Im Just Going to Put This Here and Leave Text Art
Today blog for our project Book OF OURS, the medieval-way manuscript book, is written and illustrated with photos by the Booth Centre volunteer Sue Dean. She writes from the perspective of both a volunteer and participant.
Mondays with the arthur+martha group returned this week to the designs effectually the edging of the book, and to teach those who wanted to try Calligraphy. Several people wanted to continue with their partial complete designs around the edges for the book. Some expressed an interest in the beautiful designer writings of Calligraphy, while those who chose to proceed their book designs were adequately quiet in concentration, asking few questions and by and large carefully bringing their imagined design to life.
We had pictures of insects, bugs and beautiful winged creatures to base our ideas on. The almost silent deep concentration was palpable. Meanwhile for those who chose the Calligraphy soon found this was much harder to chief than imagined from the swooshing ease of pen strokes past the actual Calligrapher Stephen Raws. Ane or ii mastered the basic idea and produced some excellent beginning attempts. For others information technology was much more than hard and not every bit expected from watching the Calligrapher write initially. Overall a quiet calm class with many happy faces at the work completed.
The Volume OF CHANGES project is funded by the Heritage Emergency Fund, supporting homeless and vulnerable people to participate in making the arthur+martha illuminated manuscript BOOK OF OURS. This project is partnered by the Booth Centre and Back on Track.
For some people, lockdown is a approval and for others it's a struggle.
On the confront of it, we have peace and quiet and an always-stretching vacation. Simply underneath those things are nagging worries: fear of infection, fear of unemployment, fright of those around usa, fear stoked by the media…
"All these things whirring." (Participant)
And yet birds are singing, the air is purer than it has been in decades, the roar of traffic and the thunder of aeroplanes has quietened. The timid creatures that nosotros share our world with have started to assert themselves again. Carparks have become wildlife habitats, the woods and moors are a sunshine paradise.
Today my phone calls with participants in the Necklaces of Stars project reflected the strange doubleness of this time. People accept thrown themselves into making poems and songs. They have space and repose to concentrate and and so they dig deep, take journeys, into their deeper selves.
Detail, embroidered shooting stars, Joan Link, A Necklace of Stars 2020
Their poems appear in the Inbox each day. They're funny, sad, thoughtful, kind-hearted. Some of them have pasted a grinning on my confront, others touched me beyond words. It's good work. And they are rightly excited:
"I accept never had this feeling before, where I have let the verse form take me over. This time I've trusted it and jumped in. Let the form accept me and learned from it. I used to treat poems similar they were a contest to win, a test. I didn't e'er really permit go. Now I've got many, many ideas, and I want to do them all…" (Participant)
"I am so pleased, and so very pleased, to accept washed this, I was unsure at first but I've loved information technology. I had doubts near myself and my work, felt silly and slow. It's wonderfully reassuring to exist told it's skilful, to know it's reached someone else." (Participant)
Today besides brought tears and shakiness from some. The ailment underneath the tranquility is taking its cost. For those who are isolated solitary, solitude weighs heavily on the centre. What is life if it isn't shared? The missing are missed terribly.
And so we talk about…
Promise to see your face once again in the mirror
On reflection allow's hope the sadness is gone
From the dark shadows where promise is fading
Replaced past radiant rainbow beams of hope.
Tricia Clough
Embroidered shooting stars, Joan Link, A Necklace of Stars 2020
Today's blog was written by Philip Davenport, arthur+martha.
A Necklace of Stars, is supported past Arts Council England, Arts Derbyshire, DCC Public Health and Derbyshire County Quango Home Library Service.
"X was sleeping crude last nighttime, came in here soaking and shivering. You can't solve all of people's life issues but you can give them a chance for simply being. But sitting and being. That'southward what I saw him do today in the workshop, he was writing a verse form, just also sitting quietly with his thoughts. Looking around a piddling, listening. Beingness a person."
(Karen, Projection Worker at The Booth Middle)
These images are pages from a book made by people who have experienced homelessness, and/or had mental health problems. A Volume OF OURS holds inside it life events, celebrations and memorials, wishes, prayers and curses. Dreams.
The style of the book is based on medieval manuscripts known as Books of Hours. The beginning section is the calendar, other sections include the prayer cycle Hours of the Virgin and the memorial Part of the Dead.
Over the concluding six months the Book of Ours project has grown into a wide-ranging exploration of history, of self, of what information technology means to be heard — and what it means to be ignored. Information technology is a argument to say, "we are here."
"The workshops, making the illuminated manuscript, have been the favourite affair I've washed here at Dorsum on Runway. For me they've meant more annihilation else, they've put me in touch with my own history. These memories stirred up and made new."
(Anonymous)
We chose medieval manuscripts to give us a class, and to inspire the states considering they're among the get-go history books, and this is the outset of homeless history in a written form. Medieval manuscripts were the belongings of influential people, decorated with rich colours and aureatelettering. We want to give this history the same treatment, get in the kind of book you can't ignore. It'south a side by side step on from our history of British homelessness The Homeless Library in 2016 and links to projects such as The Museum of Homelessness.
The calendar pages are intricate tellings of the significant life events of nearly 100 people, intertwined with imagery and symbolism. It is a catalogue of tiny events, at first glance. Every 24-hour interval is a line of half-dozen words; read together they make a year-long poem that is a multi-voiced telling of the lives of groups. It is plum-full of the trivial things that make life rich with human encounters. Birthdays, weddings, the nascency of children, falling in love. It also tells the story of sadder life events: bereavement, illness, addiction, violence. And yep, people commemorate the times they became homeless. They also talk with nifty power about the help they've received, especially from our host venues the Booth Center and Back on Runway.
All of the workshops showtime with a table loaded with prints of illuminated manuscripts from dissimilar world cultures. Nosotros also bring in information and workshop exercises that are full of references to mediaeval illuminated manuscripts. Whether it is writing or creating art, all of the making is in dialogue with this rich heritage, which reaches back hundreds of years. It besides connects to more contemporary culture, with the influence of graffiti shining strongly on the work and the echo of poets like Charles Reznikoff.
A pregnant partner in the projection is the John Rylands Library in Manchester, which hosted a highly successful research trip, designed for participants to meet original manuscripts that are hundreds of years old. The group were not only intellectually engaged, but also moved, in some cases to tears.
"I piece of work from my centre and soul. That'south why I get and so tired, I put everything in. Anybody has their own reasons for joining in and for leaving… with lots of different things happening at one time – poems, drawing, writing, calligraphy, a broad variety. Similar us."
(Johnathan)
This passion shows itself again and again — for making, for sharing, for diving deep into the art and the poems. Each page contains delight in colour, in wordplay, in storytelling and in turning the vast (and sometimes traumatic) life feel of everyone sitting around the table into a certificate that is equally varied equally the makers.
"I've got my wild days. Merely hither I'm chilled out and I let the tranquillity in."
(Roy)
Rich in colour and particular, full of compassion, but besides shot through with despair, with acrimony, sometimes incoherent, sometimes speaking in tongues of fire. It's an extraordinary experience to witness this book come up together. Moments of gentleness and reflection sometimes erupt into fury, or weeping, or laughter. And the pages carry and so many tales, bare so many souls, information technology's a book that needs repeated readings, to fully take it in. And to get an clue of the many layers of significance. Nosotros'll end with this ascertainment from Karen our regular project worker at The Booth Middle:
"One of the men sabbatum next to me, he's got a lot of things going on, sleeping on the streets at the moment. He'southward had an astonishing day. You could run into how relaxed he was, how focussed… What you lot're getting in this session is people who never join anything, ever. It is bright to see them getting involved, and it has a knock-on effect on how they engage with other services here and start rebuilding their lives, letting in the positive."
(Karen, Project Worker, The Booth Centre)
A BOOK OF OURS is supported by the HLF. Our hope is that this project helps to evidence the individuality of people who are sometimes dismissed every bit "homeless" when they are so much more.
Source: https://arthur-martha.com/tag/text-art/
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