Spirit of the wind

Necklace of Stars, poetry
My ribs whistle
In that winter wind
And my bones groan 
Like the oak 
That stands firm by my feet

Aching in its limbs
As the storm passes by
The old tree creaks
As its neighbours rub side to side.

My lips cracking
Like bark around the trees
Oh this weather
Is not kind to you and me.

The strong, cold breeze
Searches our souls
Embracing us in endings
As we all grow old

The telephone wires
Hum their ghostly tune
A lullaby for this night
That will be over soon

My eyes are watering
Tears roll down my cheeks
I yearn 
For a good night’s sleep.

But there is hope
A light close by
My wife coming to me
Wants to be by my side.

How my heart and soul are lifted
As she kisses my brow:
“Come my dear
So we may shelter
From this windy, wintry howl.”

Neil

A Necklace of Stars is a meditation on childhood, viewed from the other end of life. Older people have made poems, songs and embroidery themed around childhood lullabies for the “Necklace”; we’ve also invited written responses to the pandemic, so that people can share their experiences as an antidote to lockdown loneliness. Here Neil writes a kind of anti-lullaby, with the wind singing to him and the ghosts of memory for company. A Necklace of Stars, working with older people in Derbyshire, is supported by Arts Council England, Arts DerbyshireDCC Public Health and Derbyshire County Council Home Library Service. This project is particularly aimed at countering isolation; during the pandemic we’ve been working using distance methods – post and phone conversations.

A winter prescription: two poems by Jaye

Necklace of Stars, poetry
Dreaming the Dream

I felt the sun beating down
As I lay on the Bondi Beach
Felt the breeze caressing me 
As I basked in the sultry heat.

I adjusted my bikini and
Pinned up my golden hair
I heard the chink of glasses
A Campari perhaps for me?

Then my carer gently said,
"Here's a cup of tea."
And I awoke to a wintery day
In the reality of the UK.


A Medical Consultation

"A gammy leg, a gooey eye
Your hair is falling out?
So what's the best that can be done
For someone just like you?
I know, I'll send you to the hardware shop
To buy some Superglue."


Jaye

These two poems by Jaye are designed to put a smile on the face, during a hard winter.

A Necklace of Stars, working with older people in Derbyshire, is supported by Arts Council England, Arts DerbyshireDCC Public Health and Derbyshire County Council Home Library Service. This project is particularly aimed at countering isolation; during the pandemic we’ve been working using distance methods – post and phone conversations.

Icy pellets

Necklace of Stars, poetry

From one of the Necklace of Stars poets, for Storm Christoph:

It drizzles
It mizzles
It pours and it streams
It comes down in buckets
It fills up the streams
It gurgles in gutters
It eddies and swirls
It blocks out the landscape
From clouds it unfurls

It aims icy pellets
Down on our heads
It pounds on the roofs
Of little tin sheds

It comes down too heavy
Or comes down too little
It comes down in torrents
Or dribbles like spittle

I look out the window.
It's at it again 
When will it stop
This bloody wet rain?

Annie

A Necklace of Stars, working with older people in Derbyshire, is supported by Arts Council England, Arts DerbyshireDCC Public Health and Derbyshire County Council Home Library Service. This project is particularly aimed at countering isolation; during the pandemic we’ve been working using distance methods – post and phone conversations.

Breaking News…

Necklace of Stars, Projects

DERBYSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL SHORTLISTED FOR HEARTS FOR THE ARTS AWARDS 2021

The shortlist has been announced for the National Campaign for the Arts’ (NCA) Hearts For The Arts Awards 2021. The awards celebrate the unsung heroes of Local Authorities who are championing the arts against all odds. 

Derbyshire County Council has been nominated for Best Arts Project for Necklace of Stars – an embroidery and creative writing project set up to tackle the lack of person-to-person creative engagement opportunities for housebound individuals, with arts organisation arthur+martha.

This year’s winners will be selected from the shortlist by a judging panel of key arts industry experts and practitioners, including:

Le Gateau Chocolat, Drag artiste and cabaret performer

Paul Hartnoll, musician, composer, founder member of Orbital

Adrian Lester CBE, actor and director

Petra Roberts, Cultural Development Manager, Hackney Council (2020 winners for the Windrush Generations Festival)

Samuel West, actor, director, Chair of the National Campaign for the Arts

Despite the incredible hardships faced by Local Authorities in 2020, this year’s awards have seen the NCA receive a record-breaking number of nominations, as local communities turned to the arts for solace, strength and connectivity during the pandemic. 

Nominations were received from across the UK for each of the three award categories: Best Arts Project; Best Arts Champion – Local Authority or Cultural Trust Worker; and Best Arts Champion – Councillor.

The shortlist was judged by representatives from some of this year’s partners in the awards: Culture Counts; Wales Council for Voluntary Action; Local Government Association; National Campaign for the Arts; and Voluntary Arts Wales.

Discussing Derbyshire’s nomination Hearts for the Arts Award partners said about Necklace of Stars:

“This is an inspirational project that has supported an extremely vulnerable group of individuals, made more vulnerable by COVID-19. It has clearly given participants purpose and focus, helping to reduce loneliness and mental ill health. The way the project adapted to provide one-to-one support to individuals remotely during lockdown is impressive and we were struck by the strong partnerships across a range of partners that allowed the project to expand its impact by signposting participants to other services”. 

The winners of the Hearts for the Arts Awards 2021 will be announced on Valentine’s Day, 14th February. 

The National Campaign for the Arts present the Hearts for the Arts Awards each year. The awards are delivered by the NCA, in partnership with Culture Counts; the Local Government AssociationThriveUK TheatreVoluntary Arts WalesWales Council for Voluntary Action.

For more information on the shortlisted nominees visit forthearts.org.uk/campaigns/hearts-for-the-arts/

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Notes to editors:

  • Hearts For The Arts is a National Campaign for the Arts initiativedelivered in partnership with Culture Counts; the Local Government Association; Theatre NI, Thrive NI; We Are Voluntary Arts Wales, Wales Council for Voluntary Action.
  • The National Campaign for the Arts (NCA) is a charity and independent campaigning organisation, run by a board of volunteer trustees. They campaign for more investment in the arts, to improve the lives of everyone; and they champion those who make that happen. forthearts.org.uk

A Poetry Bubble, Pt 2

Necklace of Stars, poetry

Necklace of Stars participant Gill Ormond writes (below) about the experience of making visual poems, themed on the night sky. Gill has combined her art skills with poems that are part-image. In part 1 of her blog account, last week, she described writing her own poem and translating it into images. Here, she has remade two poems by the Scottish poet/artist Ian Hamilton Finlay in her own style, using loose hand-drawn letters and celebrating the fuzzy precision of pencils. Gill has moved Finlay’s crisp, clear graphics into a mystery space of haze and cobwebby lettering…

Gill Ormond homage to Sea Poppy by Ian Hamilton Finlay

Gill’s Project timeline

Week1 – Challenge – Go look at the stars and write, without looking at the paper, what they evoke in me.
Result – panic. That week no stars showed. Think creatively. Use their non-show to get my thoughts on paper. A poem emerged!
Week 2 –  Challenge – Fold and cut the written words in two. Move the lines up and down and see what emerges. 
Result –  as if by magic , a poem which distilled down with clarity to the heart of the experience.
Week3 – Move away from the typed words and draw them.
Result – illustrated poem with shooting stars and galaxies. With thanks to my Sister who coincidentally sent me her handmade star that I used as the basis for one of my illustrations.
Week 4 – Task Part 1 “Is it possible to imply starry sky without illustrating by stars?” / Task Part 2 – “Put your own take on visual poems by Ian Hamilton Finlay.” 
Result – here are my offerings…

Gill Ormond homage to Star/Steer by Ian Hamilton Finlay

A Necklace of Stars, working with older people in Derbyshire, is supported by Arts Council England, Arts DerbyshireDCC Public Health and Derbyshire County Council Home Library Service. This project is particularly aimed at countering isolation; during the pandemic we’ve been working using distance methods – post and phone conversations.

A Poetry Bubble, Pt 1

Necklace of Stars, poetry

Necklace of Stars participant Gill Ormond writes about the experience of making her visual poem Starsperience:

The air is light
 Bright on my skin
 The starsperience won't show
 The air is frisky
 My life shines
 Yet I stay huddled and small.

“This “Poetry Bubble” (appropriate for the times) of 1:1 phone tuition has allowed me to overcome fears that I would not meet the standard of other people’s work, of failure, of embarassing myself, of always striving to achieve rather than succeeding. I have been able to try my hand in a private way which I hadn’t realised the importance of until writing this piece. I am glad I hadn’t read anyone’s work on the blog til now. I may have run away! It is so moving and beautiful and I can begin to feel my way into its membership.

“I have amazed myself that I have been able to create these offerings. They have been developed following Phil’s suggestions. Another take I have on this statement is that I have been able to develop them using the creative framework Phil has offered. The latter feels empowering and I feel proud I have done so. The words are mine, the eventual designs are mine. However I would never have thought of presenting them in this creative way without skilled tuition…”

A Necklace of Stars, working with older people in Derbyshire, is supported by Arts Council England, Arts DerbyshireDCC Public Health and Derbyshire County Council Home Library Service. This project is particularly aimed at countering isolation; during the pandemic we’ve been working using distance methods – post and phone conversations.

If you go out in the woods tonight

Necklace of Stars

A tale of frustrated villainy by Richard Owen

The wood had awoken to its usual night activity. There were scurryings up and down trees, calls of owls, snuffling and rummaging in the undergrowth; but even on this night, when the full moon cast its light and shade into the less impenetrable corners, the living sources of these sounds remained unseen. Only the trees seemed to be visibly alive, their knotted eyes following every movement, guarding the secrets of the night, warning off the unwary.

Big Bad Wolf sniffed his way along the floor of the wood


Watched by cautious onlookers up in the branches, Big Bad Wolf sniffed his way along the floor of the wood. He had a lot on his mind, so he was oblivious of the rustling of rabbits darting across the clearings and badgers digging in the roots. He followed the same path every night, pausing for thought at the same places. Things were not the same any more, not since the predatory animals had suffered a series of humiliations. He would habitually stop at the clearing where the third little pig had built his house of brick, the place where his grandfather had gained entry down the chimney and been boiled in a pot. He moved on to the cottage where his great uncle had almost got the better of Little Red Riding Hood, only to be foiled at the last moment.


He would often muse on the fact that it wasn’t only the wolf pack that had suffered from the schemes of lesser beings. He would come to another clearing and the mouth of the cave where Goldilocks, porridge thief and squatter, had taken advantage of the hospitality of the absent Bear family, but at least they had managed to catch her in Baby Bear’s bed. How she managed to escape was a mystery to all the woodland.

The Troll slept fitfully, his snores mingling with the resounding croaking of hidden frogs


On this particular night the Wolf made his usual stop at the rickety bridge under which the Troll slept fitfully, his snores mingling with the resounding croaking of hidden frogs in the little stream. He still had nightmares about the amount of time he had had to consider the wisdom of challenging Big Billy Goat Gruff as he described an elegant arc over his rickety bridge.


So while the woodland creatures went about their routines in disembodied anonymity, Big Bad Wolf sat on the rickety bridge, musing on the smug mockery of the Billy Goats Gruff, the Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Bears, not to mention various huntsmen and woodcutters; and he listened to the pathetic somnolent ramblings of the Troll, a plan began to form in his mind. Why should these fairytale upstarts always win?


As he sat looking at the rickety bridge in the moonlight he noticed it was on the point of collapse, concealing a future nasty accident. And he thought how the woods held many dangers for the unwary and unprepared. There were paths overhung by branches from which things could fall; the same paths were criss-crossed by roots and fallen vegetation; there were hidden holes dug out by foraging paws and noses, many of them hidden by fallen leaves.


Big Bad Wolf considered the hazards of the wood and how it might be possible to harness them to reassert the rightful hierarchy of woodland life. It was time to restore the natural order of things. He picked his way down the stony bank of the stream and crawled under the rickety bridge. He prodded the Troll who awoke noisily and bad temperedly.


“I thought we might pay a visit to Daddy Bear,” suggested Big Bad Wolf by way of apology.
“I’ve got one or two ideas I’d like to run past you both.”

A Necklace of Stars, working with older people in Derbyshire, is supported by Arts Council England, Arts DerbyshireDCC Public Health and Derbyshire County Council Home Library Service. This project is particularly aimed at countering isolation; during the pandemic we’ve been working using distance methods – post and phone conversations. Lorna’s poem started with one of these telephone discussions.

Press Release

Necklace of Stars, poetry, Projects, quilts

Arts Derbyshire – A Necklace of Stars

Following on from the success of the first phase of A Necklace of Stars, we are looking for older adults who are housebound (aged 65+) from across Derbyshire to join us in a creative writing and embroidery project.

Andrea Lewis, Shooting Star

Arts Derbyshire is running a remote embroidery and creative writing project where participants receive weekly* one to one phone calls with artists ‘arthur + martha’. The artists will guide people through the process of creating beautiful embroidered stars or creative writing themed around lullabies, for free.

The embroidered stars will be brought together to create a quilt which will be exhibited alongside the creative writing and lullaby soundtrack around Derbyshire’s cultural venues in 2022. 

A Necklace of Stars hopes to increase confidence and wellbeing, reduce loneliness, forge connections and re-ignite creativity.

If you are interested in taking part in this project (whether you have no experience or plenty), or know of someone who might enjoy getting involved, please contact Sally Roberts on 07395 904386 or email sallyartsderbyshire@gmail.com 

A Necklace of Stars is an Arts Council England supported collaboration between Arts Derbyshire, DCC Public Health, Derbyshire Library Services and arts organisation arthur+martha. 

* Weekly phone calls for approximately 4 weeks or until you are happy with the work you have created.

Michael’s Star

Sharing a sunset

Necklace of Stars, poetry, quilts

Necklace of Stars writer Tricia Clough:

These thoughts came into my head after my husband David took a beautiful sunset photo. I’d also had a day, a few weeks ago, of sorting through vast photo collections of people and places.  With a couple of clicks I was able to share them with FB friends some of whom shared their lives with us when they were foster children. Now that gave them – and me – such pleasure. 

Sipping through time (with Tequila Sunset delight)

Browsing a cocktail of memories from morning to night
Each sip held a memory - some bitter, most sweet
A pinch of love here and a punch of happiness there
And bubbles of laughter to tickle your nose
From the hops of the youngest 
To champagne as they’re grown
But the taste buds are changing as day alters to night
So I’ll end with hot chocolate as I bid you ‘Good night’

Tricia Clough
Sweet Lullaby

Come share my sweetest fantasy
The night is drawing in 
So share this special memory
Of love without within
No strawberry hugs tonight my love
It’s all a mystery
But we’ll defy the gravity
And float away in harmony
Away from all the poverty 
Now hush lush chocolate night
Now hush lush chocolate night
 
 Tricia Clough

A Necklace of Stars, working with older people in Derbyshire, is supported by Arts Council England, Arts DerbyshireDCC Public Health and Derbyshire County Council Home Library Service. This project is particularly aimed at countering isolation; during the pandemic we’ve been working using distance methods – phone conversations and post.

Writing in the Year of the Plague

Necklace of Stars, poetry

Tony Shelton, the author of our previous blog A-Z of Childhood, describes how to write yourself out of lockdown.

An inveterate and incurable itch for writing besets many and grows old with their sick hearts.
Juvenal, Satires.

Writing…is but a different name for conversation. 
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

Writing, I explained, was mainly an attempt to out argue one’s past; to present events in such a light
that lost in life as either won on paper or held to a draw. 
Jules Feiffer, Ackroyd.

All these quotes (from books I have never read, I’m afraid) have some truth in them for me.


Ever since the age of six or so, when I was praised by Miss Puttock for writing a piece about my electric train set and managed to spell ‘electricity’, I have written, mainly because I had to. For most of my life writing involved essays, exam answers, official reports and memos but I even enjoyed those (well, not the exams perhaps). It was the craft that appealed to me: of finding the rights words, putting them in the right order and editing them. Creative writing began at a time when work seemed to dominate my life and I developed an itch to write the ‘novel of the century’. I started with a WEA evening class in Leeds and in the latter stages of work began to jot down ideas during dull meetings. I wrote humorous articles for professional magazines. I managed to have two stories and a few short pieces read on the radio but it wasn’t until early retirement that writing really took off. I wrote my work memoirs, to get it all out of my head. I researched a local history book which sold out and discovered the huge kick of finding people enjoyed what I had written, fan letters and requests for signings, even!


Then, when my wife and I retired to Cumbria, we both joined a U3A creative writing group and, after a year or two, I found that I liked writing poetry, really playing with words and tweaking them to fit. She did, too, and for a few years we wrote separately but together, commenting on each other’s work and enjoying it. You could say she was my audience, my muse (and I hers). Now she has gone and for three years I have been trying to regain my
desire to write, to find a new motivation.


And then came the virus and the lockdown and my shielded isolation and an almost total absence of face-to-face conversation. I no longer have any of my old interest in drawing and painting, I am no good with my hands and my knees put me off long walks but my need to write is now acute and it is a need, almost an addiction. Bread and butter writing – emails, texts and so on – has been a kind of substitute and writing a diary of my life for a future
archive makes me write something every day but these do not require the craft of poetry or fiction or the intensity of concentration which keeps out sad memories and self-recrimination. It does not give me that kick – of making a reader or listener amused or moved. I have never written for myself: like a stand-up comic I need an audience, one person will do. And I sometimes need another kind of kick – the motivation to write, the suggestion, the deadline, the prospect of a reaction, no matter how critical, because I still want to learn, to improve.


The Necklace of Stars project has now provided all that for me and, once again, ideas are coming into my mind demanding to be jotted down on scraps of paper and in notebooks. Guided by a tutor, I am learning again and finding new ways of writing. The project has nudged me into writing down memories of the dull but strange world of my suburban London childhood and the increasingly odd members of my family. Many new or long-forgotten memories have emerged as if called to action.

I used to imagine my grandchildren coming up to me in the garden and asking: ‘Grandad, what was school like when you were a little boy?’ or ‘Tell me again about the time when you…’ They never have done. Maybe children don’t actually do that at all, maybe it’s an advertising fantasy dreamed up to sell Werther’s Originals. So, this memory project is a kind of substitute. More important, recording childhood memories has pushed to one side the darker memories of the last few years, of my wife’s decline and death. I did write about those years and my experience of caring for her, trying to set it all to rest, to prevent all the ‘what ifs’ going round and round to no purpose.


I am now convinced that writing can be therapeutic. But it should also be enjoyable and good for one’s mental wellbeing. If possible, it should provide a positive sense of identity, helping you to think ‘I am a writer’, even if you now know you will never write the novel of the century. Writing for the project is now helping with all those things. I am sure it has certainly helped my mental health. And writing, as I am now, about childhood memories is making me feel a little more ‘interesting’, helping me value my life more. It is helping me to start to understand about how my character was formed in my early years.

Writing is once again helping me get up in the morning (well, most mornings), and, in the most basic sense, filling the time like nothing else. I have plenty of time to fill.

Tony Shelton

A Necklace of Stars, working with older people in Derbyshire, is supported by Arts Council England, Arts DerbyshireDCC Public Health and Derbyshire County Council Home Library Service. This project is particularly aimed at countering isolation; during the pandemic we’ve been working using distance methods – phone conversations and post.