Your Creative Sparkle: artfully craft a unique memoir
Your Creative Sparkle is about artfully crafting your own memoir, it’s a process of self nurture.
Does this sound like you?
- You’re going through a transition or time of change or would like to?
- You’re someone who doesn’t put you at the centre of your life?
- You feel weary at times or even all the time?
- You want to be more creative?
- You want some fun, either alone or in a like-minded community!
- You need something that you can fit easily into your life and your interests.
Your Creative Sparkle: artfully craft a unique memoir
What is your Creative Sparkle Season 1?
Your Creative Sparkle uses a gentle traditional medium – the letter – and reinvents it to create a diary, a series of episodes or series of visual poems to form the story of your life. This story may be comforting, it may bite at times or make you laugh.
Your Creative Sparkle is:
- artful disruption
- an inventory of your life
- a guided journey of self-care, a safe place to explore your own direction
- a community within which to share your work and tell your stories.
Your Creative Sparkle is a guided journey of self-care, hope, nourishment and a safe place to explore your own direction, your artistry and where you sit in the world right now. Your Creative Sparkle is a forum for creativity and curiosity, for art and creative writing. The whole course could be seen as a love letter to the self.
How does Your Creative Sparkle work?
- This is a three-month course which you can do in your own time. You have all the structure you need here. Within this you can be as free as you like.
- You need to commit only 10 minutes to 40 minutes a day to activities, whatever works for you.
- It’s a guided creative process, with video, illustrations, audio, specially composed music and text to inspire – these are your daily Sparkles.
- You will be invited to do 6 modules over 3 months. That’s 3 months journey into creativity, discovery and transition.
- You will make a collection of over fifty Creative Sparkle letters which you will curate into your own book or folio. Moreover, this can be shared, kept as a private collection or thrown to the wind and disposed of if you don’t want to keep a record of your work.
- This is a method to continue and to nourish your life going forwards.
- You can share posts, observations and your work with others if you’d like to, on our Facebook page, so this can also be a shared journey, or a private endeavour, whatever feels right to you.
What do you get in Your Creative Sparkle?
1. 3 months worth of unique daily stimuli and guidelines, including video, audio, photography and writing.
2. The means and method to create a totally unique book of your life, using the gentle comforting medium of the unsent letter.
3. A guided journey of self-care, a safe place to explore your own direction, and exclusive access to our nurturing community.
Who facilitates the Your Creative Sparkle course?
My name is Elspeth Penny. I am a mixed media Writer and Director, working in theatre, film, tv, short story and podcast. Working with senior academics and clinicians, I use or create original research and develop it into narratives for participants or for audiences. In addition, I’m an innovative arts&health workshop creator and leader in the Arts&Health field of therapeutic letter writing. In particular, I’ve a particular interest in the ‘little whispers’ of unheard voices. I am Director of a creative agency called 2BU Productions Ltd. A Cambridge University degree in Anthropology and Theology, followed by an MA in Theatre Directing/Script Writing from UEA informs all my work.
I’m also a woman who needs to depend on myself, and build a brilliant community around me. As a single parent, I’ve needed to be wise about getting all the essential needs met. Furthermore, in my twenties I trained in and worked as a sports injury and holistic masseur. I draw on this experience to practice self-care and this self-care provides the bedrock of all my work and life. I don’t always manage it because I work a bit too hard and make mistakes along with way, like everyone does! I’ve a bit of a dry sense of humour and I have great friends. I always will have the means to express myself – so I know it’s all going to be OK. As a result of this, I know my kids will be OK and I know that I help and inspire a lot of people through my work, and that means the world to me.
Why Letters?
I’ve always loved letters, and have a lot to thank them for. Some years I did a Tedx talk in Exeter about The Lost Art of Letter Writing. In the talk, I use the example of a World War 2 letter, for example, because during the wars, people wrote a lot of letters to each other. So we have a very personal record of our ancestors. I also talk about how letters that I have been sent and kept, have enhanced my own life, and why.
“Not many people today realise the importance of hand-written letters, so what Elspeth is doing is actually inspiring. Inspiring to stand up for the things that make us feel real and happy, such as those precious letters that you get from a relative that lives miles away from you. A letter with its own scent, feel, creativity truly holds a great power in it, and it’s quite a shame that this art is forgotten.” Ankh
“Thank you for the inspiration♥️” Annie Kasperova
After the Ted talk, I developed an arts&health project with a Bristol University project – Life of Breath, called Letter to My Breath. This became a research project, which I co-wrote two academic papers for. Perhaps we’ll write a third? We also talked at quite a few conferences. Art sprung out of the letters too, for example an installation called Suspended Breath by Louise Jenkins. Letters took me into academia and then to working with medics – talking and performing at conferences.
In 2020 I invited kidney patients to create letters, alongside clinician Barny Hole, and that work is continuing to develop to help patients let clinicians and the wider public know what it’s like to have a kidney conditions.
Though it’s letters that we’re creating in Your Creative Sparkle, it’s not quite letters in the way some see them. These letters could be made from anything, they could be seen as ‘found art’ or as collage. They are about process not perfection, they are often a conversation with the self, work in layers, mark making or pure expression. They are a creative reflection.
Why I am sharing this work? Why make a memoir?
It’s a privilege to be sharing a sparkly selection of what I’ve learned with you right here in Your Creative Sparkle. I normally work with small groups of people, in person, and because I see participants (and their families and friends) reap the benefits, I want to share these methods far and wide.
Through Your Creative Sparkle, you can discover a fertile vein of storytelling and artistry, personal to you. This will be using inspired, researched approaches you won’t find anywhere else. Because of this, here is the opportunity for you to discover and express your Little Whispers. Most importantly, this fertile vein is something you can keep for always.
How do I find the free online workshops, related to Your Creative Sparkle?
Keep in touch and we’ll make sure you find out when they’re coming and how you can see the video replay: /keepintouch.
How much does Your Creative Sparkle cost?
For a short period of time, you can do this pilot three month course for the special offer price of £195, less than the price of a coffee per day. We really want to make it as good as can be, so are offering it at this special rate as we gather feedback. After this point the price will increase. Book in now to secure your place!
Find out more and sign up here! Your Creative Sparkle
