BLOGS

New care home residency

So, this new care home residency is the first residency Pippa and I are doing on our own – on our own together, thankfully. Our training continues but the training wheels are off and although Susanna continues to support and guide us when needed, she is no longer running along beside us, we are doing…

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On 22nd March

Therapist, author and dementia trainer Danuta Lipinska spent a morning with us a couple of weeks ago, furthering our vulnerable adults awareness, leading experiential exercises and lending her supportive insight in to this work. She emailed this over, to be shared here on our blog: On 22 March It was a great pleasure and honour to…

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Coming Off Script

Coming Off Script It was about this time last year that we did our first training residency at Westmead Carehome. This was a three month project with four artists working with 2-4 people living with a dementia under the close supervision and guidance of Susanna.  For me this experience was life changing. It was an…

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Process

Process Our current project – WHERE NOW? – is the first time we have directly teamed a nursing home residency with the creation of a performance piece.  The timing and structure of the project means that each week, along with our rehearsal room reflection and enquiry, we are starting to explore performative possibilities and create…

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Navigating authenticity

The struggle for authenticity in this work was the last thing I was expecting when I entered into the Living Words process two weeks ago. As an artist and animator I am used to a solitary, controlled studio existence, so I was prepared for an emotional and physical response to such a different new working…

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Beginnings and equality

So, we have begun this enquiry into what it might feel like to be living with a dementia that affects the senses. As part of the project, we will be devising a performance piece in response to a nursing home residency, and it’s the first time I have been commissioned to write/devise a performance piece.…

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Looking Back

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” Carl Jung If I am lucky enough to continue this work I have a feeling that each person I spend time with will stay with me. That each encounter will be vivid and will…

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Carers

I look forward to every day I spend in Westmead with C. and J., and I’m beyond exhausted every time I leave. By the time I get home I usually need an hour to not talk, not think, not do anything. The focus and patience invested suck out most of my energy. I visit C.…

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Almost goodbye

Our time at the care home is coming to an end. I introduced myself to A as always: ‘Lovely to see you A, I’m Shazea and we’ve been working together – I’ve been writing your words down and putting them in a book.’  When I took out the book to show her, with the photo…

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Tuning In

Putting the books together is a new challenge. I wrap the person around me, the rhythm, tone and meaning of their words eddy round me as I edit. I feel like a composer as I pick out the stories I have been told. P’s humour, M’s silences, B’s droplets of wisdom. I’m trying to get…

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