Celebrating Our Senses - Walk 5 - Touch

The fifth in a series of Mindfulness and 

Wellbeing walks to celebrate our senses. 

We walked from the Green Patch 

along the river path to Warkton.

Inspired by the exquisitely carved feathers 

of the angel which is part of one the 

Montagu Monuments in 

St Edmunds Church, Warkton

artist Carole Miles decided to create a 

temporary installation of printed feathers 

suspended within a copper framework.

A feather seemed a good motif for Touch - 

which could be feather light yet very powerful.

We followed a trail of feathers

and sat inside or

 stood around the outside.during 

our Mindfulness meditation - Touch - 

was written and lead by Carolyn Bantin 

We felt very tranquil as we closed our eyes

and allowed our minds to hold and enjoy

the words, breathing fully and deeply.

feeling relaxed and in touch with ourselves.

We had our lunch in the meeting room 

whilst the installation was dismantled. 

We folded origami fir trees and 

wrote some thoughts about the day. 

We stopped to play Pooh Sticks on the bridge.

We walked back to our start point with 

quicker steps and lighter hearts. 

One walker said to Carole 

"You make the best walks EVER!"

Many thanks to Anne-Marie Sandos who worked on the Montague Monuments Project and is now working in education and outreach for Boughton House for making it possible for us to visit, create, meditate and have our lunch within this peaceful place. Many thanks also to Michael Miles AKA Copper Man for helping with the installation.

You can see the complete photo set here

Walk distance  3 miles.

The series of Mindfulness and Wellbeing "Celebrating Our Senses" walks have been made possible with a Grant awarded from Margaret Giffen Community Fund and Northamptonshire Community Foundation and with support from NStep.

PS - you may catch a glimpse of a familiar red head singing her heart out with the Deep Roots Tall Trees Choir  during Remembrance and Rebirth – Songs for the Montagu Monuments in May 2016 :-)

Fun Palaces - Made in Corby - Free Workshops

Back To Books artist Carole Miles will be hosting the Made in Corby Fun Palace event at Stephenson Way Community Centre as part of the Made in Corby Big Days In programme which aims to reach new audiences and give communities what they want - more arts activity on the doorstep, in the local community centre. MiC are delighted to be teaming up with the national Fun Palaces initiative, with FREE arts activities for all at Danesholme, Oakley Vale and Stephenson Way Community Centres - please spread the word!

S.W.A.G have created large paper rosettes to decorate the hall, we are using Torchtastic torches, Perspex flowers and a mobile sculpture kit, felted landscape vessels to create our Fun Palace. There will be free drawing and making activities. Paper Sculptor Phiona Richards will be joining us for a mini paper Make and Take. There will be opportunities to draw your own Fun Palace and share your hopes for creativity in Corby. Celebrate your community space! Come and find out more about S.W.A.G. Tea and cake on sale. All welcome!

For a flavour of our event please visit our page on the Fun Palaces website and look out for updates on all the Corby Fun Palaces here

Bottles, Birds, Balls, Up-cycling on the Brampton Valley Way

All the birds created from plastic milk bottles found new homes in a garden in Rushden!

First Impression

The Writing Group who have been working with author Kathy Page during the Online Writing Course Ticket To Write have almost all completed their short stories. Artist Carole Miles thought it would be an interesting addition to the work produced to make an image to go with each story and will be working with some of the writers in her relocated studio / shed. Her first visitor was Shusha Walmsley.

Demonstration of one collagraph technique

Shusha deciding which technique to use - cutting into a board with a scalpel 

or applying textured wallpaper to create shape and form.

Choice made and wallpaper it is!

Happily ensconced at the end of the galley like work space.

Inking up the printing plate

Colours applied and ready to print

Winding the wheel

Hey presto - illustration for Shusha's story.

Brampton Book Group - Sunday April 1st - 1st 11.30 - 12-30

Led by Kate Dyer Sunday April who will be discussing

Through England on a Side-Saddle - Celia Fiennes

"Celia Fiennes lived at roughly the same time as Daniel Defoe. She was born in 1662 at Newton Toney, Salisbury, the daughter of a colonel in Cromwell's army. She is remarkable for the journeys she made, and the account she wrote of them: she rode side-saddle through every county in England, accompanied only by two servants. Although she always lived in the south, in 1697 and 1698 she made two long journeys through northern England and Scotland. She travelled to improve her health, visiting many spa towns, but also for personal adventure. Her account of her travels seems to have been written after her travels had largely ended, in 1702. She described both the great houses she visited and the developing new industries. She died in 1741. The original text of Fiennes is not divided into chapters but we have tried to separate out her different 'journeys'." from A Vision of Britain Through Time

and

Country Churches - Simon Jenkins 

The chairman of the National Trust and well-loved writer, Simon Jenkins, chooses his favourite 100 English country churches. Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside - but it has profoundly shaped us too.It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land - as well as those who are travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).

If you'd like to join us but haven't read the books - don't worry - there will be copies to read after the event. Bring a flask and a picnic and join us in the seating area / car park at the Maidwell 

If You Would Like Tickets To Attend Departures Read On!

Departures

A Reading By Kathy Page

Friday March 2nd

6.30 - 9.00pm at the Water Tower 

Benefield Road, Brigstock, Kettering NN14 3JA

As part of her contribution to Back To Books project
On the Right Track author Kathy Page will talk about
the story as a journey, read  a selection of her short fiction
and  also introduce her latest book, In the Flesh,

a collection of  personal essays about the human body
and our oddly complex relationship with it.

The event is free and on a by ticket only entry
- to secure a ticket please click here

Back To Books would like to thank 

Rosalind Stoddart, FRSA Independent Cultural Engineer 

for making the wonderful space at the Water Tower available

for Kathy's return visit

Kathy will be bringing copies of In The Flesh and her
wonderful collection of short fiction As In Music.
Click the here if you would like to order your  signed
copy of either / both books.



Kathy Page’s seven novels include
The Story of My Face (long-listed for the Orange Prize)
Alphabet (a Governor General’s Award finalist),
and The Find (short-listed for ReLit award).

She also writes short fiction and memoir.
Born in London, she lives with her family
on Salt Spring Island, near Vancouver. 

www.kathypage.info

For more information about forthcoming events at The Water Tower

visit The Water Tower


  

KATHY PAGE'S RESIDENCY HAS BEEN SUPPORTED BY CANADA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS

                                 

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $154 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.

Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil  a investi 154 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.

Felting the Landscape - Getting Spherical

Carole Miles ran a felting workshop for Back To books at the lovely village hall in Litchborough. The idea was to create spherical landscapes of views from along the Brampton Valley Way which will be used in an installation at some point. Carole originally hoped to install them in a railway carriage on Northampton and Lamport Station during the forthcoming reading by Kathy Page on the evening of March 2nd as a prelude to the online writing course she will be running our On the Right Track project. The venue for the reading has now been changed to The Old Water Tower in Brigstock. There will be more details about the reading and the course to follow soon!

It was a day of good company, laughter, exercise and creativity!

Laying on colours over the base

Damping the fibres

Getting on the first pair of tights

Preparing to put the felt back in boiling water

Bouncing to felt the fibres together

The strange magic of taking the roving from this state

to this!

One set of processes leading to so many different surfaces and textures

Sonia enjoyed the process so much she went on to embellish her first vessel and make more at home! and said"brilliant day felting at Litchborough making felt vessels based on the landscape, Carole coped well with our neediness - she can't have found it too bad though as she is running another for us next month! Good to be with a group of lovely like-minded people"

You can see more images from the day here

and read about Carole's experiments with felt here

We will be felting again later in the month!