This is my favourite time of year Autumn days become longed for during the heady days of summer Autumn is a settling time

From Old English setl : ‘a place to sit’ Of Germanic origin, related to German Sessel and Latin sella : ‘seat’, also to sit, And Old English setlan ‘to seat, place’ In Autumn I feel my bones settling in my body

A-Z A is for Angle and Z is for Zip and Zoom or maybe for zzzzzzzz

On the horizon of these next months to come is a collaboration with artist Emmie McLuskey who is making an Alphabet Movement Book, a picture book A to Z of the body in motion. Together we have created a series of workshops to be photographed and filmed.

It is pure joy working with diverse and different bodies in a process of discovery and exploration and play. Not only of the alphabet unfolding in human movement. But also, of each person’s innate and individual capacity and potential for movement expanding, flourishing, and growing, something that stays with us always

If you are interested in being part of a workshop please be in touch. No previous movement experience is necessary and we love all bodies and all ages.

Weathering Well

From long before the heady days of summer, I had the pleasure of working with students from MA(Hons) and BA Architecture Programme part of the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture on a course unit titled Weathering Well.

You can find a bit more info about Weathering Well in a previous blog post, but here I wanted to share (with their permission) the work of one of the students – Kaiyin Zhao – from their final design studio in March https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNquT2AiNaY 

I love when work from one genre speaks in another genre and becomes its own and different thing, and when different enquirers respond to the same work in their different ways. I am moved too that both the body as a site of experience and the experience of growing older spoke to so many of the students informing both thinking and practice.

Wishing them all well in what is to come as they stride forth in life. Thanks to Fiona McLachlan for the invitation to contribute

Small Acts of Resistance

I continue to move in the park daily, dueting with the weather and the land. I find this daily practice is what informs, underpins and stabilises everything else that I do. I feel that I am welcomed there, that the park knows me and invites me in.

Land and weather, body and movement as spaces and places of discovery and of refuge, of connection and belonging, of deep time and slow time, of exhilaration and of peace, of experiencing and sensing.

These small acts of resistance, to the hurly burly and the commodified a claiming of space in an unobtrusive way a taking up of space and a sharing of space a clarion calling to the necessity of and caring for the civic public green spaces in our cities a way of moving that is such a simple thing to do shared as a reminder, an invitation and a prospect

Join me in person anytime, just be in touch, and catch me on twitter – @janicemparker – now and again

Have a good Autumn everyone. May you settle into yourself in the way that’s right for you. ‘Till soon

Janice