Anyone who knows me will know that being methodical does not come naturally to me so I very proud of this sample sketch book I am creating to record all the paper experiments @colourcollider and I are undertaking as part of @joy_for_stuff Paper Social. I’m particularly excited by our experiments with vegetable waste and using the little critter hollander beater to turn old bedsheets into beautiful paper. Everything is 100% compostable and I am looking forward to burying any paper we don’t have space or a use for at the end of the project! Paper Social is a weekly paper club in Tottenham open to everyone, if you’d like to make paper with us please come and say hi! If you’d like to collaborate on a project and try turning something into paper using our beater get in touch!!! #papermaking #papersocial #hollanderbeater #littlecritter #compostable
It’s legit! It’s even on the front of the events page. Come see J.F.S. Perform as part of the incredible @colourcollider ‘s incredible show Popcorn at Whitechapel Gallery. It will be the final weekend of the show too so if you haven’t seen it by then you’d be a fool not to come see us perform and the show at the same time. Expect rolling around, material sound and playful joy abound. You’ll have to come to see if we actually meet those expectations😉
JFS - Joy For Stuff is performing at Popcorn! exhibition @whitechapelgallery on Saturday 20 September at 4pm- save the date!! Come and see me and @evaandstuff , two women in our forties joyfully extracting the sounds of stuff from contemporary urban life together.
It's the day before the exhibition closes so it'll be a bit of a closing-ish party! Lets hang out and go for drinks after 😊
Climb my LinkTree in bio to book! It's free!
First two photos @noranordfromnorway at the special @mince.worldwide.official and the last from a performance night at our exhibition Joy For Stuff @setsetsetsetsetset last year.
I made some graphics to spread the word: I’m collecting odd socks as I have had an idea to use them to create a play resource for kids as part of a project I’m working on. Happy to collect if in London or pay for postage if anyone further a field would like to contribute! PLEASE SEND ME YOUR ODD SOCK! (Or I guess any socks you don’t wear but don’t know what to do with…) Thank you in advance you wonderful, lovely people! #socks #oddsocks #earlyyears #makingstuff
Sewing soft sensory things is a current obsession of mine, as life gets more complicated and there seems to be more periods of time when it feels like my brain isn’t working, touching fabric with my hands and collaging it together into experimental sensory soft objects gives me solace. I feel like I did making potions in the garden as a child, what can I do with this? What happens if I add this? What are the sensory experiences I can create? This is some of the cushions and floor mats I created for my project @playbuildplay last week. My favourite was a painted canvas and tarpaulin underside cover I created for an old punctured thermarest I had saved hoping the right project would come along. I’m also really enjoying repurposing old bedding and using it as filling and using old blankets as wadding in quilts. The soft shapes also mean I can create a comfy, relaxing and supportive space for carers and their babies right in the centre of a play space! Long May life continue to allow me to make wierd objects on my sewing machine with other functions fail me! #brainfog #earlyyears #sensoryplay #playbuildplay
It was the end of an era today. For the last 3 years @colourcollider and I have been working with a beautiful, funny, kind, creative, inspirational group of over 50 supported housing residents in Tottenham. Funded by Haringey Council we, as @joy_for_stuff , have been running weird and wonderful workshops every Friday in the communal lounge. To day we had a celebration of all we have done together surrounded and immersed in the prolific colourful joyful output we created together. It was a joy to be able to tell each of them how much we love them and how amazing they are and say thank you for all they have brought to us! It is tinged with the sadness that the residents support and wellbeing service have had their finding cut to almost nothing and that is why we can no longer continue this project. We have listened to the stories as their lives have got harsher and harsher at the sharp end of austerity. As our government has decided that the quality of life of these lovely kind people is unimportant compared to the excessive profit of landlords, corporations, the super rich, themselves. I will be at the DPAC demo “balls to the cuts” on Wednesday and these guys will be at the forefront of my mind. At least we had a fabulous time today!!!! 🪼🦞☘️🌈😈😍
Here is another 2 quilted play mats I created for @playbuildplay and The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. They are 1m x 1m patch work with hand printed panels and machine quilted. If you want to see them I personally they can be found in these hand printed loose parts play bags I created for the welcome desk families offer at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. If you like English ceramics of all kinds I cannot recommend this museum highly enough! The salt glaze bears and Staffordshire slip ware is especially excellent (in my opinion)!
Been really enjoying quilting recently! Here is a cushion I made for @rdeborman , turns out she had the perfect spot for it that already had a matching quilt!
Apologies to my studio mates 😝! My desk in the studio seems to just be chaos and colour at the moment! The chaos just seems to follow me whether I want it to or not but at least it looks good….🌈☀️🤢👾🧠👩🔧🧢🧤🦊🦑🐝🪼☘️
So this Christmas I discovered a material combo I am super excited to take forward into 2024. I have been making bread sculptures, both as workshops with the the incredible @rdeborman and with kids at my play group @sensory_stay_and_play for at least 7 years. My dad always made bread and I love the feeling of the dough as you knead it and becomes elastic, and I love it’s unpredictability as it rises and you bake it, and the smell and you can eat it, or keep it and when you’ve had enough you can feed the birds or bury it! And for as long as I can remember I have been a collector of beach tat, I just can’t help myself, the smooth pebbles and jaggard shells and wonky hag stones call to me like sirens or sweets on a ginger bread cottage and I just can’t help but fill my pockets with jems I love and cherish and fill my house with, holding and touching to calm me or get inspiration and feel close to the ocean. More than once Billy has said “You can’t put any of those rocks in my suitcase mum!” When I’ve tried to slip some in on the way back from a holiday. The act of combining bread and shells feels like a magic spell, summoning the energy of home and creativity and desire and comfort. These are some of my early offerings, I’m excited to see what I make next! The final slide is of our Christmas feast of Moroccan style Cornish sardines. Family, bread, granite and the Atlantic Ocean 💙🐚🌊🥖🍞
Made a soft sensory garden play resource for @playbuildplay and @on_the_record_stories . Over the next 4 weeks we will be taking it to 7 stay and play and family events while sharing stories from Grow Your Own, a new archive of the previously untold story of London’s history of radical childcare activism. It’s such a privilege to be part of such an incredible project. I highly recommend checking out the online map and archive at .uk.
