Last night at Theatre in the Mill, Bradford University, I presented this at the “Truth to Power Cafe”, a fascinating platform presented by Jeremy Goldstein of London Artists Projects. “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting, but on building the new” – Socrates. I haven’t checked the reference… […]
Author: Jenny
Truth To Power – time to build a culture of consent
This week I accepted an invitation. Jeremy Goldstein, Founder and Creative Director of London Artists Projects was putting on an event called ‘The Truth to Power Cafe’ and inviting volunteer participants to make 5 minute speeches in response to the question ‘Who has power over you and what do you want to say to them?’ […]
On politics, cake and circus
A lot has happened in the year since I last wrote one of these blogs. Since I believe that the personal is political, I’m going to express this from a personal angle. Women in politics for some reason can be a highly controversial topic for some people. This has always confused me for multiple reasons, […]
An Other Thing
If we’re going to challenge the patriarchy we’re going to rock the whole world.
This is about hope and unity. This is about love. This is about having ‘more in common’. This is about removing blame and always being kind. This is about building communities where no-one is the ‘other’.
Hope and kindness
Our UK democracy (and it is a democracy, albeit a far from perfect one) has put the Tories into power for the next 5 years. My social media streams are still full of shock and anger, a massive sense of fear and hopelessness. Good people are asking why, how, and who is to blame, saying […]
Why ‘Arts For All’ is important and we shouldn’t wait 50 years to support it
Today is the anniversary of Jennie Lee’s White Paper on arts policy which stated that: “Only yesterday it was the fight for a free health service. The day before it was the struggle to win education for all … In any civilised community the arts and associated amenities, serious or comic, light or demanding, must […]
Ten top tips for women on getting older
We’ve been talking to some older women recently, to get their input into An Odd Occasion. As a woman of a certain age, myself, I’ve been reflecting on what they told me and I’ve come up with a list of 10 top tips for women on getting older. Please don’t be silly about this – […]
Art, power and change
Artists and arts organizations like mine sometimes talk about our work as ‘socially engaged’ work – if arts are a tool for social and/or political change (which I think they can be) then we need to get to grips with how we do that. In the midst of my own grappling, I’ve found myself struggling […]
Echoes of Oz – 75 Dorothys – first steps on the yellow brick road
I’m really thrilled we’ve got Arts Council England’s support to realise ’75 Dorothys’. I’ve been thinking and dreaming up adventurous plans to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the opening of the MGM classic ‘The Wizard of Oz’ for over a year, now, and this is a chance to make our first significant steps to achieving […]
Irregular happenings
There’s so many things coming up for us at Irregular, I thought I’d put some info on them all in one place… The biggest deal for us is An Odd Occasion – the performance event that we’ve been working towards is coming up fast. We’ve been thinking about women and men, and the different ways […]