Healing Monsters, through walking / smelling / reading / writing.
Healing Monsters was a programme of free events to encourage collective healing, as part of Irineu Destourelles' project Does it Fall From the Skies Above?. Whilst in residence, Irineu was looking for opportunities to learn or develop skills that have become core to the project, including walking, writing and reading, but also to think about what it means to heal within a support network and the communities we live in. Healing Monsters invited diverse facilitators to explore every day tasks, focusing on healing in groups and communities through sensory experiences.
The programme invited us to 'heal' through:
Group Walk
Thursday 10 March, 6pm, starting at Square Deal, free
Community worker, artist and runner, Fi Thomson, led a dusk walk by the River Deveron.
Walking is central to Lilo's search through Huntly and the act of walking is heavy with symbolism. Poet and peace activist ​​Thich Nhat Hanh developed a pioneering practice around walking meditation, promoting concepts of mindful walking. Fi’s own mindful practice encouraged participants to be present by reducing some of our senses such as sight, to strengthen others through anchoring in sound and movement. Taking a well-trodden Huntly route, this event drew on our ideas of memory and how that might contribute or take away from mindful walking. We were asking: What do you think you see on a route you take everyday? What else could you see that draws you into that moment in mindful ways?
A workshop on smells
Saturday 19 March, 12pm, starting at Square Deal, free
Perfumer, artist and librarian Clara Weale (A Library of Olfactive Materials) joined us in Huntly to lead a workshop on smells. Clara is a scent designer and educator with an innovative approach to thinking about smell and the role it plays in our lives. In this walking workshop, Clara encouraged us to seek out scents around Huntly and described them collectively, recalling and repeating the scents as we go, uniting the group to create a long description of the scents we found (and imagined) together. Related to Irineu's projects, Clara also created additional scents to bring along on our walk based on the idea of seeking out a lost lover.
A reading group
Sunday 27 March, 2pm, Square Deal, free
Artist and educator Hussein Mitha led a workshop on reading as a healing practice, by both thinking about the ways in which reading can create a space for healing in our routine simply by claiming time for ourselves; and how the things we read can contribute to our wellbeing. Hussein took us through various ‘theories of reading’ and led some reading exercises. This workshop explored the powerful connections (and interchangeability) between readers and writers – how we often form close connections with characters and how the reader inserts themselves into a story as a way of escape but as an act of storytelling.
A writing workshop
Wednesday 13 April, 6pm, Online via Zoom, free
We were excited to have Debris Stevenson leading a writing workshop as part of Healing Monsters programme. Debris is an experienced writer who places her poetic practice at the heart of writing for the stage, screen and radio. Debris is also a performer, director, producer, dancer, educator, speaker and presenter who aims to create great art for real social change – she is not scared to create new forms to do so. Debris embeds healing and wellbeing into her writing practice and in her words, being a good artist is being a healthy person – this is to say that a sense of wellbeing and contentment allows us to work well, with energy and creativity. In the same vein, writing itself – active and engaged – can and often is mindful, grounded and places us in the present. For this final Healing Monsters event, Debris shared her own methodologies for writing and encouraged everybody to turn their inner editor off and just get it all out!
Note:
Healing Monsters was a creative programme of events. Whilst some of the facilitators have unique experience in wellbeing practices, this was not a qualified programme for health and wellbeing. Healing Monsters was a creative approach to healing practices through everyday actions. For wellbeing and mental health support, take a look at Huntly based charity Networks of Wellbeing.
This project is part of Deveron Projects' Culture Collective project, The School of Vernacular Skills.
