I started a new creative practice this year, called ‘Notes to Self’. The idea is to capture everyday moments in my life through photos and write a small piece of advice or wisdom underneath each one. I was lucky enough to get a Kodak Memoshot camera for Christmas, which has a built in thermal printer. This creates a really unique black and white look for each image, and the best part is that you can pair it with your phone, meaning you don’t even need to carry the camera around with you. I’ve been learning lots about what works and doesn’t work in black and white, and I’m also really enjoying reflecting on lessons I’ve learned recently and wisdom I need to remind myself of. Here are some of my favourites so far…
A talk I gave at Oasis Church Bath on reimagining/revisiting the ancient bible story of ‘David and Goliath’. This story is often misinterpreted and doesn’t mean what we think it does – let’s just say maybe we’ve got the identity of the underdog wrong. If you’re into Balearic slingers, singing resistance, creative activism, defeating ICE agents and finding a third way, you’ll enjoy this talk!
I recently had the privilege of being selected to attend the Raise the Bar Emerging Writers retreat at the beautiful Barley Wood House in North Somerset. The retreat was facilitated by poets Rachel Long and Nikita Gill (who is one of my heroes!) who delivered one to one feedback sessions with each poet as well as incredible group writing workshops. We also heard one another perform through an open mic evening, and we had plenty of time to get to know each other, write and enjoy the grounds.
It was also brilliant to have Raise the Bar team members offering their own workshops and I particularly enjoyed Kat Lyons’ skills workshop, which really helped me identify my goals as a poet, and develop confidence in my voice and things I want to say.
In Nikita’s workshop she asked us to really think about what kind of work we wanted to make, what we wanted our poetry to do. I wrote that I wanted my poetry to “tell the truth about how shit things can be, while leaving the reader/listener with an unshakable feeling of hope that they won’t stay that way”.
As we shared our thoughts in the debrief session my word of the weekend was ‘seeds’. I felt I had been given so many seeds, so many beginnings of things. New dreams, poems, ideas, possibilities and potential. Now its time to water them and watch them grow!
A huge thank you to everyone at Raise the Bar for such an incredible opportunity, and to Rachel Long and Nikita Gill for being such brilliant facilitators. This was a weekend I will remember forever.
As part of my role for Oasis Bath as Community Director, I work a few hours a week for the wider group of Oasis Churches, primarily supporting Oasis Church Reading and also by engaging with groups and churches who are either interested in starting an Oasis Church, or becoming one if they’re already a church.
Growing up in Nottingham, I was very excited to hear from a group there who were asking questions about what church could look like in their city, keen to reimagine what church could be and build links with us having been inspired by the Oasis approach. To gage interest and gather others who are asking the same questions, they held an event in the city centre of Nottingham that I was honoured to attend and speak at. Nath Jones, Senior Minister of Oasis Church Waterloo, and I spoke on the Oasis Church four distinctives, which are the four things that we believe, when combined, make Oasis churches unique. They are…full inclusion, an open progressive theology, an informal church service style and a commitment to social justice. The event was absolutely packed out, and it was so encouraging to see so many people (in my home city!) asking these big questions and wrestling with what the church should and could be.
Nath and I spoke on each of the four distinctives, with me speaking on an open progressive theology and an informal church service style. You can listen to those short talks below.
Since the event the Church Reimagined team are continuing to gather regularly, digging deeper into what the distinctives might mean for them. If you’re in or near to the area and interested in being part of the conversation you can find out more by visiting their website at https://reimaginechurch.uk/
I recently visited the old Toneworks factory in Wellington, Somerset, which has been decaying beautifully for over 20 years now. Somerset Council acquired the site in 2020 and since then have been doing essential repair and stabilisation works to make the site safe. As part of this they are offering guided tours for small groups at several points in the year, which always sell out. I was lucky enough to get a place on a tour so I could visit, and the results were well worth it as I’m really pleased with the images I’ve captured.
I would have loved longer in there to take more photos (sorry to the nice council lady who kept having to say “STAY WITH THE GROUP PLEASE” to me), and there are parts of the site that are too dangerous to access. In some ways limitations like this are often helpful to creativity. You have to prioritise what you want to capture, not overthink things, and be realistic about what you can do in the time you have.
Huge respect to Somerset Council and Wellington Town Council for putting the tours on! My top tip to get a place on the tour is to sign-up for their newsletter (it’s as thrilling as it sounds) as tours are announced there first. Click here to do that.
I hope you enjoy the images. Some of my favourites are below but you can see the full set on my Flickr page here.
Lyra is a brilliant poetry festival held in Bristol each year. As part of the festival there is a poetry slam. This is a poetry competition where poets battle it out to be crowned the Lyra Grand Slam winner! I was really pleased to make it through to the qualifying rounds this year, and via Zoom I performed a poem called ‘#NewProfilePic’…
At the qualifying rounds, each poet performs and is scored by a mix of scores from three judges (all professional poets) and votes from the audience. I was thrilled to make it through to the grand slam final! This was held at the iconic St Georges’ in Bristol, in front of hundreds of people watching both in person and via a livestream. It was an experience I’ll never forget – performing with so many other amazing poets on such a big stage! I chose to perform a poem that’s really important to me. It’s called ‘Little Jo’ and it’s me as an adult revisiting younger versions of myself, saying what I felt I might have needed to hear at those points in my life. You can see my performance in the video below. Check out www.lyrafest.com for more information about the festival.
At Oasis Church Bath, as part of speaking series called ‘Hands In’, I explore how we can strike a healthy balance between looking after ourselves, and getting involved in our church and community hub.
As part of a series at Oasis Church Bath called ‘What’s On Your Mind?’, I ask how we might reimagine what church leadership could look like in the light of a progressive theology. With failures around safeguarding and morality by prominent Christian leaders hitting the headlines recently, what can we learn and how should this change our approach at Oasis?
If we are born good and wired towards goodness, then how can we explain evil, and the choices we sometimes make that harm ourselves, others and the world around us? Is ‘original blessing’ just a way to avoid facing up to our mistakes, and how do we ensure it doesn’t stop us from continuing to seek wholeness and forgiveness?
If we reject the notion of ‘original sin’ as progressive Christians, what do we do with the word sin? What does it actually mean and how can we develop a helpful and healthy understanding of it in relation to our faith and the lives we live? In this talk for Oasis Church Bath I encourage us to think differently about sin, and ask how we might reimagine it in light of being ‘already good’.
