Creative Play time 

Once a month I have the joy of running a Saturday Art Club for Adults. Yep, adults get to be kids! Yes.. really! It's so much fun so why should only children be able to do it? January was our first session of 2023 and we decided to make good use of our empty festive celebratory wine and bubbly bottles. With a bit of painting, decoupage, cutting and sticking (including a bit of glue gun excitement) we created candle stick holders and night lights. 14 people chatted, laughed and drank tea, some of whom had never met before, but when leaving there were hugs and fond fair wells until we meet again February 25th when we will be doing Experimental Water colour.  

Tip: It is a really simple one.. switch off your phone once a day, perhaps have a dedicated time that is ' phone free time'. 

Even when it s on silent we keep looking at it, checking for a social media updates, the likes, the comments on our posts, the disappointment when people don't love our doggie photos as much as we do or the Ebay ' ping' 

The 10 week short course has started and students are already enthusiastically getting stuck in. Each week we explore a different art movement and then put our own spin on it.

This week was Dada and collage. We cut pages from old magazines and books, used photographs and sections of poetry. We then selected random words and cut them into separate pieces, which inspired us to create bizarre pieces of art. The Dada movement was questioning the fractured time of the World war 1 and they did this through styles of art that left audiences scratching their heads  .. the word Dada not really meaning anything at all. and this was the point.

In class we wanted to remove our sensible, logical head and find our inner child.. and basically drop our grown up mode and be big kids. For 3 hours there are no rules, no right or wrongs just simply being in the moment and having fun through play.  

We take breathing for granted - this book is fascinating - check it out The New Science of the Lost Art by James Nestor 

"Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art was released May 26, 2020 by Riverhead/Penguin Random House and was an instant New York Times Bestseller. Here’s what it’s all about:

No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you're not breathing properly." (James Nestor)