On my way to Manchester to run my Do It Together (DIT) project; Birth The Musical at The Lowry. Very excited to get in the room with some birthers and make some weird sounds. There is so much I want to try, currently sorting through scores on the train seat next to me.
Birth the Musical is a three-day workshop for pregnant people and people who have recently given birth to explore the weird and world-bending metamorphosis into parenthood.
Mainstream heteronormative narratives around pregnancy can feel restrictive and alienating particularly to queer people. I experienced pregnancy as a transformation, but not just from person to parent, it felt far more complex and strange. Existing as two people in one body for a time, then splitting gorily into two: pregnancy is body horror, love story and identity crisis all rolled into nine months and a birth.
We’ll discuss the social conditioning around pregnancy and birth – the ‘rules’, advice and culture that shape how we are expected to experience and perform it. We’ll unpick those cultural scripts and see what happens when we write (or sing) our own.
Collectively we’ll begin to process the physical sensation and phenomenon of pregnancy and birth and create compositions and performance scores. These will then be structured into a scratch musical 🎶
Thank you to The Lowry and hÅb for hosting me! And to LADA for running DIT.
@thisisliveart@the_lowry@warnmcr
#DIT2026
📣 Apply to take part! 📣
Birth the Musical will explore the weird and world-bending metamorphosis into parenthood. It is a workshop for birthers to process pregnancy – as body horror, a love story and an identity crisis.
It will discuss the social conditioning around pregnancy and birth – the ‘rules’, advice and culture. What happens when we unpick those cultural scripts and write (or sing) our own?
📅 Wed 8 - Fri 10 April
📍 Salford
👯 This DIT is for artists/practitioners who are pregnant or have recently been pregnant.
📅 Deadline - Mon 23 Feb, 6pm
🔗 Check out the link in bio to find out more!
📷 Jo Hellier, 2025, background image from Louise Ahl’s Skunk Without K is Sun (2023). Image Jo Hellier
📷 Jo Hellier. Image Ruby Turner
#DIT2026 #LiveArt #ArtistLed #OpenCall #LADA #PeerToPeer #ArtistDevelopment #ExperimentalPractice #CoLearning #callforartists
I'm running an experimental voice choir - just four sessions in Bristol...
This is a chance for me to share what I’ve been exploring through my DYCP in experimental vocal practice: to try out leading a choir, and to create the kind of vocal group I’ve always wanted to exist in Bristol.
We'll:
🎶 Warm up together
🎶 Sing some easy, fun songs
🎶 Safely explore wild/ugly vocal sounds - screams, roars, whispers, and more
🎶 Learn and experiment with vocal scores (some of which I’ll be testing out for the first time, but maybe some by composers)
🎶 Take turns leading each other in improvisations (à la Phil Minton) and create textural improvised sound scapes
📍Interval
🕕 6 – 7:30pm
💸 Free (as I am learning too!)
🎤 No singing experience needed - just open-mindedness
Dates:
17th October
24th October
7th November
14th November
It would be great if people could come to all 4 sessions so we can build stuff up a little, but ok if that's not possible.
DM me if you would like you to come and I'll add you to the list if there is space!
Pipes of my dreams ✨️
Twas a joy to liberate 24 ex-primary school recorders and write a score for them with @toughsellzine on Sunday night. I loved how it came out, a sort of ghost from a year 3 music lesson.
Big love to the players, who learned the composition a few hours prior to the gig - you were magic
Thanks to @toughsellzine for creating these invitations!
@cubemicroplex
Photos from our Bog residency hosted by @giftfest 🌿
Yas, Kit and I spent the week visiting bogs across Northumberland and getting involved with them in every way we could imagine—walking, sitting, sinking, rolling, singing and listening. The bogs were warm, welcoming, extremely beautiful and sexy in all their depth and ecological complexity.
We brought all that boggy logic back to the studio at Gateshead Library, where we composed and choreographed new material and scores, on our quest to conjure a bog in the room.
On Friday, we ran a workshop for a brilliant group who were so open and up for everything—exploring our ideas and process together, and making some gorgeous vocal textures. Later that evening, we shared a very early version of our bog opera with the audience at Gift.
Huge thanks to everyone who joined us in the mud, and to @giftfest for inviting us and holding such a great festival! And thanks to @maykithappen who are producing this project!
More to come from the bog soon...
@yasclarke@kit__hall@giftfest
Hannah and I are publishing a cookbook after 6 years of Coven Oven!! It's the perfect gateway into witch cookery🧹✨
We are bringing the project to a close 🥹 and this book is like a summery of it all! It's got over 35 of our fave recipes (some from the zines, some from events and a few new) as well as a chunk of herbalism, loads of history and folklore about the 8 'wheel of the year' festivals, (Yule, Beltane, Samhain etc) and plenty seasonal jokes. 🔥
The cookbook has original artwork throughout and a new lino cut cover. It's A5, 80ish pages long. It's a bit like one of our zines but giant and better.
Pre-order now from our website shop (link in bio) and it will be posted to you mid December, well in time for Christmas presents if that's what you are thinking!! ✨❄️
@coven.oven
Last night we celebrated Samhain! Samhain marks the turning into the darker part of the year, it's a celebration of all things dark and mysterious and is also a night to remember the dead. Last night we acknowledged endings of all kinds; the end of sunshine, plant growth, warmth, summer, and this Samhain the end of Coven Oven itself! Yes that's right, it was our final event after 6 sweet years and it was a particularly good one. ✨
Much love to everyone who came, it was very special to celebrate with you all!! We toasted the dead, made guising masks, drank pumpkin spice latte, made magical incense, ate soul cakes and sang round the fire 🔥 🌛
Our final fling will be a Coven Oven Cookbook, full of our favourite recipes, magic, history and lore! Watch this space for pre-orders v.soon (It will be ready for Yule)!
The Thicket is one of my all time favourite things to perform. Someone last night described it as sci-fi bell ringing ✨
Thanks to @yasclarke for composing such a beast and bringing us all into this trance!
Composed by Yas Clarke, performed by me, Kate Evens, Beni Evans and Shirley Pegna!
#TheThicket
Performing at Supernormal marked my first day back at work after having Enys (a baby). As ever it was a great joy singing Wojciech's compositions and performing with him and Emmy 💘
So grateful to all my friends (some pictured here) who helped make the festival fun with a baby, literally couldn't have done it without you and all the holding, playing and loving. Supernormal always blows my mind with all the inspiring music and people.
Also pic of me breastfeeding just before the gig to make visible the often invisible extra labour of working and caring.
@wojciech_rusin@emmytheharp@supernormalfestival
Tonight is a double headliner; album launch for The Thicket by Yas Clarke, and, Wojciech Rusin, me and Emmy Broughton are playing some old and some new material composed by Wojciech! Always love making music and playing live with Wojciech!!! The set with Emmy on harp and flute is particularly special, I can't wait.
At The Cube 8pm it's sold out though :(
@cubemicroplex@qwakclub@wojciech_rusin@emmytheharp@yasclarke@tbc_editions
