Let Creativity Begin ...

Wanted: A creative manager and/or shadowy svengali

2011-10-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I came to the realisation that I need a helping hand to get done what I want to get done. After much umming and erring and some pleasant detours I'm ready to ask for that help ... If this is you then please get in touch:

a) you love the art I create and want to use your cheerleading/creative management skills to encourage me to make more and fly higher/deeper.

b) you follow what I say on twitter with interest, curiousity, amusement and a large dose of forgiving patience.

c) you are reasonably confident that you'll be able to tell the difference between when you need to prod / coax / trick me into taking the next step and when you need to simply hold back and wait for the tempestuous breezes of my creative enthusiasms and/or despairs to roll on by.

If any of that applies to you then please do raise your hand or whisper in my ear and we can have a chat over coffee and cake, or wine and chocolate, or both of the above. My hope is that we'll find a way to work and play together 'in a spirit of mutual ambition' and that you'll get tangible benefits from working with me but that the promise of future ££ will not be the reason you want to embark on this unknown adventure. In the first instance I might be paying you in art / ideas / poetry / stories but that would hopefully be a short-term measure while we find our feet and wait for the music to start happening.

I'm particularly interested in hearing from anyone who wants to disruptively explore pay-what-you-wish, copyleft and self-publishing as methods of creative expression. If you have any questions then plonk them in the comments box below or give me a holler on twitter and I'll try to give a sensible answer :)

The Pay It Forward Art Fandango

2011-09-26T14:27:00.000-07:00

The lovely Corinna Spencer recently gifted me a small, but perfectly formed, piece of artwork as part of a pay it forward art fandango that she was participating in. Here is the piece she sent me ... it was hard to take a photo of it without capturing anything too revealing < blushes >

So now it's my turn to pay it forward. If you'd like me to send you a piece of artwork then leave a comment below or give me a shout on that there twitter. The first five people to holler will get a small something sent to them, completely gratis. The only catch is that you then have to send five people a piece of art/doodle/scrawl/whatever.

If you like the idea of getting art from me for free but feel lightheaded at the thought of having to send out some art yourself then there is another way ... ... ... < wait for it > .... ... ... yes, that's right, you can Give Blood, Get Art instead. Let the art rush commence!

Hand-drawing a Library of Creative Inspiration

2011-09-19T08:25:00.000-07:00

A while back I set up an Amazon affiliate shop widget thingy that (in theory) makes me a few pennies when someone clicks through to buy any of the books I've included in it. I say 'in theory' because so far I haven't made a single penny. Even so the whole 'making money from simply curating a collection of books that have inspired me' things leaves me feeling a bit icky and uneasy.

So I dreamt up a personal art project that disperses my own sense of ickiness about making unearned money ... I'm planning to hand-draw the front cover of each of the treasured books I own and share the reasons why I cherish it.

First up is Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg which I bought in 1999 from a bookstall at the Womad Festival when I was slightly under the influence of hot spiced cider. It was the first Natalie Goldberg book I bought and it's now dog-eared and travel-worn. Every now and then I misplace it at the bottom of a bag or a box and it seems to always resurface just at the moment when I've given up on ever finding it again. It was also the first book published by Shambhala that I bought. Over the years I've come to treat the Shambhala logo on a book as a sign that I should go ahead and buy the book I'm leafing through in a bookshop - they've become the gold standard of zen books for me :)

The opening paragraph will probably be enough for you to recognise whether Natalie's words speaks to your life story. It certainly was for me:

"I was a goody-two-shoes all through school. I wanted my teachers to like me. I learned commas, colons, semicolons. I wrote compositions with clear sentences that were dull and boring. Nowhere was there an original thought or genuine feeling. I was eager to give the teachers what I thought they wanted."

The overall message of Writing Down the Bones is *Sit down to write. Keep your hand moving.* If you sometimes find yourself frozen to the spot by perfectionism and procrastination then you'll find Natalie's words as comforting and inspiring as I did. What Natalie writes about is a lifelong journey of making "a choice for beauty, kind consideration [mostly for ourself], and clear truth." Mindful choices made with our feet on the ground and in the knowledge that "we are not running after beauty with fear at our backs."

Carrying a campfire within me

2011-09-18T09:44:00.001-07:00

Even though it's been nearly a month since I headed to deepest Hampshire for Uncivilisation: the Dark Mountain Festival, I still don't quite have the words to tell you what I experienced there. So for now ....

.... Wrap this woollen shawl around your shoulders. I finished knitting it as I sat listening to the bands perform and the speakers speak. The yarn was soaked through with the words I heard and I knitted them into the very fabric of it ....

.... Hold this rough ball of stone tightly in your hand. I found this small spherical rock just by the entrance to the Woodland Stage as I quietly slipped into a session where an animist priestess held a space for us for to unravel and reveal our true motives and share deeply intimate stories ....

.... Listen to the fearless feral choir and wonder what the world would be like if we all had opportunities to test the full range of our voices along with a congregration of strangers, who would quickly become friends, in a spirit of trusting solidarity and communal courage ....
The Inaugural Performance of the Uncivilisation Feral Choir

.... Words are on their way in the form of stories and poems but for now here are the words I've been catching as they swirl around my head:

It's great to know that a date has already been set for next year's Uncivilisation I'm already looking forward to the long journey to hope and then back home.

If I ruled the world ...

2011-07-25T07:15:00.000-07:00

... it would be called the United States of Sanctuary.

This would be the flag we'd fly:

And this would be the national anthem we gather to sing from our souls:

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues by subpop

Postcards From the Edge of Poetry

2011-06-04T06:11:00.000-07:00

I went onto Chat Roulette for the first and, most probably, the last time. I completely blame Ben Folds for my curiousity. I had my webcam and mic switched off. Something in the bored eyes of the strangers I saw looking back at me inspired the poetic part of my brain. I've constructed a poem-ish thing from the fleeting fragments of, sometimes one sided, conversations. It was easier than I expected (and less harrowing) but the hard part is that most people spin the wheel as soon as they see you haven't got your webcam on - I managed to get a few people to talk to me though ... Below is the result of our anonymous interactions, edited and slightly reconstructed but using only the words that appeared in the chat box. Because of the way the chat box works much of the text appears in reverse to the order it was typed in ... somehow it still seems to work.

{*warning: Chat Roulette is a *bad* place - please do not journey there yourself*}

[...] wait. [...]

from the ether
a fragment
of poetry.

Wait

for a small sign
of life
for a small sign
of light
in the darkness

wait

in the darkness

wait.

[...]

Hello friend

I don't have friends
but I will
yes you can

ok

you?
shy
you?
deep woman
woman
girl
a boy
or a girl?

je
suis
not
pretty

je
suis
une
poet

wait.

[...]

Hello darkness

hello
darkness

goodbye.

Wait

before
I
leave
you
I
don't
mind
if
you
leave
me

this is
my first
time
have you
been here
before?
oui

garave
like grave?
serious?
oui

une artiste?
oui

ok

you femme?
or
a butterfly?
maybe
a spider?

has something caught your eye?
what are you looking at?

did your mind fall
asleep
and drift
into the ether?

are you still breathing?
are you asleep?

au revoir

wait.

[...]

Hello

next time
the wheel stops
spinning
maybe
we will find
each other
again

it will be like
we're listening to John Cage
or dreaming in the dark
if we stay quiet for 4mins 33secs

[...]

it will be like
finding
a momentary soulmate
when i find
another
black square

i like the silence

wait.

[...]

We are all artists ... no, really, we are

2011-02-25T04:40:00.000-08:00

I'm prepared to admit that we are not all Vincent Van Gogh or Jackson Pollock or Georgia O'Keefe. But we can all make a mark on the page and leave our mark on the world. Start by scrawling, keep going, maybe progress to doodling or adding flourishes to what you write, or throw a whole tin of paint at a wall then stand back and watch the paint draw its own masterpiece. [n.b. this author will not be held liable for any damage caused to either your property or your propriety.] If that all still sounds too scary then start of with tracing paper and a pencil and draw anything you like from a magazine or a book or your computer screen - Ignore anyone who tells you tracing is cheating - invite them to join in or jog on [or stronger words if you're feeling feisty].

Online sketch tools like the wonderfully delicate and dreamy Odopod reveal drawing for what it really is ... one line, followed by another, continue until you're finished, or until you run out of ink, or until you lose the feeling in your hand.

http://sketch.odopod.com/

Another online mark making tool that will show you up for the artist that you are is the hypnotically compelling http://mrdoob.com/projects/harmony/

Here's another one - I drew it while I was on a conference call, it's called 'Dog Bubble Doodle' ... maybe naming your creations might feel too fancy at first, in which case call them 'scrawl 1', 'scrawl 2', 'scrawl 3' etc until they start naming themselves.

Off you go ... be the artist you are ... come back and show me the marks you make ... or at least a photo of the drawer you're hiding them in.

Sermon over.

Update: I'm going to keep adding things here until every last one of you (i.e. all 9 of my readers ;-)) show me something they've drawn ...

Dionne Swift's 'Speed Drawing' blogpost is aimed at textile artists but it would be great fun for anyone. [hat tip to Sally Fort for tweeting about it]

My declaration of decapitalised creative expression

2011-02-21T03:23:00.000-08:00

When the tickets for The Story 2011 went on sale I didn't think twice about buying one. Last years event was one of the highlights of the year for me and I still have vivid memories of many of the stories that were shared [some were fiction, some were non-fiction, some were somewhere inbetween]

The blurb for this years event read much the same as last years: "The Story is not about theories of stories, or making money from stories, but about the sheer visceral pleasure of telling a story." So on Friday I sat in the wonderful Conway Hall eagerly anticipating another day of captivating yarns and hoping that I would be able to control my tears more ably than I did last year. I sat all day listening to a masterfully assembled cast of wonderful speakers talking brilliantly about storytelling and I had, you know, a *good* day, but I left feeling somewhat troubled. Partly because, for me, there had been only momentary glimmers of heart-stopping storytelling (and for most of those moments I felt like I'd had to work hard to extract the marrow of the story myself) and occasionally it had felt like I'd stumbled into a project evaluation meeting or that I was picking up a timewarped broadcast of the This is Playful event from 5 months earlier. But, much more than that, I just couldn't stop wondering why so many of the speakers had started their talks by claiming that they weren't storytellers. My heart had sunk a little deeper throughout the day whenever someone announced "I'm not a storyteller..."

In his talk, Karl James asked the question "how do stories limit who someone can be?" ... in Karl's case the story he told us was that he was a 'story listener, not a story teller'. Perhaps the day was lacking in oral storytelling in the sense that there were no magical re-tellings of events, or spellbinding narration of fairytales, or poems, or any other fiction really, but the day was certainly rich in the tangle-weaved words of stories about the speakers and the stories they choose to listen to, or tell, or show, in the work they do and the anecdotes they recounted. The wise folk of Wikipedia say: "Storytelling is the art of portraying real or fictitious events in words, images, and sounds, often by improvisation or embellishment. ... Crucial elements of stories and storytelling include plot, characters and narrative point of view." I would argue that all of the speakers told us a story and, by extension, are storytellers whether they cared to admit it or not.

It struck me that maybe the crux of this 'I'm not a storyteller' conundrum is that the speakers were thinking of storyteller with a capital letter, i.e. 'I'm not a Storyteller' in the 'my job title isn't Storyteller' sense rather than as a denial of their instrinsic storytelling nature. I then started pondering whether this is the same problem when people say 'I'm not creative' or 'I can't draw' etc, etc.

My meandering thoughts became quite disgruntled as I pondered how anyone could claim that they're not a storyteller when we tell fragments of our own epic story every time we speak, or claim we're not a dancer when we move with our own unique rhythm as we walk and can stumble with unintended grace. As soon as I started removing the capital letter from various creative roles I could see fragments of those roles glimmering in our everyday lives: squeezing toothpaste from the tube becomes an act of sculpture, entertaining a small child in the post office queue becomes performance art.

And so I've written a manifesto of sorts as a reminder to myself and others that, whether we care to admit it or not, we are all practitioners of everyday artistry. even if what we create can sometimes lack a certain aesthetic refinement or craftmanship.

*update: speaker name snafu corrected [nothing to see here, move along]

you and me and an ampersand

2011-01-30T14:30:00.000-08:00

I was lucky enough to be gifted 12 tiny wooden ampersands and I'd like to turn them into 12 pieces of artwork.

If you'd be interested in commissioning one of the pieces then get in touch - the price of each piece will depend on how large the finished artwork is, but as a rough guide it will be the cost of the frame multiplied by four :)

Each piece will include one of the wooden ampersands which are about the size of a 20p coin ... which leaves plenty of space to incorporate any ideas you might have :)

Head over to Rhona Mowat's blog to find out how these beautifully crafted wooden ampersands came to be.

#Update:
Number of commissions since I posted this blog ... zero.
Number of ampersands left ... eleven. (because I sat on one and broke it)
... < le sigh >

Serendipitous Searching

2011-01-29T07:09:00.000-08:00

I have come to the conclusion that performing a Google Image search is a fail-safe and fast-track route into the realms of serendipity. Yesterday I was looking for images of ampersands ... more specifically, I was looking for 'how to draw an ampersand' as source material for a new doodle that had popped into my noggin.

My search lead me to this image on the Snore & Guzzle blog

Something in the blogpost piqued my curiosity so I had a bit of a dig around and read through some more of their posts. By the time I got to a thought piece called 'Stacks', written by Michael Neault, I knew I'd found some kindred spirits. I love the clarity of his statements about the unique benefits of libraries:

"You can touch anything in the library. No one tries to sell you anything. Everything is free."

The focus of the blogpost is on how wandering aimlessly through the stacks can lead to discovering hidden treasures and a sense of purpose.

I agree wholeheartedly that there is something deeply therapeutic about wandering through libraries and stumbling across something you didn't know you were looking for - with the current threats to the future of UK public libraries I'm left wondering whether the serendipitous image searches I get a kick out of online could ever provide anywhere near the same level of therapeutic sustenance once all the library shelves are empty.

If I worked in a public library I would turn Michael's resonant prose into a poster and stick it to the front door:

"You can touch anything in the library. No one tries to sell you anything. Everything is free."

Links worth looking at (imho):
http://www.voicesforthelibrary.org.uk/wordpress/
The #savelibraries hashtag on Twitter
Philip Pullman's speech in defense of public libraries
Snore & Guzzle's 'About Us' page which only served to deepen my intellectual crush on them ... "Story-telling is not a luxury, it is an absolutely core need." {Robert Rosen} ... Amen to that.

A book is a fragile creature ...

2010-10-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

"A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion."
~Umberto Eco~

Have Fun, Make Art - A creative competition

2010-09-18T08:05:00.000-07:00

The thing about being around Hope and Social is that it makes hard work look like fun and makes being in the audience feel like being part of something. In the hopes of passing on some creative inspiration from Hope and Social via me, I'd like to invite you to take part in a little competition ...

Last year I took a series of photos from a moving train. Yesterday I finally got round to turning those photos into a video:

Here Comes The Sun from Helen Harrop on Vimeo.

It's missing something isn't it? There's no sound for starters and it feels a bit sparse. So here's what I'm thinking ... you watch my video, then scamper off and listen to some of Hope & Social's music and then create something, create anything ... it could be an instrumental soundtrack for my video, or a poem, or a reading of a poem, or a reading of Hope & Social lyrics, or a doodle, or a painting or a video of your own ... an-y-thing as long as it's in someway a response to my video and to Hope & Social's music. Feel free to download and hack up/deface my video or let me know if you want any of the photos that the video was created from (maybe you'd like to print one out and write/doodle on it?). You can do anything, bold or simple, complicated or off the cuff - if you could keep it safe for family viewing that would be nice but feel free to do something dark if that's what springs to mind.

You've got until midnight on the 18th October to create something and send me a link to it. I'll then ask Hope & Social to pick a winner (they don't know anything about this so hopefully they'll say yes, if not then I'll chose the winner). If your creation is chosen as the winning entry then you will get the following prizes:
- A physical copy of 'Architect of this Church' by Hope & Social (which I'll ask them to sign )
- A wind-damaged plastic kazoo from the Hope & Social Fun Bus trip
- A knotted handkerchief which my lovely husband crafted and wore on the Hope & Social Fun Bus trip with the letter 'I' on it (photo to follow)
- An original doodle by me inspired by the H&S Fun Bus artwork

By entering you'll be giving permission for me to post your entry here on my blog (credited to you of course) - I promise not to do anything evil with it :) The judge's decision will be final etc, etc.

Now ... go forth and let creativity begin :)

[update: Number of entries ... zero ... pffft]

Wherever We Gather We'll Sing From Our Souls

2010-09-18T06:15:00.000-07:00

The Saturday after my birthday I found myself catching an early o'clock bus to York so that Mark and I could catch a (still quite early o'clock for a Saturday) train to Leeds so that we could get on an open-top bus to travel back in the direction of where we live and pass within a 5 minute drive of our house some 3 hours after we left it. The bus sat in a traffic jam for about 15 minutes when we were not quite close enough to a roadside establishment where a much needed comfort break could be enjoyed.

An hour later and the bus trundled along narrow country roads and we had to keep our wits about us to a) avoid getting showered by breeze-caught Leeds Pale and b) protect our noggins from being knocked off by a passing tree. As we lumbered across the North York Moors a particularly steep hill proved too much for our brave jalopy and the thick black smoke coming from the back of the bus and we were forced to bail out and trudge across the moors like deluded cultural vagrants.

I should also mention that most of the time you could not hear yourself think due to the glee-ful wooping and seemingly endless singing and throughout the journey we were forced to carry out arts and crafts chores and other acts of drudgery - all the time with a cheerful smile plastered across our faces for fear that we would get thrown overboard if we didn't look like we were having fun.

Listen!

The unflinching gaze of the camera-wielding sentinels meant that we could never be certain that we weren't be observed and any dissenting actions caught on film for later scrutiny. The mantra 'Make Art, Have Fun' was drummed into us until we lost any sense of our individual identities.

When we finally reached our destination we had to don a uniform which comprised of a knotted hanky on our head (with letters on them that made up a secret message that we were forbidden from trying to decode) and carry all of our wordly belongings down a long steep hill, across a vast beach and up one final flight of steps to our temporary camp.

By now the Dunkirk spirit had kicked in and we all laughed and smiled as we were able to relax for the first time. However it soon became clear that we had been brought to a place with no means of communicating to the outside world and that we would be expected to take part in demeaning physical activities such as 'musical deckchairs' while our smiling captors looked on and jeered.

Only once our benevolent hosts were confident that Stockholm Syndrome had overtaken the entire group were we rewarded with a jubilant musical rally, complete with mandatory flag-waving, and some delicious, delicious food at the end of a long queue.

Our final ordeal was the long trudge back to our bus which we were literally marched back to with no let up in the singing, smiling and the laughing allowed.

Listen!

I will never forget the huddling quietness of being forced to travel back on the open-top bus in the dark, cold, windy night wishing that someone would let me share their survival blanket and where the only interaction with our captors was being forced to sing along to shambolic covers of various 90s rock songs.

It is testament to the depth of our brainwashing that I remain convinced several weeks later that this was one of the best days of my life. Our journey was a metaphoric one as much as a literal journey and since then I have been plagued by vivid, epic dreams where I am back on the Hope and Social 'Fun' Bus, swaddled by beaming smiles and embraced by endless laughter.

Hope & Social Fun Bus propoganda:
Culture Vulture blogpost
Flickr photos
Eduserv summarizr page for #hsfunbus

Pounds, Pints and Hours

2010-09-01T01:31:00.000-07:00

Today is my birthday and I am in the mood for taking your good wishes and turning them into good deeds ... so here's the deal:

Option 1:

Donate money to a good cause - maybe the DEC's Pakistan Flood Appeal? - or maybe a cause of your choice, one that is close to your heart? Leave a comment below (anonymous if you'd prefer) letting me know how much you've donated and, as it's my {cough} 38th birthday I'll donate 38% of whatever you donate ... this will challenge my maths skills but I'm sure I'm up to the task.
{see below for a slight disclaimer}

Option 2:

Do something amazing and register to give blood or, even better, head to a drop in centre and hand over a pint in your lunch hour. In return you will not only feel like a superhero but if you head to http://givebloodgetart.blogspot.com/ and fill in the form then I will send you a doodle.

Option 3:

If you are thinking 'this all sounds like a lovely idea but a) I don't have tuppence ha'penny to rub together, let alone give away and b) I'm rather attached to my blood' then this could be the option for you. Donate your time in hours to the kind souls that surround you or to a local voluntary organisation (http://www.do-it.org/ could be a good starting point if you don't know anyone who needs your help). Leave a comment below to let me know how many hours you're donating and I'll donate 38% of the total time that folks pledge.

So go forth, give of yourself and then let me know about it.

{{slight disclaimer: I have limited funds available which I estimate will more than cover your generosity but if anything crazy happens with the option 1 donations then I'll give all the cash I have available and find another way to cover any residual karmic debt}}

today I am an artist

2010-08-25T07:53:00.000-07:00

When you wear an 'Artist' wristband at a festival with such an amazing line up it is hard not to feel like a bit of a a fraud but I have to say that this purpley cerise strip of fabric made me feel pretty special ... I'm even keeping it on now that I'm home to remind myself of my achievement :)

On Saturday evening I stood in front of about 30 people in a yurt in Einstein's Garden and spoke about my personal journey into and out of creativity and then back into creativity and beyond into computing and how I've realised that very little separates art from science. The talk lasted less than 5 minutes; 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide ... when I finished I was literally breathless. It was in many ways an utterly terrifying experience and next time I will do it better but it was brilliant to be able to share my story (alongside Neil Cocker who talked about how to simplify your life and Emma-Louise Hardman who talked about her Climate Stories journey, and also six other inspiring speakers).

Although I couldn't really relax properly for the first half of the festival it was worth it for the experience and it felt good to be (literally) labelled as an artist for the whole weekend :)

My musical highlights of Green Man were:

Lowrie Evans
Sweet Baboo
Erland & the Carnival (esp. Trouble in Mind)
Doves
Billy Bragg
Lone Wolf
Laura Marling
Mumford & Sons
Josie Long
Joanna Newsom

More personal highlights and reminiscences to follow shortly :)

songs that stop me in my tracks: Open Heart Zoo by Martin Grech

2010-08-25T07:03:00.000-07:00

Go in the direction of your fears

2010-08-15T15:58:00.001-07:00

go in the direction of your fears, originally uploaded by creating in the dark.

These blog posts have resonated wildlly with me recently:
http://swirlygirl.typepad.com/swirly_girl/2010/08/five-things-especially-for-you-yes-you.html

http://ruthannharnisch.com/the-coach/i-come-for-the-one/

I've been thinking a lot about about identity and honesty since yesterday's blogpost ... Last year a friend of a friend said to her "the thing about Helen is she's fearless." That really couldn't be further from the truth but (having read Ruth Ann Harnisch's blogpost) I'm starting to think I might be able to be fearless for 'the one' ... we'll see.

Me and my aspirations laid bare

2010-08-14T06:54:00.000-07:00

To some of you this might come as a bit of a surprise, or perhaps it's pretty obvious to most already but I have spent most of my adult life battling to overcome a sometimes cripplingly low self confidence. When it's come to taking opportunities to progress I have mostly relied on being in the right place at the right time and/or the encouragement of others to make me go for it. My natural inclination is to wait for someone to tell me that I stand a good chance of succeeding or to let the opportunity pass by ... usually because I feel that I'm not ready, or I don't have time to put together a decent application, or that I wouldn't deliver if I did get through, or whatever other paper-thin excuses that my monkey mind has dreamt up. All too often I've taken myself out of the running rather than risk failure or rejection.

The reason I'm telling you this is that I want something big and I want to ask for your help to make me brave enough to go for it ... This seems like an utterly ludicrous thing to be typing but I'd like to apply for a place on the TED Fellowship scheme ... madness, total lunatic madness right? As soon as the little hopeful voice inside me thought 'ooh, that would be *amazing* ... I wonder if I could apply' it was swamped by a tidal wave of self-doubt rushing in the other direction. That wave of self-doubt boils down to me struggling to see what I've done that is remarkable enough to justify putting in an application ... basically a huge big, resounding, tuneless chorus of 'I'm not worthy'.

So here's how you might be able to help ... if you can think of anything that I've done that seems remarkable to you or has inspired you in any way then please leave a comment below (or send me an email if you'd rather not do it publically). If you are kind enough to share your thoughts with me then I'll happily and gratefully reward you with a doodle in return ... that's not meant as an inducement or a bribe, I just know how much effort it takes to put time aside to do stuff like this.

My gut feeling is that I should wait another year (or two or three) until I have done something bold and outstanding but maybe you see things differently? All views welcome but be gentle if it's a 'don't be so flaming daft' comment :)

A rose by any other name

2010-08-14T06:40:00.001-07:00

today she was a rose, originally uploaded by creating in the dark.

For nearly a year I've been grappling in the back of my mind with the question of whether it still made sense to have two separate twitter accounts. Last month I came to the conclusion that there is so much convergence in my art life and my non-art life that it would be better to drop one of the accounts. In the process I confused myself and just about everyone else who noticed something had changed. In the interests of (hopefully) clarifying things and as a cautionary tale for anyone else who finds themselves in a similar position.

Here's a timeline of what happened:
Back in the summer of 2007 I joined twitter, and @helenharrop was born.
My twitter account sat fairly dormant until later that year when I started meeting other people in the real world who used twitter.
Many moons later I decided to change my twitter name to @iamhelenharrop which seems a bit crazy because it's 3 characters longer but it matches my email address and I liked the quirkiness of it.
In December 2008 I made the fateful decision to set up a second twitter account, originally as a safe place to hide, which became @iamcreative and was where I posted about arty and creative things rather than more geeky stuff which was usually connected to my work life.

When I made the decision to drop one of the accounts I was faced with a conundrum ... my @iamhelenharrop account had a longer history and therefore would reflect my cool geek status as a fairly early adopter of twitter ... but I really liked the @iamcreative name and felt that it better expresses what I'm about ... so I came up with a cunning solution ... well it seemed cunning at the time, in retrospect it was ony ever going to cause high levels of confusion.

Here's what I did:
Step 1) I renamed my @iamcreative account to be @iamelsewhere
Step 2) I renamed my @iamhelenharrop account to be @iamcreative
Simples! ... except that the result was mild to extreme confusion for my followers (particularly those following my @iamcreative account originally).

I had thought that renaming the account I was dropping @iamelsewhere would flag to folks that I had moved to a different account but I don't think people have largely realised that's what it means (and I'm still getting new followers thanks to the new 'Who to Follow' feature on twitter). The confusion was greatly exacerbated by the fact that I was telling folks who followed me as @iamcreative to switch and follow me as @iamcreative ... a few people replied saying words to the effect of 'eh?! I'm already following you as @iamcreative' and then I had to try and explain in 140 characters what had happened.

Effectively what I've done is to move my arty twitter id over to my work account without a clear strategy for getting my arty followers to move with me ... fairly big fail there! I've been thinking a lot about how I can remedy the situation and have decided that:
a) I'm going to post a link to this blogpost a few times over the forthcoming days and weeks on my @iamelsewhere account

b) I'm going to change the @iamelsewhere account to 'protected' in a few weeks time so that new folks are put off following me

c) I'm going to go through the 300+ folks I was following on the original @iamcreative account (which is now @iamelsewhere ... keep up!) and follow them as @iamcreative (using the account that used to be @iamhelenharrop ... is this making any sense yet?!)

So there you go ... how to confuse several hundred people and lose 700+ followers in two easy steps ... next time I try anything like this I think I'll storyboard the process first!

In conclusion if you were following me as @iamcreative before July then you need to follow me again at http://twitter.com/iamcreative :)

Inspiring Women Project

2010-07-20T07:40:00.000-07:00

Inspiration from UK Handmade

2010-06-21T04:45:00.000-07:00

I feel like I barely need to add any words to this - it's awesomness is self-evident - but I should at least credit Emma Seaton (aka @amoebababe) for bringing it to my attention :)

Behold:

Click to launch the full edition in a new window
Publishing Software from YUDU

Give Blood ~ Get Art

2010-05-20T05:44:00.001-07:00

Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust, originally uploaded by creating in the dark.

In the spirit of sharing I am going to tell you something shameful ... The last time I gave blood was about 10 years ago ... at least ... (where the heck does the time go?!!). At the beginning of May I decided that enough was enough, I swallowed my shame and took myself along to a local blood donor session. This story should end with me saying how lovely and understanding the nurses were (true) and how I skipped off home with my head held high, one pint of blood poorer but one cup of tea and one biscuit richer ... unfortunately I was in for a bit of a nasty surprise - my blood count was too low for me to donate so I skulked off back home without my free biscuit and without the feeling that I had done something amazing

It turns out that I'm anaemic ... nothing serious but I won't be able to give blood for another year :( ... I've come up with an idea to encourage you folks out there to give blood on my behalf. It's simple ... go and give blood ... come back and tell me about it ... I'll send you a little hand-drawn doodle (a 'bloodle'!) to thank you for being awesome!

A few of you might be thinking 'Dang! I'd love to get my hands on a doodle but I can't give blood ... boo! not fair!' ... worry not! If you can persuade someone you know to give blood then I'll send you both a doodle ... happy days!

I've had a go at creating a form for you to fill in once you've given blood (or once the person you've persuaded has given blood) ... I'm not going to put an expiry date on this offer (it took me 10 years to get round to going after all!) but obviously if everyone steps up to the plate and gives blood then I might need to have a re-think :) ... but for now, go forth and do something amazing! {beaming in anticipation of how proud you're going to make me}

songs that stop me in my tracks: Strange and Beautiful by Aqualung

2010-04-14T16:58:00.000-07:00

Live&Love York ... OMG!

2010-04-05T09:12:00.000-07:00

Those of you who follow me on twitter will already know that I am a complete Live&Love York fan girl ... so you'll also appreciate just how thrilled/overwhelmed I was to be chosen as the winner of their April Creative Showcase competition ... it's crazy and I'm still speechless a week later. They've featured 3 of my Howies catalogue doodles/defacements and I'll be collaborating with them on a future magazine cover ... like I said, *crazy*. Just shows what can happen when you put yourself out there :)

You can see my doodles on pages 41-43 of the April issue, or you can see them together with the other Summer 2009 Howies catalogue doodles in my 'I Love Howies' flickr photoset.

You can never meet your hero(ines)

2010-03-24T15:26:00.001-07:00

It has slowly become apparent to me over recent months that meeting your heroes/heroines is a completely impossible task ... which is not to say that you cannot be in the same room as your heroes, you can shake their hand, look them in the eye and even talk to them, maybe even walk along the road with them ... but there is one problem ... and it's a big one ... They will not recognise themself as a hero or heroine. When you say 'it's such an honour to meet you' they will (assuming they're used to being thought of as a heroine) politely accept your (probably greatly tempered) adoration with a gracious smile.

... But you will, unfortunately, detect the almost, very nearly, imperceptible blanching of their skin as they internally recoil in reaction to the identity dissonance that you've inflicted on them. Nobody feels like a celebrity and nobody feels like a hero. You can, by all means, meet those who you have projected hero status onto but do not expect it to feel all warm and cosy. Fear not, meeting *your* heroes will still be thoroughly wonderful and life enhancing but allowing them to be themself and minimising any swooning at their feet is probably about the best way to repay them for the inspiration that they have unknowingly bestowed on you over the years.

My Finding Ada Heroine: Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock MBE

2010-03-24T05:03:00.000-07:00

I have Twitter and @Belladax to thank for introducing me to the inspiring Maggie Aderin-Pocock. @Belladax tweeted the following words a few weeks ago: "Who is this lady on desert island discs?she's awesome! What a great ability to explain science-y things #R4". This tweet activated the my 'being helpful to people I don't know' gene and I scampered off to find out who it was and tweeted back Maggie's name and a link to the relevant BBC webpage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00r33mq

Some days later I finally got round to listening to the show myself and Maggie had the same impact on me that she'd had on @Belladax ... a space scientist who has a special relationship with the moon, built her own telescope as a teenager and was inspired to study space by watching the Clangers as a kid??! ... I was in instant awe!

Everything I've seen about Maggie since has backed up that initial impression and I love that she's so passionate about inspiring the next generation to follow in her footsteps, while finding their own path. Maggie's Telegraph article from a year ago is a pretty good introduction to the wonderful Maggie Aderin-Pocock: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/4985076/Lets-inspire-the-next-generation-of-scientists.html

You can watch Maggie in action on this compelling video about the importance of role models and getting kids to aspire to follow their dreams:

I vote that we make Clangers required viewing for every youngster (and, imho, make Moomins required reading) and help Maggie in her mission to inspire the next generation of scientists (and explorers, bodgers, inventors, artists and creative thinkers)

A tiny part of something great

2010-03-20T06:51:00.001-07:00

I couldn't be more over the moon to see one of my Do Lectures doodles made it into their flick book (pg24) - photography is by the uber-talented and all round nice chap, James Bowden (see http://www.jamesbowden.net/ for proof!).

Wing-Girl Required, apply within

2010-03-04T01:22:00.000-08:00

I'm organising an event which will encourage folks to go for their dreams rather than wait until they feel ready. The working title for the event is 'Wait Not For Your Wings'. It will be an event for me as much as for anyone else - a reminder to go for it, just run off the edge and let the wind catch me.

If I try and do it alone I'm worried that it might never happen ... so I'm looking for a wing-girl, someone to bounce ideas off and who might help with some of the organising and who will keep things (i.e. *me*) on track.

The heart and soul of this event is contained within this one tweet: http://twitter.com/iamcreative/status/9823689783. I already have permission to run a screening of The Lemonade Movie and James Whitaker is up for showing his beautiful 'After Redundancy' portraits.

Likely date: late April, early May
Likely venue: York or Leeds
Likely remuneration: £Zero (but I will do my darndest to cover your expenses)

The next few months should be a thoroughly enjoyable adventure ... who's with me?

p.s. if you are not a girl but would still like to help me make the event happen then let me know, I'm very open-minded ;-)

Time to make my own manifesto

2010-02-08T12:11:00.000-08:00

Lately I've come to the realisation that I have no firm idea of what is important to me; what I will stand for and what I will fall for - my aim is to do some digging and find out so that I can make my own manifesto like the fantastic one from Aardvark on Sea (thanks to @betsybeth for buying it for me!):

The Right Brain Terrain manifesto by Frederic Terral is equally inspiring: "Just create to create. Create stuff to remind yourself you're still alive"

Update:
I still haven't nailed down my manifesto but I'm getting there (slowly). In the meantime I'm collecting inspiring manifestos that I stumble across on my journey and I'll list them here.
Olivia Sprinkel's 'Creativist Manifesto' on ChangeThis.com calls for more Being/Doing and less Consuming. It's a weighty manifesto at 17 pages long but well worth the read. I'm currently at page 6 and my favourite line so far is "Be wide-eyed"

I found this guide to writing your own manifesto via Hugh MacLeod's article on making art every day ... fantastic stuff :)

Update:
Over a year later and I still haven't written my own manifesto ... erm, what's up with that?!

I did come close with this proclamation though. And this list of 5 manifestos on the 99 Percent blog is very inspiring so you never know, I might get round to doing my own one of these days.

Let Creativity Begin Retreat: Exciting guest photographer

2009-10-01T12:27:00.000-07:00

'he listened' - photo by Naomi Calvert

As soon as I saw this photo, which Naomi Calvert (@_nai_) took while she was at the Do Lectures, I knew I was in the presence of a pretty special photographer. When I saw the rest of the photos she took during those magical days at Fforest and read her blog I thought how great it would be if I could somehow find a way to get Naomi to teach me photography. Organising my first creativity retreat has provided the perfect opportunity to do just that ... I've invited Naomi to be a guest tutor at the retreat and she's agreed! I'm so excited and can't wait to find out how Naomi gets such amazing quality of light and a sense of honesty in her photos.

Good Cause Auctions, now with added doodling delightfulness

2009-09-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

So here's my latest scheme to raise money for good causes (I should point out up front that one of those good causes happens to be me!):

Auction 1:

My Do Lectures notebook packed full of scribbled snippets of wordly wisdom gleaned from each of the Do Lectures speakers PLUS whoever wins the auction will get a Do Lectures inspired doodle from me every month between now and the next Do Lectures in 2010.

25% of whatever I raise will be donated to the Do Lectures to give them a headstart on their fundraising for the 2010 lectures. Another 25% will go to Ben Bowen to support his fantastic DoTour adventure. The other 50% will go to me and I will spend put it in a safe place and put it towards my 2010 Do Lectures ticket.

Auction 2:

My Howies 2009 Summer Catalogue which features 7 of my doodles hand-drawn over some beautifully inspiring photography by James Bowden ... by the time I mail the catalogue out it will almost definitely have more doodles in it :-) PLUS whoever wins will get a Howies inspired doodle from me every month for a year.

50% of whatever I raise will be donated to James' Bourgeois Bicycle Caravan adventure. The other 50% will go to, you guessed it, me.

So how this will work* is you drop me a message via the comments here, or on twitter, or on Facebook, or via email or by running up to me in the street and let me know which auction you want to bid on and what your best bid is. I'll keep this blogpost updated with the highest bid and I'll close the bidding on Sunday evening (27th September) at around 9pm.

*All the usual rules apply ... basically I make the final decision about who the winning bidder is and I won't close the bidding until all bidders are finished ... this isn't ebay ;-)

One Hundred Days Of DO

2009-09-21T14:14:00.001-07:00

One Hundred Days Of DO, originally uploaded by creating in the dark.

Today I bought a new notebook for recording my first 100 Days of DO-ing ... The first 100 Days of Do is up on the 16th December and hopefully there will be meetups of Doers going on all over the UK ... all I have to do is help make it happen and then decide which meetup to go to :-)

By the way, I've worked out that if you work to a 100 day change cycle then you can have three change cycles every year and still have 65 days of rest ... I quite like the sound of that!

Do you want to play?

2009-09-20T10:15:00.000-07:00

When I started this blog it was part of me taking a tiny first step towards a long-held dream ... to help others have fun exploring their creativity. My fledgling idea was that eventually I would hold workshops for creative souls who want to play at making art, crafty bits and pieces. Thanks to an inspiring talk by Andrew Reason at the Do Lectures (and helped along by a sharp nudge in the ribs from the irrepresible Duke Stump) I've decided to take a leap and organise the first ever 'Let Creativity Begin workshop'.

Here's the plan: a group of us (girls only I'm afraid!) will spend 3 or 4 days together in early November. You can stay at my house or at a local hostelry. I'll supply the materials, inspiration and food ... you bring your sense of fun and a willingness to share your ideas and play. During the day we'll cover the dining room table with words, paintbrushes, scraps of material, glue and things we've ripped from magazines; In the evening we'll eat together, drink together, make popcorn, watch heartwarming films and share our stories ... we might even sing, or teach each other to knit, or go for a scary torchlit walk in the woods.

You'll be helping me shape future workshops so I'll leave it up to you to pay what you think the workshop is worth/contribute however much you can afford. If you're interested in coming to this workshop then get in touch and we can take it from there!

Do be brave, Do be happy

2009-09-18T09:54:00.000-07:00

I am currently finding myself rather dumbstruck at the magnitude of awesome things that are going on in my life right now. Today seems to have completely gone off the awesomeness scale and is carrying right on up through the stratosphere.

First of all it's payday ... which might not seem all that awesome but it means that I can pay back one of my Do-nators. Paul Carruthers (@paulcarruthers) blew me away when he donated £100 - firstly because we'd only recently met on twitter when he made the donation and secondly because he was doing his own fundraising at the time and training to cycle from Lands End to John O'Groats! The doodle I did for Paul is below {well it would be if blogger was uploading the image! in the meantime you can see it here} and will be winging its way to him as soon as possible :-)

Second of all I found out that my application to the Leadership Unleashed programme was successful!!!! It made my day when I saw a tweet from Michele Taylor (@mou5e) to say that she'd found out she was accepted to the programme ... when I checked my email and found out that I was accepted too I burst into tears of joy! You'll see from my recent tweets that I was far from confident about applying:

"writing my application for a leadership programme is tricky when I don’t see myself as a leader :-("

"… my application can be condensed to 5 words: “take a chance on me” … please keep all fingers and toes crossed until further notice"

"in a rare moment of bravery I’ve just submitted an application to the Leadership Unleashed development programme: http://ow.ly/oFhQ … gulp"

The next 12 months look set to be somewhat of an adventure - I'm looking forward to [i.e. feeling mild terror at the thought of] having my preconceptions of who I am and what I'm capable of stretched to their very limits.

Thirdly, I went for my first singing lesson in about a month. I started lessons about 3 months ago and I'm completely loving it. Turns out that I've actually got a pretty good voice - I just need to learn how to control and amplify my instrument :-) If you've ever fancied learning to sing then I insist you find a singing teacher or join your local community choir ... whether I spend the lesson singing scales, humming like an angry bee or singing the 'Tale As Old As Time' (from Beauty and the Beast) I always leave my lesson on a complete high ... and it only costs me £16 for each lesson!

Fourthly, and finally, I had the privilege of spending a transformational 30 minutes chatting with Duke Stump (@skratta) on skype. Duke was one of the Do Lectures speakers who I was lucky enough to connect with ... in an irreverent piss-taking kind of a way ... and he offered to give me a bit of coaching after the Do Lectures dust had settled. Despite *slight* technological difficulties (all at Duke's side of the Atlantic I'm fairly certain ;-) it was a deeply thought provoking and challenging conversation that ended up with quite an extraordinary revelation ... it's a bit early for me to spill the beans but I promise that as soon as I can put it into words I'll share my 'big audacious hairy goal' with you. I'm so grateful to Duke for sneaking up behind me and shoving me over the edge of the clifftop ... I'm sure it won't be a wholly graceful descent but he's certainly got my '100 days of Do' off to a high velocity start ... and hopefully I'll find my Doing wings on the way down :-)

My Do Lectures Notebook

2009-09-13T02:58:00.000-07:00

Open my Do Lectures notebook on the Issuu website

This is the notebook I filled with words while I listened to each of the Do Lectures speakers. I'm planning to auction off this notebook to the highest bidder ... 75% of the money I raise will go to good causes, 25% will go towards getting me to the 2010 Do Lectures (arguably also a good cause, albeit a less altruistic one!). I haven't worked out the best way to run the auction yet ... all ideas and/or initial bids very welcome!

Feels Like Home to Me

2009-09-11T10:38:00.000-07:00

"Decide who it is you want to hear and let them speak to you" ~ Andrew Huggett

In the weeks that led up to the Do Lectures I went stumbling and crashing through pretty much every possible emotion ... hope, euphoria, relief, gratitude, unworthiness, fear, quiet bravery and loud celebration ... at the root of it all was the worry that I wasn't enough of a 'doer' to deserve a place at the Do Lectures and a fear that I wouldn't fit in. Then suddenly I was there in the middle of Fforest - all the mental noise fell away and then the learning began.

Trying to describe being at the Do Lectures would be like painting the Forth Bridge ... it would take forever to do and as soon as I got to the end there would be new stuff to describe from right at the beginning. All I can tell you is that the deep connectedness, deep learning and deep sense of timelessness I experienced in those four days is threaded and stitched through my soul in a way that makes the ticket price pale into insignificance.

As I unpack, literally and metaphorically, from my trip to 'TED in a Welsh field' I'll try and find the words to share my experiences but in the meantime you can see the Do Lectures through my eyes in my flickr photostream, and read the tweets I made while I was there on my tumblr blog.

Songs that stop me in my tracks: part 1

2009-09-09T12:38:00.001-07:00

the journey from Procrastinating to Doing

2009-08-16T12:48:00.000-07:00

the journey from Procrastinating to Doing from Helen Harrop on Vimeo.

While I was making this I learnt an awful lot about the very worst way to make an animated video ... next time will be a breeze!

Lots 2, 3 and 4 in my 'book + charity' auction

2009-08-13T14:53:00.000-07:00

The Harry Potter first edition triple charity book bonanza was a bit of a flop i.e. I still have all three copies in my possession and raised a grand total of zero pounds for the three charities. Undeterred by this fundraising hiccup I now offer to you the following books:

Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks - Paperback, unread

The Hyper-Creative Personality by Blaire Palmer - Paperback, unread, 1st edition

The Van Gogh Blues by Eric Maisel - Paperback, preview copy supplied for a blog interview I did with Eric Maisel, 1st edition (the corner of one page has been folded over on a page that happens to have the word 'sex' on it ... this is a purely unintentional, albeit rather Freudian, coincidence)

This is how it will work ... you have until 9pm on 18th August to make an offer by leaving a comment below or by sending me a message on twitter (@iamhelenharrop). Each book will go to the highest bidder but the second highest bidder will get a chance to increase their bid (in the interests of raising as much money for charity as possible).

You can choose which charity you'd like the money to go to from the list below or nominate your own preferred charity. You can also choose what percentage you want to donate to charity (the remaining percentage will go towards covering my travel expenses etc for the Do Lectures).

The Royal British Legion - to honour Harry Patch, the very last WW1 vetaran who died last month.
Comic Relief - to support Eddie Izzard's 1000 mile (!!!) run as part of Sport Relief.
Touchstone Leeds - a charity who support communities, particularly around mental health issues.
Living Paintings - a free tactile book library who bring stories and artwork to life for partially sighted and blind children, young people and adults.

The minimum bid for each book is £20 and I reserve the right to increase the percentage donated to charity depending on the final amount raised (i.e. I'm not looking to make money for myself). Each winning bidder will also get an original doodle which I'll draw while I'm at the Do Lectures.

Harry Patch: A life well lived, a person well loved

2009-08-06T06:39:00.000-07:00

Created with the text from Harry Patch's biography [pdf] on the British Legion website (using Wordle)

The triple charity book bonanza

2009-08-06T04:58:00.000-07:00

There is every possibility that I'm pushing my luck here but in the interests of charity I'm going to take a chance and put my (many) doubts to one side ...

Several years ago I was preparing to get married to my wonderful husband and was busy looking for presents for our bridesmaids. I had the idea of buying a Harry Potter celebratory edition paperback for each of them. At the time you could pick a 1st edition, 1st printing copy for almost cover price and I thought it might be a nice gesture ... but then doubt set in and I ended up buying other, less tangential, presents for them.

Which is all a slightly long-winded way of explaining why I ended up with a mini-stock pile of 1st Edition Harry Potter paperbacks.

After the success of my recent 'charity + book' auction I've decided to offer up another three copies of the same book to see if I can raise some money for some more charities while everyone is still in a generous mood.

Here's how it will work ... I'm offering each book for £125 which is a tiny bit more than the amount the last auction raised ... £100 of that donation will go to one of three charities:

The Royal British Legion - to honour Harry Patch, the very last WW1 vetaran who died last month.
Comic Relief - to support Eddie Izzard's 1000 mile (!!!) run as part of Sport Relief
Touchstone Leeds - a charity who support communities, particularly around mental health issues

and the remaining £25 of your donation will provide support to me for my forthcoming trip to the Do Lectures (to help cover some of my travel costs etc).

Each donor will get a 'thank you art doodle' from me which I'll be drawing while I'm at the Do Lectures.

If you'd like to grab one of these 1st edition Harry Potter paperbacks and raise money for charity at the same time then you can leave a comment below or send me a message on twitter: @iamhelenharrop

It goes without saying that if you would like to donate more than £125 that would be amazing and if you'd prefer 100% of the donation to go to charity then that's no problem at all.

The top 100 greatest '100 best ...' list of lists

2009-08-04T05:58:00.000-07:00

100 Ways to Teach with Twitter (new entry)

100 Things to Watch in 2010 (new entry)

100 Greatest Writers of All Time

100 Best Blogs for Librarians of the Future

100 Top Blogs for teachers of the future

100 Top Websites for learning about anything

My love affair with clouds

2009-08-02T09:54:00.000-07:00

I think clouds are so amazing that I find it really hard to understand people I meet who say 'yep, it's a cloud .. so what?' when I point wildly into the sky. I didn't realise quite how much of a cloudspotter I was until I did a search for "cloud" on my Flickr photostream ... aren't those clouds fantastic! :-)

One of my favouritest things is clouds reflected in puddles ... it's like a whole other world exists through a watery puddle portal (or something).

The fact that there is a Cloud Appreciation Society with some 18,000+ members makes me feel glad that I'm not alone.

The August '09 issue of Coast magazine featured the Anderby Bay Cloud Bar where you can do a spot of cloud spotting from the roof terrace all year round.

Lot 1: Harry Potter, now available with added charity

2009-08-02T03:19:00.000-07:00

***UPDATE: Final bid = £120 ... that means £90 for Full Circle Arts and £30 to put towards my Do Lectures expenses ... All thanks to the lovely @Mou5e! ***

Raising £1200 for other folk's charities is lovely and everything but it got me in the mood for raising money for my own choice of charities (and helping to cover some of my Do Lectures expenses at the same time). So without further ado I present to you the first item in my 'Book + Charity' auction.

Lot 1:

The Celebratory Paperback edition of JK Rowling's 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone' was published in 2001 to coincide with the launch of the first Harry Potter film and also to celebrate 1.5 million copies of Philosopher's Stone being sold.

This copy I'm auctioning is a 1st edition, 1st printing of this celebratory edition. It is in brand new, un-read condition and would make a great investment to store away and give as a gift to a child on their 18th birthday. The spine is uncreased and it's only been opened to verify it as a first edition copy (and to take the photograph above).

The charity that will be benefiting from this auction is Full Circle Arts

How the auction will work:

You can submit bids via twitter (@iamhelenharrop) and in the comments here on this blog. I'll tweet whenever I get a new bid (there might be a delay on that during the day because I'll be at work). The auction will end at 9pm on Wednesday 5th August but in the interest of raising as much money for charity as possible I'll give the highest bidders at that point a chance to increase their bids in a similar way to if you were sat in an auction house or the way that the Bumblebee Auction website works.

I reserve the right to a) refuse to take a bid from someone I have reason to believe is not genuine b) cancel the auction if it looks like something is going horribly awry c) increase the percentage of money that I give to charity if the amount I raise far exceeds my expectations (i.e. I'm not doing this to get a ton of cash for myself). d) auction additional copies of this book after this auction finishes if there is enough interest. e) I have the final word on how the auction is run and who is the winner. f) the successful bidder will be notified by me and will be given 24 hrs to make a payment to me via Paypal, in the case of them not making a payment then I reserve the right to offer the book to the next highest bidder (as long as the reserve is met. ... Complicated enough for you? Good :-)

I am setting a reserve to ensure that I raise a minimum amount for charity - please dig deep folks!

I'll be donating a minimum of 50% of whatever I raise to support the fantastic work that Full Circle Arts do. They are a national arts organisation who promote and campaign for access and inclusion of disabled people - both as artists and audience members.

I had the opportunity to attend a Full Circle Arts workshop in Manchester last month and was impressed by their passionate but down-to-earth, wholly inclusive approach to what they do. Their mission is positive, empowering and in my opinion, extremely necessary - while I was watching the live streaming of Ted Global recently it struck me just how able-bodied centric even the most enlightened of events can be. At the Never Dive Alone workshop I attended I had the privilege to meet a whole spectrum of folks from the creative industries - I came away feeling nourished and included as an artist and my head was buzzing with new ideas and wider possibilities.

The work of Full Circle Arts encourages and supports arts practitioners such as Alan Martin who travels all over the country running Inclusive Dance Workshops, giving advice on disability rights and access issues from his own personal experience, and also choreographing dance performances which can turn the tiniest of micro-movements into a centre stage performance - I learnt more about the art of communication and understood more about my own limitations from spending a day with Alan than I could from studying a degree in linguistics. He also has one of best website names I've come across in a long time: http://www.mouseonthemove.co.uk. My first thought when I listened to Alan talk about his dance productions was 'I'd love to see that on the stage of TED' ... I'm going to suggest it to them and see what happens.

Spread some joy

2009-08-01T09:58:00.001-07:00

"In a world where there is so much to be done, I felt strongly impressed that there must be something for me to do." ~ Dorothea Dix, 19th century activist for the welfare of the mentally ill.

Some days I use twitter to spread joy, on other days the folks on twitter buoy me up with their joy. My aim is to spread more joy than I absorb :-)

When passion and people power collide: a modern day Twitter fable

2009-08-01T06:05:00.000-07:00

Less than a week ago I expressed a dream and a slightly crazy idea for making it happen. Now I find myself sitting here with the slow realisation that we did it, together we made it. A handful of generous friends, family and followers stumped up a total of £1000 so that I can go to the Do Lectures. *Wow*. It still hasn't sunk in!

Thanks to my generous donors I'll be passing on around £1200 to various good causes over the next 10 months (sooner if I can) and all the donors will get a thank you doodle which I'll draw while I'm at the lectures.

What has been really thrilling and unexpected is that £120 of the donations came from people who wanted to thank me for my TED Global twitter coverage ... wow again!

Of course the idiotic dreamer in me is already thinking ... hey, maybe we could do this to raise the money to go to TED Global 2010! I think not but you never know ;-) For now I'm thinking that I'd like to do more for charity and raise some money for my travel expenses etc so I'm going to do a book + charity thing with books that I own more than one of. Full details to follow but the books I'll be auctioning are:

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling (Celebratory edition, 2001) - Paperback, 1st edition, 1st printing, unread

Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks - Paperback, unread

The Hyper-Creative Personality by Blaire Palmer - Paperback, unread

The Van Gogh Blues by Eric Maisel - Paperback, preview copy supplied for a blog interview I did with Eric Maisel

I'll do a proper post detailing how I'm going to run the auction but the plan at the moment is that I'll set a reserve for each book and 50% of whatever I raise will go to charity ... more info to follow.

The kindness of strangers (and friends + family)

2009-07-29T04:01:00.000-07:00

I am rather overwhelmed (to say the least) by people's response to my Do Lectures appeal on Twitter. I thought that at best I would be met with disinterested silence and at worst I would be met with scathing 'who do you think you are?' comments chastising me for abusing the goodwill of my twitter followers ... boy was I wrong!

Since Sunday folks have donated a grand total of £610 plus a book (undisclosed title at the moment). Even folks from the non-Twitter world have stepped up and donated! I'll do a proper grovelling thank you post soon but for now here's a quick run down:

£100 from @traceymadden
a book to take with me from @warmstrings
£100 from @paulcarruthers
£100 from Michael Dodd (colleague and mentor)
£100 from @carencarter (my twin sister)
£100 from @betsybeth (my best friend and honorary twin sister)
£100 from my Mum!
£10 from @dswviper (£10 as a thank you for my TED Global tweetfest!)

So that means I'm currently 2/3 of the way towards my Do Lecture ticket and have raised £751 for charity ... (including £20 which I'm sponsoring @paulcarruthers for his Lands End to John O'Groats cycle ride: http://www.905milesinthesaddle.com/)

*Wow* *thank you!* Each person will get a hand drawn doodle from me as an additional little thank you.

I've never been so glad to be proved wrong!

Fingers crossed I can get the rest of the money raised before the tickets sell out - The Do Lectures website says there are 36 tickets left but I think that figure is out of date ... eeek! If you want to help out and raise money for a charity of your choice at the same time then drop me an email (iamhelenharrop [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk) and I'll let you know the best way to do-nate (if you donate by credit card using the button on the left that incurs a charge so I've found a better way to do it via PayPal directly)

By the way if you buy a £15 Do Lectures t-shirt from Howies you have a Willy Wonka-style chance of winning a free ticket to the Do Lectures: http://brainfood.howies.co.uk/2009/07/win-a-golden-ticket/ ... if you win the ticket but can't go then give it to me and I'll donate £1000 to a charity of your choice over the next year. If I sound *desperate*, that's because I am ;-)

Do Lectures dream update

2009-07-26T10:56:00.000-07:00

In the two weeks since finishing my Do Lectures inspired animation I have been mulling over how I could come up with the £1000 ticket money I need (forgetting about travel etc which I'll need on top). There have been a few days I've felt like just damning the consequences and whacking it on my credit card but that didn't seem like a particularly sensible solution (particularly as my finances are not exactly in a blissful state as it is). I thought about getting all my completed art pieces up for sale on Folksy (which I've been meaning to do for months) but then I can't guarantee I'll sell any pieces let alone sell them quickly enough to secure a ticket to Do Lectures before they sell out.

Last week I came up with a crazy but possible solution and tweeted my proposal:

If someone gives me £1000 now, I'll donate £100 per month for the next year to a charity of their choice.

That would means someone's favourite charity would get £1200 (plus gift aid) over the course of the next 12 months. Unsurprisingly no-one responded to my tweet but then today one of my close followers sent me a Direct Message which simply said:

"I'll give you £100; can you find 9 more?"

So I sprang into action and set up a mechanism whereby folks can make a donation to me via Paypal (I wanted to use JustGiving.com but you need to specify a charity upfront for that to work)

The idea is simple: instead of one person giving me all the money I need, ten folks give me £100 each and their charity of choice gets £120 (plus gift aid) in return within the next year.

I tweeted this new idea and waited ... so far *nothing* but then I tweet a lot so it would be easy for folks to miss the idea even if they follow me quite closely.

If anyone would like to help out then they can use the PayPal 'Donate' button on the lefthand side of this blog. If I get ten people donating £100 then I'll buy a ticket to Do Lectures and make a payment to a charity of each person's choice as per my plan above. Each person will also get sent an original doodle which I'll do for them while I'm at the Do Lectures. If tickets to Do Lectures sell out before I reach my target of £1000 then I'll give donors a choice of taking their money back or letting me go ahead and donate the money to a charity of their choice (but without my extra amount on top) - they'll still get a doodle from me to say thanks :-)

If I get anyone donating less than £100 then I'll donate to a charity of their choice with 10% added on top and they'll get a doodle too.

Theoretically I already have my first donation of £100 pledged by the person who gave me this idea ... so that's just £900 left to raise, hoorah!!

I dream of Do Lectures

2009-07-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I was (once again) drooling over the Do Lectures website and wondering how I might be able to afford/justify spending the £1000 I don't have on buying a ticket. Suddenly I spotted a single line on their tickets page "There is one special [free!] ticket going to someone who can create the best Do inspired animation." I had never really even thought about doing an animation before let alone actually sat down and made one but doing so seemed to be the only way I would have a chance of getting to attend the Do Lectures so I got to work. Two days later this is what I'd made:

Do Do Do Do Do animation from Helen Harrop on Vimeo.

I never imagined that my first ever attempt at animation would be good enough to win the free place so I wasn't too distraught when I got the 'it's lovely but' email back. The feedback from Claire was really encouraging and I was *thrilled* to see it featured on the Do Blog a couple of days later :-) The thought that it might inspire someone else to have a go is fab ... please do share your efforts with me if you do :-)

Happy Mothers Day

2009-03-22T08:31:00.003-07:00

imperfect beauty, originally uploaded by creating in the dark.

Daffodils are my Mum's favourite flowers - everytime I see one it reminds me of her :-) Happy Mothers Day to my Mum who is more than 200 miles away but very much in my thoughts today :-)

angels want to wear my red shoes

2009-03-22T08:28:00.001-07:00

red shoes [close up]
Originally uploaded by creating in the dark

About a year ago when I painted a picture of my favourite red shoes I would never have dared to dream that someone would buy the painting. Then I was invited to exhibit my work at the Round Foundry Media Centre in Leeds and a few weeks after it went up I got the exciting news that someone was interested in buying my red shoes painting!

Going on [creative] safari for charity

2009-02-12T13:01:00.000-08:00

Today is pretty historic for the world of social media ... 175+ cities across the world are hosting Twestivals and will all be twittering away about it as they raise money for Charity: Water. I'm heading along to support the Leeds Twestival and have also donated a prize to the raffle.

I've described the prize as "A half-day Creative Safari (a volunteer tour guide will take you on a tailor-made expedition to explore your creativity)" ... in a nutshell I'll be spending half a day with the lucky winner and dragging them at high-speed on a whistle stop tour of art galleries and other interesting places in Leeds. Along the way I'll be forcing them to brush off their creative skills by doodling and playing with words. I just hope the person who wins likes walking and eating cakes because there will be plenty of that.

I would love to raise more money for Twestival so I've got a plan ... if you like the sound of spending half a day getting in touch with your inner child then donate £50 to Charity: Water and then get in touch with me. The deal is that if I come to Leeds you also cover my travel (let's call it a tenner) ... if you want to come to York instead then you just pay for your own travel. We'll each buy any refreshments out of our own pockets :-) ... simple!

... And just to make it really interesting ... If you donate £100 or more to Charity: Water then I'll spend the whole day with you :-)

Let the magical mystery creativity tour begin!!

Notes from behind the curtain

2009-02-11T11:25:00.000-08:00

On 11th January I spotted a tweet from @nmeth on Twinkle which read: "York Light Opera need backstage people for 2 weeks in Feb at York Theatre Royal" - In a rare moment of decisiveness I sent a message back saying that I might be free ... Nigel put me in touch with David Pumfrey and just under a month later I found myself backstage at York Theatre Royal for the first full dress rehearsal of 42nd Street. I couldn't remember anyone's names, I didn't know any of the backstage lingo, couldn't make head nor tail of the set notes and was petrified that I'd get in the way or generally show myself up as the newbie I was.

Against all odds I enjoyed every nerve wracking minute and after three nights I'm already starting to feel quite at home ... I even know what 'paging the blacks' means ... and will get it right next time! :-)

Tonight I've got a night off because I'm heading to the Leeds Twestival and I can already tell that I'm going to miss those hours spent in the shadows waiting for the next flurry of activity and trying to protect members of the cast from being run over by the fast moving 'treads' (trans: staircase)

The Element (by Ken Robinson) is mine all mine

2009-02-02T12:46:00.000-08:00

I put Ken Robinson's new book, The Element, onto my Amazon wishlist the moment I saw it was being published. When I saw it was on special offer at less than half the full price it got immediately promoted to my shopping basket ... can't wait for it to arrive!

Looking forward to Jen Louden's Virtual Retreat

2009-01-04T07:11:00.000-08:00

I've been a fan of Jen Louden's for ages and loved both of the books I bought (The Woman's Retreat Book and Life Organizer) a while back. So when I read about the virtual retreat that Jen has organised for later this month it didn't take much to convince me that I should book myself onto it - particularly once I saw that many of the speakers are people who I admire greatly (namely Barbara Sher, Michael Bungay Stanier and Michael Neill).

As someone who tends to worry much more than she'd ever like to admit I found just reading the session titles for each speaker ever so soothing and comforting! I was lucky enough to get an early-bird offer via Jen's newsletter but even at the full retreat price ($88) it's a steal and there's even a 100% money back guarantee. For the price of a couple of nights out you get a 4-day virtual retreat with access to some amazing inspirational speakers (including Jen herself), loads of support and a ton of freebie downloads before, during and after the retreat - hurrah!

As you'll know from my previous blog post I'm currently nursing a broken wrist (you have *no idea* how long it's taken me to type this blog post!) so what really swung it for me is that all of the sessions will be downloadable and mine to keep after the event. I find that my eagerness to take in new ideas and information can sometimes make it hard for me to take things in deeply first time round so the idea of being able to download the sessions and revisit them as often as I need to is very appealing. If you want to join me on the retreat or want to sign up for Jen's inspiring newsletter then you can click here to visit Jennifer Louden website :-)

oh no, i just keep on falling

2009-01-04T07:03:00.001-08:00

oh no, i just keep on falling
Originally uploaded by sandramatic

Two and a half weeks ago I slipped over and within seconds I knew I'd broken my wrist - a late night trip to casualty confirmed my suspicions and in an instant my festive plans went up in smoke. A combination of the pain, the woozy-making pain killers and other external complications meant that I've been in a one-armed limbo-land since that fateful moment. Happily the pain is finally settling down and I'm chomping at the bit to get my creative plans back on track ... albeit one-handed until my cast comes off on Jan 19th!