Quark for Health...

A small blast from Italy

What a week! I AM: Art as an agent for change has seen the fourth partnership meeting in Pescara, Italy. As guests of the Italian health agency, FeDaSerD people from Pescara and Pistoia in Italy, from Kütahya in Turkey and from Liverpool and Manchester in the UK have begun designing an artists exchange between the three countries which will see a series of artist led workshops, exhibitions and symposium exploring culture and the arts in the addiction/recovery process.

I am thrilled to announce that we will be working with some quite outstanding international artists who each in their own way, have ploughed a unique furrow. Ali Zaidi (UK) will be pulling all the artists together and his work around food and our eating together, promises to excite and engage and be invaluable to the collaborative process. Cristina Nuñez through her beautiful and provocative photography, explores self-portraiture, creative identity and self-esteem - particularly through moments of crisis. Selda Asal is a film-maker who enables people to tell their stories in distinctive ways, often people marginalized by forces seemingly beyond their control. Leon Jakeman is an artist who constructs work that responds to his own experiences, stripping away original meaning and creating new identities in the materials he works with.

Unique and challenging, all of them - but working together to explore just how the arts might be central to the recovery process. I’m pleased to say that building on our Manifesto for arts/health/wellbeing, I will be working with all the artists and partners involved in this work, to develop a European Recovery Manifesto to be launched between July and September 2014. Think bill of rights, think what it is to be human, think again that, “standing on the world's summit we launch once again our insolent challenge to the stars!”

A big thanks goes to Nicoletta D’Alosio for being such a wonderful and generous host and to Giuseppe (Joe) D’Abruzzo who was the kindest and most giving of friends, even with advice on my own fragile health! And a HUGE thanks to Dr. Giovanni Cordova and all at LAAD for their warmth (and food)...and of course, the indefatigable Mark Prest.

Getting International in Arts and Health

Artists International Development Programme

The Artists' international development programme is a £750,000 fund, jointly funded by the British Council and Arts Council England. The programme offers early stage development opportunities for individual freelance and self-employed artists based in England to spend time building links with artists, organisations and/or creative producers in another country. The next deadline for applications to the fund is 5pm Friday 4 October 2013.  Decisions made mid-November. Read more at: http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/apply-for-funding/artists-international-development-fund/ 

Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Grants Programme 

Organisations and schools in the UK that wish to develop links with Japan and Japanese schools are able to apply for funding through the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. The Foundation makes small grants to support activities that support the study of the Japanese language and culture, School, Education and Youth exchanges. In the past the Foundation has made grants towards visits the between the UK and Japan between by teachers and young people and the teaching and development of Japanese language and cultural studies in schools. http://www.gbsf.org.uk/

It seems that the Australian media (well the Sunday Telegraph at least) were right in their almost prescient front-cover, which I reprint here for the sheer bliss of sharing an oh-so-subtle, unbiased, politically neutral 21st century press. I am thrilled to be speaking at the 5th International Arts and Health Conference in Sydney this year between 12 - 14 November and hosted this year, by the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. More details can be found by clicking on the Koalas below! To find out a little more about what I'll be speaking about, click on, fiction-non-fction.

On the joys of European working...

Driving from Pescara to Rome through the most outrageous landscape, I dwelt heavily on the week’s work. I’ve spent time with some remarkable people...exhausting, committed and wonderful people. My traveling companions this week have been a heady crew: Musical score by Bill Callahan (Smog), Knock Knock - Film and light entertainment provided by Frederick Wiseman, Titicut Follies and something light to read - Sarah Kane, Blasted and 4:48 Psychosis.

Melancholic by nature, I was lifted from my torpor and found myself near to hysteria by the strange charms of idyosyncratic translation. I’d recently been interviewed by the Turkish news channel, TRT - and probably talking much hyperbole and gibberish, they dubbed over me (if you speak Turkish, please tell me, what they said, that I said!!) So, throwing ego out of the window, I share with you a snippet of this interview and my new identity! Excuse the sweaty pallor and over-enthusiastic nature. Please note my full name and place in the universe.

Footnotes on Fundamental Cheese-Based Products...

A Quark is an elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. There are six types of quarks, known as Flavours: up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top! 

Quark is a type of fresh dairy product, made by warming soured milk until the desired degree of denaturation occurs. It is soft, white, unaged and curd-like.

Good grief...C.P.