lost my patience (please replace)

lost my patience (please replace)

"Saturday was a perfect example of how simple art techniques can release powerful emotive responses and generate incredibly touching outcomes. Yet another example of the importance of creative practice in allowing people to confront feelings and emotions. It was great to see the positive responses of the passing general visitors in the informal setting of the sponsored walk, as oppose to more formal organised sessions in a pre-prepared scenario." Johnny Woodhams

Johnny Woodhams and participant

On Saturday creative consultant, educational practitioner, artist, musician, writer, performance poet, comic and craftsperson.... Johnny Woodhams, joined me to work on our Lost Properties Stall at a Sponsored Walk in aid of charities 'Making Space' and 'The Alzheimer's Society.' This is an ongoing project where we ask people to simply right LOST on one side of a luggage label, and on the other side to write FOUND, then we ask people to think about someone or something they have lost, someone or something they have found and to write their descriptions on the corresponding label. It appears to be a simple idea, however the results are at times complex, and often moving. People talk directly or sideways on about issues we rarely face in our society, loss of loved ones, loss of abilities...The project is about caring, how we care, and who we care for and the impact that caring has on ourselves. 

The people we worked with on Saturday were there because they were interested in the issues of dementia- either they had the condition, or working with people with diagnosis, or their carers- so that theme often emerged. Take the image below, Lost Belt. It seems innocuous at first reading, but then the gentleman revealed that he had been caring for his father-in-law, who came to his rescue and lent him his. Or the image above 'Lost My Patience', the gentleman wrote while his family laughed out load around him, it obviously hit the right place for them.

Lost Belt

I held her in my arms

Johnny introduced a new exercise, bringing in a collection of small card containers, here we invited people to write on the label an address or part of an address of someone they wanted to remember, and inside the box a message to that person. These boxes where then tied up with string, for the messages to remain hidden. Johnny and I were particularly moved by a women who explained her box thus:

'I held her in my arms, she died before I could tell her I love her. I leave little messages for her where ever I go.' Ebun

For more photos please visit http://www.flickr.com/