Salisbury Arts Centre

The Kingfisher Project was set up in 1999 as a collaborative project between Salisbury Arts Centre and Art Care, the arts service at Salisbury District Hospital, with the mission of providing a platform for sharing and celebrating literature in health and social care settings in Salisbury District Hospital and the wider Wiltshire community. Its work is based on the fundamental belief that the arts have a far reaching potential to enhance the quality of people’s lives and contribute to maintaining or regaining health and wellbeing.

The Kingfisher Project has a reputation as a model of good practice, and is seen as a flagship project pushing forward the debates around the role and processes of the arts in health care, and undertaking advocacy and dissemination work. As part of this dissemination and sharing of good practice, The Kingfisher Project hosted a 2002 conference ‘Strange Baggage’, a seminar in 2006 entitled ‘A Word on Health’ and a 2007 conference, ‘Naturally, Writing Heals’, bringing together professionals and practitioners in health care, the arts, social care and voluntary services. Key notes speakers Richard Mabey and Penelope Shuttle were joined by contributions from Richard Aylwin, Dr Zoë Brân, Susan Down, Victoria Field, Robin Ford, Grace Gauld, Fiona Hamilton, Karen Hayes, Judith Kazantzis, Dr Geoff Lowe, Sandy Moors, Helen Porter, Claire Williamson and Gilly Williamson.

At the core of The Kingfisher Project is an ongoing weekly programme of creative writing workshops facilitated by a lead writer. Over the past three years Rose Flint, the current lead writer, has worked with hundreds of people in community settings (such as the social services and supported housing facilities) and with hospital groups (such as the Speech and Language Unit and the Spinal Unit). These sessions range from single sessions with individuals at one end of the spectrum to longer term groups who are able to develop their skills over a longer period producing outstanding, high quality work, and getting published or taking part in public performance. Alongside the core programme, special strands of the project have includes performances, recordings, exhibitions and publications.

 

• Three Kingfisher readings as part of Poetry Café (including one as part of ‘Riita Sits Badly’ disability arts festival)
• Two Lyric Lab projects, a three-day music and lyric writing holiday workshop and performance at Salisbury Arts Centre for young people at risk
• A film making project for young people at Salisbury District Hospital with Claire Williamson and Cluna Donnelly, and a public showing of this work as part of the Preloader Film Festival
• Exhibition in the Spinal Unit
• A series of banners produced with artist Liz Nash
• Pictures commissioned from Wiltshire College Salisbury students in response to poetry from speakers and participants in the ‘Naturally, Writing Heals’ conference

Rose Flint is a poet, writer and art therapist. She has been Lead Writer for the Kingfisher Project since 2002, working in the hospital and community of Salisbury. She teaches Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes for Bristol University and is a tutor for Arvon and at Ty Newydd. Previous writing in health residencies have included a doctor’s surgery in Bristol, working with staff and patients at the Royal United Hospital in Bath, and with the Blind club in Devizes. Awards for Poetry include two Poetry Places from the Poetry Society and a Year of the Artist award. She has won numerous competitions including the Cardiff International 2008 and the Petra Kenny International Poetry Prize 2007. She has four collections, Blue Horse ofMorning (Seren), Firesigns (Poetry Salzburg) Nekyia (Stride) and Mother of Pearl (PS Avalon.) Her work can be found in many anthologies and magazines.

 

Current activity

The Kingfisher Project has funding from Arts Council England South West for 2008 – 2010, supplemented by contributions from participant groups and charitable trusts and foundations.

As well as continuing the core activity with Rose Flint, over these three years we will be commissioning a series of ‘Words of Art’, visual arts commissions making visible the words of participants.

Words Of Art: Lifelines is a site specific commission at Salisbury Arts Cente from Thursday 18 February to Saturday 13 March.

With the support of the University of the West of England we are also researching the impact of Kingfisher’s work on the participants involved, strengthening the argument for the importance of arts in health and wellbeing.

For further information about ArtCare please click here

 

 

 

Commissioned poems from Naturally Writing Heals Conference:

 

THE FIRE

How ends this lovely salt-air islands day’s –
sunglow? High blue mackerel sky flushed salmon;
my whole horizon blushed vermilion –
gold scarlet flames set mountainsides ablaze.
Meanwhile, a symphony in orange glaze
caught sea-calm fractals cadmium-crimson.
Never have I known such livid reds shown on
canvas-scape, snapshot, vivid colour plays.

Light lenses through my shadowed soul; where pitch dark,
squat grey griefs, deep root hurts, poisons within,
begin to smoulder, crackle, till all burns
to nothing on my sad heart’s hearth. That lark,
this sun, will scorn on its renascent spin
those ashen ghosts – their phoenix-like returns.
© Susan Down

 

TREE SOLACE

When my whole world tilted
and my heart was squeezed by the dark,
when the tears that I shed were blood red
and the life that I lived was a sham,
where then did I source my song?

I slipped the slope to the forest,
I sat with my back to the venerable oak
all knotted and gnarled with age.
The wisdom the dryad told was of time
that passed, the seeping of light after night
and my spine felt the strength of that mighty trunk
and a loosening of bands round my heart.

Then I walked the path to the beech grove,
old pollarded trunks that soar to the sky
as cathedral giants of the forest
with sun-blenched trunks grey-polished.
I lay at their feet, searched foliage for blue
and they talked of the strength of their roots
to weather whatever the elements sent
and the shelter they gave to all creatures:
I hugged tight that cloak of protection.

I followed the path to the skeleton yew
the most ancient of sacred beings;
I laid my cheek on the smooth heartwood
where the bark had dropped away
and I stroked the streaks and stripes
of amber, russet and ochre
as my tears sprang from the fruit of the yew.
Its husk spoke of death
but the song it sang was of birth
and its beauty pierced my soul.
© Gilly Williamson

 

JOURNEY

1.

Drizzling rain makes no difference to the plans of the day. 
There’s an empty drinks can in the puddle at Clapham Junction,
discarded cigarette ends.  I’m distracted by a mobile phone.
Stand well away from Platform Nine, this train is not scheduled to stop.
Reflected at my feet:  clouds, a cluster of over-head lights,
one plane followed by another.
A gift of a feather lands at my feet and I place it in the puddle,
watch, as it journeys in circles, whiteness spreading in the bob and spin
towards small puffs of cloud.
The stub of words on my tongue are moulded into something new
like small jewels, rubbed until they gleam
like the sparkle in a dewdrop when the sun splinters through.
Platform nine for the 16.40.      Mind the gap.      Mind the gap.

2.

Strangers  surrender their awkwardness into small spaces.
Across the passageway, a man sleeps, sun falls on an old newspaper.
On a narrow table, a can collides with crumpled gift wrap.
If I could choose you a gift, I would give you this:
A small stone, amethyst, rose-quartz, or lapis,
to place like treasure in a bottom drawer,
to be taken out from time to time, held close –
note the smooth surface, the indentations, hold it to the light.
I would give you a moth pressed against the window pane.
Note the outspread wings, its symmetries.
I would find you a humming-bird moth to dance a petronella.
Hear the rhythm, listen to the hum.  Then listen to the silence
like the silence at the end of an overture.  Listen, and capture it.

3.

Then I would walk with you, hands held out to sun and rain,
We would brave soil and stone and quiet hills,
gather speed as red clay kindled our conversation.
We would walk the path between the black-brown remains
of sun-burnt heather, watch the slow slant of buzzard,
take the steep slope through the shadow of trees
to where grey-stone buildings and uncanny feelings nestle together.
And on ordinary days when the air is still,
when the sky curdles across the landscape,
when  the rolling hills and the light becomes strange,
I would ask that you roll the stone between thumb and forefinger,
that you feel the fine contours, remember the wings of the moth,
and you’ll know that these are the laughter lines of life.
© Grace Gauld