Celebrating Creativity - 35 Years of Supporting Mental Health through Education

World Mental Health Day (10 October) this year also marks 35 years of Outlook, a City of Edinburgh Council service providing free adult education for people who access mental health services. The Celebrating Creativity Exhibition at the Wee Museum of Memory at Ocean Terminal will showcase Outlook students' creative work including pottery, stories, collages and photography. 

I've delivered classes for Outlook for several years now, focusing on creative writing and nature studies. Specifically for this exhibition, I've just finished teaching a course using historical photos of Edinburgh (from the archives of The Living Memory Association) to inspire creative writing. I've been very impressed by the stories the students have written and am looking forward to seeing their work at the exhibition. It will be a very worthwhile exhibition for anyone to pop into while shopping in Ocean Terminal. So do pop along if you can, while you're in Edinburgh. 

I'll write more about this once I've been to the exhibition launch! This is just an advance notice so that you can put the dates in your diary.  

Celebrating Creativity, 10.30 - 4.30, 11th - 20th October at the Wee Museum of Memory, Exhibition Space 2, on the first floor of Ocean Terminal, next to a well known coffee outlet.   

Closing my Etsy shop

 It's many years now since I set up shop on Etsy. My first shop was called Crafty Green Poet and sold an eclectic mix of handmade items (mostly jewellery), vintage items and craft supplies. After a few years I decided to split the shop into two and about ten years ago set up Crafty Green Magpie as the shop for the vintage and supplies, Crafty Green Poet then solely selling handmade items. A few years after that, people stopped buying my handmade items - one of my biggest sellers had always been my handmade lanyards, which people totally stopped buying during the COVID lockdown when people stopped going into the office.... So I recombined the shops back into one and Crafty Green Magpie has since then been selling mostly vintage and supplies with the occasional handmade item. 

Anyway, I've decided it's now time to stop selling. My Crafty Green Magpie Etsy shop will close soon after Christmas. You can browse all the items here. 

Sandra George at The City Art Centre, Edinburgh

Sandra George (1957-2013) was a community and youth worker in Edinburgh and a prolific social documentary photographer. A range of her photos are now collected together in an exhibition at Edinburgh's City Art Centre. 

The exhibition groups the photos into themes including family, disability and youth-work and features areas of Edinburgh that many people, even lots of long term city residents, aren't familiar with. It's certainly a good exhibition to have on during Edinburgh's summer festivals, as hopefully it will give many tourists a view into the Edinburgh communities that they generally won't see during their visit. 

George's photos are documentary, so she focussed on capturing the people and activities around her and her relationship with her own son. Many of the photos show her ability to elevate an ordinary moment into a timeless memory.

You can read a longer review by Lee Sharrock, along with a few selected photos from the exhibition here. 

 

Sandra George: Start from the Level showing at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh, until Sun, 27 Sept 2026

The Library

I loved the library in the town where I grew up. It was housed in a quirky little building with shiny wooden floors and steps down to the children’s section. The place smelt wonderfully of polished wood and was full of more books than I would ever be able to read. I could choose any book I wanted to, without having to think about whether I would be allowed to buy it. So I discovered stories that I would never have otherwise found, stories that still sit in my memory now, though I’ve forgotten the details. A story of children growing up in the stone age; a story of a boy with epilepsy discovering a bond with nature and many others. It was also here that one day I was surprised by a fellow pupil from my school slithering under the book cases and grabbing my ankles!

When I was a teenager, the library started stocking music, which gave an extra dimension to my borrowing. Now I could randomly select music and listen, without actually buying the albums! A great way to broaden my musical horizons.

I pass the library every time I visit the town where I grew up. The building now houses a motor-cycle showroom. The library itself is now up in the town centre, in the same building as the medical centre. I’ve never visited it there, it just wouldn’t be the same, though I’m sure it offers the same expanded horizons to today’s children as the old library did for me.

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Originally published as part of the CILIPS (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) 2022 #LibrariesareEssential campaign. You can find all the creative responses to their campaign on their website here!  

TrippyTakka at Edinburgh Canal Festival

 Yesterday we spent time at the Edinburgh Canal Festival. After walking along the canal, we sat in the sunshine at Lochrin Basin and listened to the excellent local band TrippyTakka. 

They're a rock and blues band who write their own music (not a single cover version while we were there) and they deserved a much bigger audience than they got yesterday. They had a bubble machine on for some of their songs, and I tried to capture the lovely way the bubbles were catching the sun, but without any great success!  

There are a couple more photos from the day on my Crafty Green Poet Blog here. 

The Reluctant Model

Why would someone do this to me?
It weighs a tonne and I feel a fool.

There's skill and artistry
in the intricate designs, but
any beauty in the detail is lost
in the overall execution.

No I won't smile for the camera
this thing is giving me a headache
and if I move a muscle
it will all come tumbling down.

So many problems in the world need solutions
and you choose to do this to me?

 

originally published on The Ekphrastic Review, in response to this artwork by Severine Gallardo.  

Reflections

 

I took this photo when we were having a meal in a restaurant recently, I liked the way the light shone through the bottle. 

Scottish Gaelic and Scots now recognised as official languages of Scotland

Scottish Gaelic and Scots are now recognised as official languages as from St Andrew's Day, thanks to the Scottish Languages Act, which was voted through in June this year. (see this article on the BBC website).

I've seen a couple of recent examples of editors sharing translations 'into Scottish Gaelic' which were actually into Scots! However, the two languages are not to be confused! Scottish Gaelic is closely related to Irish and Manx, and one of the Celtic languages which also include Welsh, Cornish and Breton. It is very different to English and as such can be challenging to learn. Scots is much more closely related to English and arguably these days feels more like a dialect than a language, as though lots of people in Scotland use a good number of Scots words, few speak wholly in Scots or even using Scots grammar. But historically it really is a language and it's great to see it being officially recognised as such in a modern Scotland. 

Both Scots and Scottish Gaelic are vital parts of Scotland's culture and this recognition of  their status ensures that they can continue to play an important part on the country's future. 

If you want to learn Scottish Gaelic, then the Speak Gaelic website is a good place to start. This website is tied in to a programme that ran recently on BBC Alba (the Scottish Gaelic channel of the BBC) and is now available on Youtube. Alternatively, you may be able to access face to face learning in a local community centre. 

Edinburgh Council has a very good adult education programme and is now taking bookings for the next term, including classes in Scottish Gaelic and one class in Scots.  

There are a number of useful online Scots language resources including:

The Scots Language online.  

Dictionaries of the Scots Language.  

Not in Our Name (a found poem)

There were mutterings that each day grew louder,
signs and portents that we refused to believe.
Local militia were organizing and drilling
getting ready to answer the call should it come.
Not that people thought that it would come.
They believed, as they hoped,
that something would be done to prevent war…….
As for those others who prophesied and prayed for it,
who wanted the vials of God's wrath uncorked,
they got what they wanted.
Their prayers were answered;
the land was drenched in blood.
But for the most of us
we did not.



Found poem from:A Virginia Girl in the Civil War, 1861-1865: Being a Record of the Actual Experiences of the Wife of a Confederate Officer: Ed. by Myrta Lockett Avary
 

I originally posted this found poem for Read Write Poem, many years ago now, but it still seems very relevant 

Haunted

Her bones buzz
as she tries to remember
who it is whose eyes
stare at her
from the shiny glass
on the wall.

All the white powders,
syringes and needles
were supposed to help her
find something.

If only she could remember
what it was.

She thinks
it had something to do
with those eyes. 

 

originally published on Shot Glass Journal.  

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Meanwhile, I've just had a tiny poem published on the Smols website, you can read it here.