Entries by Sharon Virtue

Tenacity and Patience

The Name of the Rose Nkimadams I might be repeating myself, but that is a luxury I can indulge. I wake up in the morning with a head full of ideas, people to call, catch up, maintain relationships, check in and reminders. I am fortunate to have a supportive husband who believes my work. The […]

Pleasant Surprises

My Tenacity has paid off in several situations- my impatience has caused a few people to feel threatened and go into retreat, or of course they just thought I was a brassy yank they didn’t want anything to do with.As I said before patience is a work in progress. Ironic as my name is Virtue. […]

Timing

The Mandala of Time      Nkimadams Timing  is everything Knowing when to act and when to sit back and wait or give myself and others space + time. During our reflective practice intensive week I realised everyone has a  different sense of time and timing. I’m much more of a go for it get […]

Integrity and Trust

A friend gave me a great book called the Artists Way http://juliacameronlive.com/ some years ago. Its a book that encourages reflective practice. The method involves creating the ‘morning pages’, when you first wake up with all those great ideas that have been cooking in your dreams overnight. It takes practice like everything else. Having sat in […]

The Need for Artistry

I’m reading (skimming through) Donald Schons’ book Educating the Reflective Practitioner. As I read, I see how the issues that are currently going to be big challenges in carrying out the Phoenix Project are being highlighted by what is written in these books. Haringey council has a history of bad practices and incompetence in the […]

Memorable Meals Intensive Week

Having just lost all the text I posted for this post I now realize you cannot make a post in the blog alone.  So one more thing added to the to-do list.   Trial run of memorable meals group mural activity with classmates Our intensive practice week started on day 3 for me, and I was […]

Social Synergy

I’m going to be working with several groups of people in the Phoenix Project, so our work on group dynamics was particulary useful. We were invited to review the work of Anthropologist Ruth Benedict. June 5, 1887 – September 17, 1948). She was an American anthropologist and folklorist. Am surprised she did not know the work of Josheph Campbell, the Mythologist I […]

Claudia Jones

Researching the race riots that have been happening in the UK since the 1958. Found the work of this great activist, who started the Notting Hill Carnival as a response to racial inequalities. humming birds at Nottinghill carnival http://www.demotix.com “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!” [edit] Jones’ best known piece of […]

Values

JOYINTEGRITYCLEAR COMMUNICATIONDIVERSITYINCLUSION These were the five ‘values’ I used in one of our first class discussions. We were then guided on a ‘heroes journey’ in which we were going to have to relinquish one of the values. To get across the river, I gave up inclusionTo quench my thirst, I gave up clear communicationTo appease […]

Freedom

On Paolo Freire   It was recommended that The Pedagogy of the Oppressed  would be an important book to read for my work. It was the first book that I bought in attempt to develop my practice in community art. So I just bought it, trusting the person who recommended the book.    I couldn’t read […]