By Kate Hodges
08th October 2020
MAKE Red, Green and Gold
And down come the leaves! Our streets are awash with green, yellow, red, orange and brown love letters from our tree pals. They make a natural, colourful art resource. Try preserving them on rocks, making fun faces, doodling, or creating these simple mandalas, which bring the autumn inside connect you directly to the turning season in the most beautiful of ways.
EVENT Hey, Ladies!
This Sunday mark the International Day of the Girl at the virtual Festival of the Girl; an initiative designed to inspire and educate girls and encourage adults to raise them in a less stereotyped way. This interactive event has an incredible range of speakers, workshops and activities. Learn about engineering, neurodiversity, and draw spy otters. Chat with olympic medallists and boxers or try a feminist consent dance tutorial. Learn about activism, starting a campaign, and how to write your own political speech, or discover how to bake the perfect muffin with Bake Off contestants or put make-up on your dad. Find the full line-up here
Alternatively, Women of the World (WOW) mark the event with three days of digital discussions and workshops, as well as launching an incredible young activists directory.
EVENT Hello Sailor!
London’s National Maritime Museum in Greenwich is an inspiring, fun place to visit year-round, but its bright, airy atrium makes the venue a particularly good rainy day destination. This week, its Discover Sundays events, where you get to explore objects from the museum that introduce you to different people, histories and cultures are themed around Black History Month. Guest artists Natalie Cooper and Ese Akpojotor explore African musical culture and how shanties and songs travelled through the infamous trans-Atlantic route, fuse The Windrush to Wakanda in a Black Panther-meets-Commonwealth-migrants workshop, and introduce Natalie, a Black Victorian sailor-turned-performer. Free, but booking essential
EVENT Move Those Feet
This year, Dancin’ Oxford’s Family Dance Week has been taken online. Rise and shine with a morning Wake ’n’ Shake class, get your feet moving to the super-tool beats of the Disco Shed or join a series of five workshops where you’ll learn how to make shadow magic using things from around your home. Free. All week from October 10–18
EVENT and MAKE Roots And Culture
We’re a little in love with this video by Gateshead’s BALTIC gallery artist Sally Madge and her granddaughter Nancy using vegetables and salad grown on their allotment to create art. Join them to see how beetroot, lettuce and potatoes can make striking and colourful prints. The BALTIC is open and welcoming visitors; if you’re near enough to book its family friendly sensory room, visit the Learning Lounge, or see the stunning botanical art of Nonuya artist Abel Rodríguez do take advantage of this generous, creative place. If you can’t get there in person, you might like to take a virtual tour of the exhibition.
What we’ve been reading this week:
How we interpret our feelings depends on where and how we’re brought up, says professor Lisa Feldman Barrett - and not understanding this is making our lives harder “Barrett argues that the universal components of human experience are not emotions, but changes on a continuum of arousal on the one hand, and pleasantness and unpleasantness on the other. The term for this is “affect”. It is a basic feature of consciousness, and people in different cultures learn to mould this raw material into emotional experiences in different ways.” Read more here
Found something inspirational to read that you’d like to share? Want to share your creations with us? Have an idea for things to do? We’d love to hear from you. Email Kate
