NEWS FLASH - Clive Parkinson leaves Man Met

First of all, a big hello and I do hope that all is well with you, and that covid hasn’t had too horrible an impact on you and those you love. If you’re a regular visitor to the North-West Arts, Health & Social Change blog, you’ll know that I’ve been treated for multiple myeloma whilst the pandemic has been wreaking its havoc. What a year - or two!

Any threat to life, makes one consider the value of things, and not the monetary value, but the value of being alive in the moment! And I've been weighing up larger social, cultural, and environmental issues that stretch way beyond the individual. So, mortality a-tip-tap-tapping at my door has made me re-evaluate where I want to put my energies. You can get something of an idea of my perspective on things from the short film I created for the Culture, Health & Wellbeing International Conference in June. Just click HERE or on the image below.  

Bizarrely this experience has rejuvenated both my imagination and the impulse to create. Not at all a bad thing. Alongside these personal perspectives - and after much rumination on my part - I’m leaving MMU and its iteration of ‘Arts for Health’ this month, which I’ve been at the helm of for many a year. This isn’t a bad thing at all, as institutions can contribute to institutionalisation, and we can’t have that, can we?! For any of you who have been in touch about enrolling for the new MA Arts, Health & Social Change, I’m not quite sure what MMU will offer up, though I understand that it won’t be the course I’d originally designed. You’ll need to keep a beady eye on their website. 

So, liberated from the organisation - and with newly invigorated curiosity - I am branching out into the wider world which will enable a more radical approach to what I take on, what I do, what I think - and what I say. I’ll be asking how we might collectively revolutionise our thinking about what constitutes knowledge in this field and who is asking what questions and why? I’ll also be exploring things from a rogue freelance perspective in terms of research, evaluation and training - and action. More on that soon. But let's pause. Nina Simone is sublime. Her ghost lives on in this thing we call the web. Just incredible.

Still working with the Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance, and the National Centre for Creative Health - as I alluded to earlier this year - I hope to ramp up the development of the North-West Arts, Health & Social Change Network and get new blood in the system. So too, I’ll be driving the Manchester Institute for Arts, Health & Social Change forward - and on both fronts, I’d like to keep you in the loop and inject some vitality into our shared community of interest. Keep an eye on this blog for updates, or on the Manchester Institute pages, or my woefully unpopulated and ropey, personal website. I'm very much looking forward to collaborating with you on all sorts of things.

Here's a shout out to the So Many Beauties Collective and their extraordinary and wonderful free event as part of South Asian Heritage Month on 5th August. Click HERE for details.  
  
I've been putting songs on this blog since 2009 and today's no exception -so here is a sweet, sweet song from the Almodovar film, Hable Con Ella, (Talk to Her) which just about breaks my heart.