I’m really looking forward to being participating in my local arts trail this year, happening over the May Day bank holiday weekend, in Saltaire, near Bradford. 

“Saltaire Arts Trail prides itself in reaching out to new audiences and making art accessible to all by using imaginative venues - the internationally recognised Salts Mill, public buildings, the homes of Saltaire residents and outdoor spaces around Saltaire, to display visual art outside of traditional settings, as well as delivering new exhibitions and commissions”

I’m a resident artist in the Open Village Trail and will be displaying some of my permaculture themed illustrations in my windows via a walk through my garden. I’m excited to have two other artists - Grace  Denton and Cameron Lings showing work in my garden and kitchen. I’ll be selling prints and cards of my work from my kitchen too. 

I’ve been creating some new illustrations for this event. Cards and A4 prints of this design and five others will be for sale at the Open Village trail and available to buy on my online shop just before the event. 

There is a lot of grief in our communities right now. Grief related to so many aspects of the Covid 19 crisis. Grief related to our damaged Earth. Grief relating to people close to us who are dying and who we can't be alongside. Anticipatory grief. Actual grief. Complex grief.

I made this colouring-in page about the web-like pattern and aspects of grief that often form in our lives. Please feel free to print off and colour in/doodle on. 

Click here for a PDF version to print from. 

If you want to read more about different types of grief and practical, creative ways of living with so much loss then I can recommend the blog at What's Your Grief as a good place to start.

I've created this A4 colouring in page for anyone to print off and get creative (and relaxed!) with. Here is the PDF Link 

​I know lots of people are really struggling financially ATM and a lot of charities are desperate for support, but if you do have some spare cash then it would be great if you could donate a couple of £s to Sue Ryder Manorlands Hospice.

As well as providing amazing specialist palliative care in the area, Manorlands has also been my place of work for many years and I am passionate about helping to make sure it can continue to thrive through the current pandemic and economic crisis we are in. Creative ways of providing good symptom management, end of life care and bereavement support are desperately needed through these times of Covid 19/Coronavirus and I'm so proud that my amazing Manorlands friends and colleagues are at the forefront of designing this solutions focused care in the hospice, community and hospital.

I know the financial support for charities announced by the government on Thursday will help significantly over the coming weeks, but Manorlands Hospice is going to need as much extra financial help as possible in order to continue to do the invaluable work it does in the near medium to long term.
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You can donate directly to Manorlands via this link

Many hospices are in a similar position so, donating to your own local hospice instead if you can, is very much encouraged

If you don't have any spare money to donate then please still feel free to print off as many copies of this colouring in page as you need. Also, feel free to share this post widely with people you think might be interested. Thanks so much 

My Permaculture Illustrations on this new page on my site are offered free of financial cost, to use digitally in any regenerative change event or resource materials and marketing. Please just include a reference to my website with any use. 

Click here to learn more and access over 30 other free to use "everyday" Permaculture illustrations. I'll be adding more of my creative work to this resource over the coming months. To get reminders about this, sign up here to my monthly newsletter.

​I'm really excited to be illustrating this amazing online course being offered by the Permaculture Women's Guild. The course starts March 15th 2019 and folk will be able to start at their own pace anytime from that date.   Students are invited to :- 

For more details, including how to sign up, visit the Permaculture Women's Guild website, where you will also find lots more courses and opportunities on offer too.

One of the life tools I like to create at the start of a calendar year is choosing a focus word for that year. I create some art or craft work at the end of December or start of January, which goes on to become my daily reminder about my focus word and the energy behind it. It's a tool that has worked really well for me for several years now, no matter what is going on in my life at the time. My focus word for 2018 was "Creativity" - and when I chose this word in the January, I had no idea that the daily doodling I did, and shared on social media to help my emotional and cognitive wellbeing, would evolve into requests for Illustration work for prints, books and online courses by the start of 2019! While I'm sure this didn't just happen because of my chosen word, it certainly helped me to regularly connect with the intention behind it.   So this year I have chosen "Activist", Activism is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as, "the use of direct and noticeable action to achieve a result, usually a political or social one."  Throughout my life I have nearly always been involved in various types of activism about issues close to my heart and spirit. Over the past decade this has very much been connected to my development as a permaculture practitioner and educator. I'm hoping that choosing this word as my focus in the coming months, will enable me to design my new form of  activism, as part of my plan to continue to thrive while being unwell with Lyme Disease. 

Over the last year I have been following the work of illustrator and online Mental Health Activist, Make Daisy Chains and also the Craftivism movement, especially the work of the Craftivism Collective  Both of these are part of  my inspiration for these first weeks of the year as I begin to design the early part of the journey, my focus word for 2019 will take. Im hoping to use the Wheel of the Year, Earth based festivals for times of reflection about my current permaculture projects, and how these are influenced by my new focus word. I plan to document the main topics of that reflective process, within future blog posts here. ​

My Winter Solstice Doodle Prints , are available to buy now, with 100% of the profit going to support Manorlands Hospice, in Oxenhope, West Yorkshire. (England).You can find out about the amazing services Manorlands provides via the link tagged in this post . Its an organisation very close to my heart, as I've nursed in various roles at Manorlands over the last 15 years, and it's been a wonderful place to work.

The Pagan festival of Samhain, occurs at the end of October, and today is the Samhain New Moon. One of the of the eight festivals from the Wheel of the Year, it also marks the end of one year and the beginning of the next, in the Pagan calendar.
 
Like some other permaculture practitioners, I love to use the solar and lunar cycles and circles within this Earth based spirituality, as a grounding tool and guidance for my permaculture projects.

The core symbolism of the death of one year, followed by the birth of the next, offers a welcome opportunity to reflect on how the permaculture projects in my life have progressed over the last year.

Im spending time using the roses, thorns and buds reflection tool with each of my current projects, to help me re explore and focus on the functions of each different design. Possible aspects of each project that are no longer useful can also be stopped. Then I identify the “seeds”  of next steps to be taken in each project, plus seeds of other potential designs/projects.