I Will Try And Keep More Of A Track Of My Work And Career Development Here As Well As Interesting Things

Remembering Carol and Michelle

(Carol, J, me, Michelle)

February 2019

I have always known the my experiences in L'Arche London (formally known as L'Arche Lambeth) were special times. Explaining the experience of living with and supporting adults with learning disabilities is something that you can't explain in a way to give justice to it. It transformed my very being and allowed me to experience some of the very hardest and some of the very best moments of my life. I don't want that previous sentence to sound too cliche - but its true.

Before joining L'Arche fresh from University I naturally had a limited experience of life - mostly myself and my family. I had no idea what I was letting myself in for as such. I was going to a community that was very much rooted in beliefs of a traditional faith nature and I was/am of a spiritual nature but not of a religious background. I was also informed unofficially that I would be fine there in any home as long as I wasn't going to be in a certain home that had been experiencing some stressful months. Yes of course I then found out that that was the home where I was going to be! I had had no previous experience of working with adults with learning disabilities and when I first arrived I was met with a busy corridor - full of adults with and without learning disabilities. I can honestly say that my first feelings were those of anxiety. How on earth was I, literally just out of University going to be able to support adults with learning disabilities?!

However, it was in these early days that Carol was really the first person with a learning disability that I got to know. I can't say that I remember too much in terms of details from the early days or any of the days in a way that would be nicer to remember - as my memory is pretty awful sometimes. I was desperately looking for photos on my external drive, but sadly believe most of these early day memories are real photos in an album (which is also quite good) in another country from the one where I am now. I'll hopefully find them in due time. I do of course remember a sense of the time I spent in L'Arche.

What I do remember is Carol's welcome of everyone who arrived in the house - short or long term visitor - friend or acquaintance. I remember her interest in and knowledge of everything that was going on in the house. I remember her sense of humour and the persona she played when having fun. Although she naturally took a while to allow me to support her fully - something I respected - as why should she straight away with someone she doesn't know - and someone who is younger and has less experiences in life than her and who is also anxious about dong something wrong when first getting to know people. This is what I first respected about Carol, and the same with Michelle. They both knew who they were in terms of what was their personal space and what and who they did and didn't like. They also knew and expressed who their long term friends were and I knew that if I did anything Carol didn't like that she would let me know that she wanted to tell one of her friends in particular about it! However, over time we developed a trust between us and I can hear the way she called and said my name as I write now. I can also remember her taking my arm when walking somewhere. What I remember most fondly was her concern for others - she knew if you were not 100%. She would ask if you were ok. I remember her smile and her willingness to have a go at new things - such as when a colleague and I started doing some sensory storytelling in L'Arche a few years back. Carol is also one person who I can clearly see how she maintained her personality but also seemed to be able to find more peace and relaxation as life went on. I can't believe that I knew her over the span of 20 years  - is quite something for any of my friends.

As when remembering Carol I remember the house where I was first living in L'Arche - when I remember Michelle, I remember the stone workshop - which was the first craft workshop in L'Arche that I worked at. I was quite nervous around Michelle at the beginning and I guess she probably was of me as a new person too. However, through the great idea of my then boss and continued good friend, we started doing the health and safety checks together. We got an A4 ring binder folder and I printed off some accessible symbols and photos for the weekly checklist. Michelle could lead on the job, by carrying the folder and ticking off the checklist. She was so thrilled at the thought that she was 'learning' and had responsibility. From that moment on we could be friends. I can't remember when she first went to college but this was in 1998 (same year I came to L'Arche) but I will never forget her thrill at saying that she was learning and the pride she took in that role. She taught us that you really need to give opportunities, responsibility and let people with learning disabilities take the lead.

Both Carol and Michelle had a great love of music and for me I remember the 50s/60s audio cassette we had in the stone workshop. Wish I knew what the playlist was - but do remember the song 'I remember You' - that Carol sung along to often - with a beautiful, passionate voice. She also liked the song about 'No Milk Today'... Michelle - I mostly remember her love of 'Michelle My Belle' and Abba tunes! Michelle was also a keen joiner in of the first music and storytelling sessions that I started doing with some colleagues as a freelancer out of L'Arche- and for that I am also grateful to her for her continued friendship.

Just a few images from Friday's Sensory Stories training with Jo Grace. We had a really good introduction to creating sensory stories, tours and memories for a wide range of people including people with multiple learning disabilities, autism and dementia. Just what I needed to help inspire me to follow my passion and develop work in the area of making heritage accessible... One reason I've changed work recently. I partly have too many project thoughts at the moment but I would rather have it that way than not :) I'd love to develop a sensory nature trail among other ideas for Fun Palaces for a start and sensory tours for local heritage sites :)

Bus travel observations and thoughts ... This time I contemplated the landscape of the transmitter in cp being the familiar feature of the return to cp from town... It's a geographical landmark now. I am also reminded of the posters advertising the fresh air of cp at it's similarly geographical landmark heights! (I wonder if the humps were there in the Victorian times...)

Me in the World

October 2016

Hello there :)

Testing out writing a bit more regularly about what I do in my tutoring, music and storytelling sessions. I would be interested to hear if any of it is useful to anyone reading this.

So the first activity that I am going to talk about is a one I found through a search of Montessori blogs. It is called a 'Me on the Map' or 'Me in the world' activity. It is an activity I didn't come across when I was Montessori teaching a few years back. However, when searching for activities about the world I really liked the idea of this. An important part of Montessori philosophy for me is the area of cultural education. Montessori was very much dedicated to peace and the activities in this area really develop this through helping children to understand more about the world, their place in it and how everything is connected.

I tried this activity out with two brothers I tutor. The idea is that you have coloured circles of ascending sizes. You start by asking the child to draw a picture of themselves and then their house and gradually progress to their continent and the world.

The youngest started accordng to the plan. He wasn't too keen on drawing his houseso drew the entry gate to his house. We only did about three last week and completed this week because the activity did not captivate him as much as others. The eldest decided that he would do it in his own way and started with a mean looking character who ended up living on the moon. He gave areas of the moon different number codes that got more complex as they went along and really got into it. I had intended that he did it about himself, however, I loved his creativity. Below are the results. And here is a link to the page I found the best for describing this activity and variations:  Here

Bye for now....

Museum one of my USA trip ... The American Museum of Natural History. Yummy meal from the Peacefood Cafe not too far away before hand. Ate under the blue skies in Central Park before enjoying #museumhack tour in lovely cool building of the AMNH - great extensive collection!

It's arrived! I really hope it works, that I can work it and that etc etc...

Learning Disability Music Sessions

October 2016

My broad theme for my current term of sessions is Autumn and work songs. We have already had a few sessions and I thought it might be nice to blog a bit about what L'Arche is, how I got to the theme and what I have been up to so far. Read on to read more about L’Arche and my theme.

L'Arche London is a charity based in West Norwood, South East London. I have worked for L'Arche in various ways and for various lengths of time since first leaving University many years back! I first went as a summer assistant and never seem to have really left. The charity supports adults with learning disabilities to live alone, in flats and in larger houses.

The community also runs day services, which currently centre around a garden project and a craft project. L'Arche originates from France and started in London in 1977. The community was set up to give people with learning disabilities their own home and sense of community. Previously people with learning disabilities were living in impersonal and often unpleasant institutions. The history of the day provision is also fascinating as the founders realised that people with learning disabilities wanted (and many still do) to do real work, have a job and earn money. The history of the day provision and community could be a whole heritage project and is something that I'd like to consider while some early members of the community can still share their stories.

I didn't intend to write such a long introduction, however, L'Arche's past helped me decide on the theme. Work is at the heart of many songs old and new. I love folk songs and folk work songs are a plenty :) I thought it would be nice to explore some early songs about rural life as a starting point.

The early September sessions began with an Autumn theme and we have gradually moved into the rural and work theme. The sessions begin with an attention grabber and at the moment always include a soundscape, turn taking activity of some kind, voice warm up, songs and percussion instruments.

Autumn Theme

I will share a couple of examples of activities that have taken place in the sessions. The first attention grabber activity was shaking leaves in a large plastic box. I took the box around shaking it and offering others to shake it if they wanted. I did this before singing the welcome song. I didn't say anything at first and just walked past each group member shaking the leaves as a way of beginning the session. When creating the autumn soundscape we also experimented with comparing the sound of a smaller sized box to shake the leaves, shuffling the leaves in a different way and with hitting the bottom of the box to mimic walking in rhythm. We hit sticks together (twigs and  clapping sticks), snapped twigs, turned rainmakers, waved big leaves and shook sycamore seed bundles. We took time to listen to each of the sounds independently before adding them and experimented with loud and quiet/fast and slow and stopped suddenly to pause and listen to the introduction of a new sound. As well as the above sounds, one of these sounds was the dropping of an acorn or two to the floor, with pauses in-between. I built up different Autumn soundscapes over a couple of weeks. There are also quite a few sounds you can find online and of course can record your own if you want to add some real life sounds.

We then developed the theme by singing a song written by Emmie Ward called 'We're All Walking Along... (through the woods)', which I have used before in our Crystal Palace Park/London Wildlife Trust project. Even though there were up to 12 people with learning disabilities in the session, we took the time to sing it for everyone, while people had the opportunity in pairs to walk around the centre piece. At the end of singing a verse for someone, that person was given an acorn and could drop it into the large plastic box, which made up the centre piece. At the end I and then anyone else who wanted to - shook the box to a rhythm and heard the sound of all the acorns together.

Work Theme

I feel I have written way too much already! However, to give you a little taster of the work song sessions.... I continued the Autumn theme into the work theme. The attention grabber for the next session became the sound of pasta shaken in a box to recreate the sound of a train. This was an idea I learned from Coralie Oddy. Again you can experiment with the fast and slow/loud and quiet. The soundscape changed from travelling through the woods to taking a train and walking to work soundscape. As well as some of the Autumn sounds we also had some street sounds of bike bells and cars. Setting a regular rhythm was key here - and leaving space for others to take over and add to the rhythm. In the song part of the session we sung 'I've been working on the railroad' and concentrated on singing just part of it and everyone having a turn on the uke (instead of the banjo!) if they wanted.

The travelling back in time idea has become part of the current soundscape and you can use a tone chime of any kind to signal the going back in time. It was nice to intersperse the chime sound with the sound of the train and working on railroad. The turn taking activities (whilst singing 'We're all walking)  have since included dropping conkers into a bowl of water, ladling water and this week pouring corn with a measuring jug. I thought these all in some way represent time passing and link in with the autumn/rural theme. Today, I cornily said that pouring corn could be symbolic of the the grains from farming and also the grains of time!

More to follow on the work theme and in particular the knitting/weaving theme that is also part of the L'Arche history and rural history. I hope the blog entry has been of some interest and I have not pointed out the obvious.

As with all the work I am up to at the moment. I owe much of what I practice to inspiration from many people. Today's thanks are to Emmie Ward and Coralie Oddy. Emmie is a fantastic music teacher, with many years experience of teaching people with learning disabilities. I have learned so much from observing her music sessions and working with her on the Sound Tracks and Crystal Palace Projects. Coralie Oddy, I met through attending a Jo Grace Sensory Stories workshop and we started storytelling together for the Crystal Palace Project as well as Sound Tracks.

Post- lecture thoughts

So a few thoughts that I had during my course session today: Should I in theory involve participants in my trail, in the trying out other audio trails? I don't think that it is feasible with my time scale, but a good thought in terms of creating a community project. Involve the community with decisions about how they want to create theirs. I feel mine is going to be driven by me in the main.

Something that was said today by our visiting lecturer kind of linked with my thoughts. She said that in terms of her education setting that it is about connecting the past to the present and it is not jut about knowledge transfer. I like that thought.

I was also wondering about referencing the visitor research that Kew Gardens did for their app - that was published in their paper entitled 'Delightfully Lost' - there may be some elements that are relevant to creating my trail - when thinking about what people like to do in an outdoor natural space - and the thought of wanting to be delightfully lost seems to fit with some of my reading on psychogeography.... still only in the initial stages and my introduction to it book!

anticipating the crystal palace overground festival...

Hello all who is following!

I am grateful for your following and reading!

Apologies for the lack of recent updates, but the reason is purely that I have been spending my time on other work and with more of the organising.

I made a few classmates speak and be recorded by the audio recorder, which went well I think and I now feel ready to go with the proper recording. Forms all done and little ad's to give to anyone I meet who might want to take part. There has been a bit more social media advertising as well - through some people kindly offering to post my ad further on other local forums. I've ordered a few more books to look into and done a bit of an essay plan - for when I read the books! I am also going to listen again and carry out more audio trails in the coming week or so!

This weekend is the Crystal Palace Overground Festival - which I am quite excited about! I shall be trying to catch as much of it as possible and also again will always be on the lookout for new recruits! I am attending a reminiscence session tomorrow - with an unknown amount of attendees, but will be interesting all the same, regardless of if I meet anyone who would like their story recorded! I just love hearing anything new about Crystal Palace history! (Well any history to be honest!) I'll also be possibly helping out the LAS Theatre people, who I've never met, but seem to be creating something really interesting at the festival... they are creating a cabinet of curiosities and have variety of performers of science and more!

I've also been as before been observing all I can about the world around me - especially when on London buses - much more interesting that other forms of London transport - even from the sense that you get much more of a sense of scale of all around you! I am the nosiest traveller as well - looking at all that is going on outside!

I might upload a couple of quotes and/or pics to add some more bright to the blog!

Reminiscence session as part of the overground festival... Heard some interesting snippets of stories related to the park that I would like to hear more of... Tried out a bit of recording with my friends daughter... Now at the spoken word event of the festival... It's all about crystal palace, the park and spoken word for me at the moment!