour from an empty cup - if you don’t feel creative or connected, do you need a rest? If you have an idea for something you’d like to create, ask: how does this particular thing want to be made? For example, if there’s a quote you love that you’d like to do something with - does it want to be bold and typographic as a framed poster? Embroidered quietly on a pillowcase? Printed on a t-shirt? Sometimes the ‘what’ can direct us to the ‘how’.
Activity: Framing as a practice
Katie’s meet-up brought framing to the fore as... • a way of seeing: à la Henry David Thoreau, “it’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” • a way of being intentional: what you decide to bring in, what you decide to leave out. • a mark of pride - putting something into a frame, designating it as special, putting it on the wall, protecting it and making it last.
This activity has you create a viewfinder, and take a set of mental photographs, or ‘fauxtos’.
You will need
• Thick cardboard • Scissors or a craft knife and cutting mat • A rubber band • Pen • Notebook
Step 1: Make your viewfinder
Cut your cardboard into a rectangle. In the middle, cut a small square around 3cm wide. Loop your rubber band through the hole and tie it at the edge of the card. On the front of your viewfinder, write the numbers 1-5 down the side.
Step 2: Take some fauxtos
Step out into your room, garden or street. Look around you through your viewfinder. Think of it as a meditation. What do you want to frame? Snap your rubber band, as you would the shutter on a camera, to take a fauxto. Note the subject of your picture on the front of the viewfinder. You only have 5 fauxtos in total to take.
Step 3: Journaling
Once you’ve used up your fauxtos, pick 3 from your list and spend 1 minute per image to record what was in your frame. Try to be as specific as possible.
Step 4: Composite Poem
Go back with a different coloured pen and pick words or lines from your reflections that stand out. Work these snippets together to create a poem.
Isla’s gift
Leaves rattle through the portal Nature finding its way into my home Layers, cobwebs, beauty in dust and decay Complexity Luminosity Frame lives within a frame Golden beauty shining through Smells of the sea light, upwards, light the promise of Margate
- Corinne, Sophie and Isla
Untitled
Dead leaves the same colour as the willow behind. Grounded. Grounded by its scent. Clouds. Wind. Hard swift movement. I want to touch it. Freedom, blissful hobbies.
“It’s like when we moved in”
- Melise, Nour and Katie
Moments
It is terrible to die of thirst on the ocean Throng the speakeasies Fondness A chandelier in dog’s basket. Memory A chewed up fox A mother, schooled in misery Gratitude The oddness of it
- Meera, Ieva and Bailey
Corinne and Jasper repping the Makers’ Marathon at an Enrol Camp speed-drawing workshop
Sophie
Website: sophiehowarth.com
The question I came and leave with:
What might emerge from a regular studio practice?
Motivating, aligning, fulfilling.
How would you define making?
Making has been a really embracing word for me to work with. I loved the holistic approach to making we took as a group - some people making music, others making space or words or objects. My marathon was mostly about making a regular creative practice, which involved making space, then time and with these underpinnings in place, finding myself better able to make actual creative expressions. I stopped berating myself about all the things I don’t make, and started celebrating all the things I do - making food, making family, making love, making a life that feels true and alive.
Tell us about something you’ve made.
I’ve made myself a beautiful studio space at home and a portable suitcase-studio I can travel with. I’ve made a structure for my days that keeps me aligned with my values and creative priorities. I’ve made lots of experimental collages and sculptures. I’ve made myself and those closest to me happier than at any other time I can remember.
What have you learned from this process?
I’ve learned how enabling routine can be, and how creative freedom can be helped by regularity and constraint. I’ve said no to lots of things in order to say yes to the priorities the Maker’s Marathon helped me identify. I’ve found that simplifying my daily routines has reduced my anxiety and existential doubts, and helped me show up to attend the things that matter most to me, day after day. I’m fond of the Annie Dillard quote “our days are our lives”, which helps me focus on having ordinary days that are creative and calm and trusting that’s how I find and stay on a path that’s mine.
I read a lot of advice from other makers as part of this marathon. I felt myself supported by an invisible network of creative mentors found in books, podcasts and social media streams as well as by our peer community. I loved learning how other makers organised their days to do their best work. But what helped me most was learning to trust myself more, to know that doing what I love is an expression of gratitude in being alive and trust that being joyful is a worthy contribution to the world. So that’s also what I’d hope for anyone else making friends with an overlooked or undernourished maker hiding inside them.
Activity: Tree Medicine
Sophie’s Tree Medicine meet-up showed us that whatever the question, trees have the answer.
Try taking a question to a tree:
Spend five minutes in the company of a tree.
Any tree will do, no need to hunt the oldest or biggest or most beautiful; each has something to say.
Rest your hands on the bark and tell the tree your Learning Question.
Ask the tree what answers it has for you. Listen and receive.
Notice when you are stepping in to speak for the tree and let your thinking mind take a back seat. Let the tree whisper it’s secrets to you.
Scribe what you receive.
It needn’t take longer than five minutes, though if the tree magnetises you for longer and seems to have more wisdom to reveal, please surrender. And if it offers you material gifts, graciously accept them.
