Where We Meet

Every Thursday this autumn I’ve been escaping to Stowmarket for the ‘Where We Meet’ project run by Suffolk Artlink. Each week the same group of ten children from Year 5 visited the handily situated next door residential home to work with a bunch of the residents, taking part in chatting/writing led by me or art session led by the artist Caitlin Howells.
From the beginning it became obvious that my session wasn’t going to involve the participants writing – many of the residents were living with various stages of dementia – so it evolved into a conversation or ‘chatting room’ with Candida from Suffolk Artlink writing down good words or thoughts or memories as they emerged. It felt like a real luxury that we had time to evolve this – things like, Caitlin having the idea of starting with a song at the beginning and then allowing the group to play around with the lyrics. So we made up our own words for ‘My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean’ and ‘She’s Coming Round the Mountain’ and I suggested an old Scaffold number, ‘Today’s Monday’ which we also ‘customised’.
Each week we would have a different theme for the ‘chatting room’ – some worked better than others. So colours (based around the autumn leaves) worked well where as ‘sweets’ didn’t and just became a list of sweets rather than any memory around them. And there was always a crossover between the writing and the art with Caitlin using some of the words and phrases as part of her making (creating things like leaves and hanging them from ribbons with the words written on them).
My favourite session was when we discussed the moon and it quickly became pleasingly creative and a little strange. ‘What does the moon taste like?’ I asked one resident called Nancy. She looked at me like she hadn’t quite heard what I’d said to her (mostly she’s asked if she wants a cup of tea or coffee or whether she’s too hot or cold). So I asked again and Nancy smiled, said, ‘you are daft!’ and then thought a bit more and said ‘well, they say it’s made of cheese, so I suppose it would taste of that.’ But what kind of cheese? ‘Primula’ came the answer immediately. And then Doreen disagreed and suggested a blue cheese -‘Gorgonzola. Because you can see the blue lines running across the moon’s face.’
It all came to a close with a Celebration event, where we sang the songs (our own versions) and the children performed some of the group poems - that’s when the picture was taken. And here's the moon poem - the final line is a contribution from a lovely resident called Margaret, who if asked a question would often respond with a very apt song.
THE STOWMARKET MOON
It’s like a tablet dissolving behind a cloud
It’s white chocolate and tastes like milk
It’s a reflection of the earth
Its hung on a fishing hook
And in Ipswich they cut the moon down
It’s like the egg guy who fell off the wall
It’s a golf ball or just a round ring
It looks like a glass of milk
Or the top of a prit-stick from above
The moon is a melon or sometimes like
A chocolate orange segment
It’s luke warm mouldy milk
It has a happy face
The moon works most nights
And yawns and says, ‘I’m tired’
When the moon goes dark the birds go quiet
The moon is always over the mountain
It’s as scary as a sunflower
It’s as cold as a dog’s nose
It’s as cold as a polar bear’s igloo
It’s white because of all the snow there
The other day the moon got embarrassed and went red
And when Nancy was watching it
through the window, it disappeared!
The moon doesn’t like the sun
It’s friends with the sea
The moon dreams of coming down to earth
The moon tastes like gorgonzola or Primula
It smells of sweet peas or dafodils
When the moon is bright, she sings…
‘Take these chains from my heart and set me free…’