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Craftivist Carrie Reichardt discusses the power of art to heal and work collectively within our communities to envisage a better future.
Women’s empowerment guru and social entrepreneur Lynne Franks takes a fortnightly look at what is happening for women in the world today and how we can grow into our full potential as leaders in community, business and as changemakers in the creation of a sustainable, positive future for all.
Love and learn with Lynne’s forthright chats, conversations with inspirational women and men plus simple exercises from her Seed platform to support and nurture you to grow.
[00:00:00] Lynne: Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of Frankly Speaking with Lynne Franks and friends. I'm Lynne Franks, your host.
[00:00:11] And today we're going to be talking about art and activism with, in my opinion uh, one of the most talented artists who really has. Worked with activism, with her beliefs, with community, well, for the last 20 years, really, and her work is stunning. Incredible. And I wish she'd come and work on my house, like she has her own, but I'm gonna tell you a little bit more about that in a minute, I'll get her to.
[00:00:38] So Carrie Reichardt, welcome. Welcome to Frankly Speaking. I am such a fan in my kitchen where I'm not sitting right now. I have to say, I have got one of your ceramics up on my wall, which says, fuck the patriarchy, which I'm all for. A lot of others, I would love to have on my kitchen wall.
[00:00:56] So tell me about what you would, we would just talk about really, which is art and activism or you're calling it now, or craftivist, and what's your whole feeling about craftivist, being a craftivist, what does that mean, actually, because it's not a word I'm familiar with.
[00:01:12] Carrie: Craftivist, the word comes from Betsy Greer. She invented it. I think she came up with the term in 2003, as a way to have a word that would describe people who use craft and activism and put them together to form craftivism.
[00:01:26] Lynne: Do you see yourself making craft rather than an artist?
[00:01:29] Carrie: No, I'm actually got a degree of a first-class degree in sculpture. I come from a fine art tradition. I came into doing craft mainly because of my own mental health problems. I had a terrible nervous breakdown. In fact, I've had many nervous breakdowns and I'm an actually diagnosed with an extreme personality disorder. So I came across Kraft myself when my first husband suggested that I did a mosaic in my garden. And I'd done some stained glass. So I thought, yes. And it was when I started doing craft myself that I realized how self-soothing is, how it's the most wonderful thing to do.
[00:02:07] I think we can see that when you see, like at the moment everyone does coloring in books or everyone has that kind of desire or has found how therapeutic it is to sit there for hours and color in books, well, I just discovered that way back in about 98, I discovered that I could get a design and I could spend hours and I would be lost it just the color and the shape and just the application. So I came into craft as a form of art therapy, and I think that nearly all of my creative work this comes from a position of it being a form of art therapy. But over the years, I've just become more skilled at what I do. And so now I'm in, in a very low, an amazing position where I get paid to go and do public work.
[00:02:53] Lynne: Yeah, which I think is fantastic. We're going to talk about that a little more in a minute. But you use words, it's not just images. And certainly all the work I've seen of yours, the words are very important and they do express how you feel, whether it's about feminism or. Climate change or any human rights would you, I mean, when did that start, did that start at the same time that these words started coming in?
[00:03:17] Carrie: because I started doing mosaics. I started just playing with tiles, but then I went back to college. I spent eight years at Richmond adult college, studying how to transfer image onto play. I spent a very long time learning how to add meaning to, to, to my work, because I think when I was at college, I used to do loads of collage, that was the thing that I did because I have no confidence in my ability to draw or paint. And I think I probably would be on the, I am dyslexic. I'm a very visual person. I struggle with the pronunciation of words I struggled to write. I called, I think I've always been so visual. And what I did was I've always just taken imagery, taken works, taken things that mean something, and then try to put them together to form a dialog.
[00:04:06] Now, that's what I, when I was at college and I was doing my own work, I used to mix text and imagery, and that's just developed because I've been practicing as an artist now since 98. It's 20, 25 years. It's a very long time. And over that time, I've never really changed who I am or I'm doing or how I communicate. I just became very skilled at mosaic and I've become skilled at ceramics. I've got a whole different mediums and ways that I can communicate. And I have such a belief that ceramic and tile and glass is so it, it transcends certain things. When people look at a mosaic or they can feel and touch ceramic, I think it has a real deep.
[00:04:53] I don't know, it's like playing with the earth. Isn't it. So I like to think that it has a real special quality that you can't deny. That's why all civilizations have learned how to make clay objects. They're beautiful in themselves. Intrinsically just the glaze, just the earth. So when you start applying layers to that and layers of me, I'm printing on them, I think you just make a very rich ceramic tapestry that I'm able to now make and using public artwork as a vehicle to tell people's stories. It's, the basis of most of my work now is the idea of telling stories from below telling the people's history. Bringing into the foreground and celebrating people, everyday people, everyday heroes, all the struggles that people have had that don't get mentioned.
[00:05:43] Lynne: Yeah. And I saw you did that in that fantastic Elm tree of life that you've done in Finsbury park. I come from north London and I've known Finsbury Park station my whole life, my kids live near there. So it was something really special when I saw you were doing this beautiful image there. So tell us about that because that's got exactly what you're talking about, members of the community and their stories.
[00:06:03] Carrie: That's actually, there's one of two. I made that in collaboration with the artists, Karen Francesca and her brother ATM Street Art, and we've been working together as an arts group as a community arts group since 98. She was my best friend at college and it's her older brother. So we have been working as artists for nearly 25 years. And mark is a fabulous painter and paints indigenous birds are becoming extinct. And Karen actually went and did a degree in art therapy, so she could add to when she was working with people, teaching them art.
[00:06:37] So those piece has to be seen as something that we all made together. The first one I made was the south Acton tree alive, which is around the corner from me on the local estate. And then we were asked, we got another commission and we decided to do one for Finsbury Park. And the reason we did the Elm tree of life is because obviously Seven Sisters, that street is based on the story of seven sisters that planted 700 trees around. I think it was a walnut tree and
[00:07:05] Lynne: I did not know
[00:07:07] Carrie: going on for centuries and centuries.
[00:07:09] Lynne: go to look into it. I li I went up and down Seven Sisters rode more times
[00:07:13] Carrie: no, but that's why the seven sisters prom. And if you go and look at my piece of work, we've got lots of pictures of various seven sisters doing it, throughout the different, I think in the 19 in the fifties and, going way back. Everything that we do when we try and do public car, we're trying to make it site-specific, we're trying to make it very much tell a story, but in the most universally appealing way as possible.
[00:07:36] And I've always felt in service, Karen and mark, that nature is one of those things. We always do an awful lot of consultation work. We did three months worth of consultation work for the Finsbury park job. Karen worked with the well-woman. She worked with a blind organization. We worked with an elderly daycare center. We worked in the library. We went out, we talked to people, we collected their stories. And what happened is I print all that onto tiles and that's used as all the background and then the tree, which is the tree of life, which is a universal symbol. Do you want, I mean, it's not that everyone who sees the tree of life sees it and will recognize that.
[00:08:14] And and within the tree of. In the bottom in the roots, it's got the names of all the bugs or insects or plants that only ever live on an elm tree, so it's really supposed to be talking about the interconnection between us as a planet and also about the roots. And we see the roots of symbolic is embedded into the community. And so the idea is the history, the oldest history starts at the bottom and then it goes up
[00:08:41] Lynne: That's so beautiful. In my Seed community that I've been working with for a long time, we use the tree of life and the roots are where the women connect and it's their values, which is about creating a better different world is which is what goes up into the branches.
[00:08:56] Carrie: Well, I'd love it. Isn't it? Cause you need strong foundations. The whole point of anything is that you need a strong foundation. So we have, the roots has been embedded in the community and in the history and telling it. And so we worked very hard to reflect that community. All the information on that piece comes within a five minute walk of that spot. That's how there was so much history of that area. It's so radical. There's so many amazing things that happened in that area. But what I did was decided if it was after a five minute walk, it wasn't going to be included.
[00:09:30] And also within that, there's a border that goes around it and all those stars were made by local people, every one of the stars was made any workshops that we had in the local library and the pattern we had printed. And then incorporated there was pattern that represented the different groups of people who'd moved there and made it their homes. There's a lot of Turkish print going on there, or, we deliberately tried to make a piece that didn't matter where you came from, or who you were, that would be something that might be recognizable to you or something that you would love or that it would be as appealing, to as many people as possible.
[00:10:09] Lynne: I love it. Absolutely love it. I haven't been up there since you'd put it up, so I that's just, what are the reasons I will be going up to see it? It's
[00:10:16] Carrie: If you do go around the corner. Cause there's a second piece now that I was commissioned to make, that was actually commissioned to be made by the people, the family that own, all that land this family, but they're quite a funny family, but it's also quite nice. It's another nice piece around the corner that's got bits of history about the local area.
[00:10:33] Lynne: I will. For me, I'm not the greatest experts, but I don't know anyone that does the work that you do, bringing in community, bringing in the words for change. And at the same time he imagery is so wonderful. And of course, you've done it with your own house, which is world famous. You thought? Where could I have a big canvas that I could put anything I want up. And I know you invited many artists friends around the world to contribute. And in Chiswick I've again, haven't seen it in real life. I've only seen the pictures, but it's and films it's remarkable. Tell me about your house called the treatment rooms, right?
[00:11:06] Carrie: Yes. Funnily enough, the name comes from the fact that years ago, before I did this with my first husband, we got access to go around Hamilton mental hospital when they were closing it down, it'd been shut down and we asked if we could film in there as artists. And really, we just went round there to see what it was like. It was awful, terrible place, but I stole the sign from a hospital wall that said treatment. And thought that was really a hysterical. And then I came home and I put it on the door of what was my studio, because I kind of knew even then I knew then that this is my treatment, the treatment rooms, I go into this room and I do art therapy, so it came to that, the rooms and it came from the treatment rooms. Was this whole idea of it. All of it, creative. All our creative outpouring was a form of art therapy for who, whoever came along and helped.
[00:11:53] But my house is quite funny because my dad was a landlord. He's literally like a Rigsby character. He had all these different houses and they were all multicultural, absolutely rising, damp Rigsby. And this was a house that my parents for. Married. They came here with my two brothers and they lived in the bay. It lived in a tiny little flat downstairs, rented out all the rooms. They've moved to the house where I was born, which is just down the road in Chiswick. So this was just a new one on my dad's properties. But when I was 16, I begged to leave home because my, my father is a difficult person to live with. And my sister all lived, she lived in the flat downstairs. My brother had a bed set and I moved in into what is now my bathroom at the top of the house. And then I lived in all the different rooms as bedsits.
[00:12:40] And then I did move away. I went to university, I went and lived in another flat, and then my sister used to live here and then she moved and then eventually I got into the ground floor flat. And then I just started having children and eventually taking over the whole house.
[00:12:55] But in reality, I didn't own the house. And so I felt like a bit like a squatter in my own family house. And I was doing community mosaics. I was doing public art. I'd just done a big job at Harold Hill. And there'd been some steering committee that we haven't let us do things. They wouldn't let us put the symbol of don't burn trees because they said it would incite arson, and it's just it was rubbish. It was just like, oh God. Barrett's. And at that very moment, I'd also bought a book called Fantasy Worlds, that was just a book of people. Who'd done mad things all around the world to the house. And I just thought, you know what? I think I'll just most out my house. They can't tell me what to do then, even though I didn't own it, I just thought I'll mosaic it. And so I just did, I just started doing it. And I remember thinking as I started, I used to joke to people, oh, it probably take me about 20 years and then it did.
[00:13:48] Lynne: Did it take 20 years? Cause it's a big house. So the big frontage, and for those of you who haven't seen it to listen to this podcast, I really do recommend you Google it and have a look at the pictures of it because it's absolutely remarkable. But then of course you did the back of the house too. And that really tells the story of your friend, Louie Ramirez who you lost. Do you want to talk about Louie?
[00:14:08] Carrie: Yeah, because what happened is that in 2000, which is a, roughly, this is the same time. Really the, I started to rotate my house. Is that. I was doing community art and I picked up a Big Issue on, on, I was reading the Big Issue and it had an advert in the back saying human rights. Could you befriend someone on death row? And I thought, oh yeah, I could. And I did think, oh, Silence of the Lambs. Oh, this will be in because when I was about 13, I was obsessed with reading about serial killers. I'd always been a fascination into why would anyone do that? It's, but that's just that, how could you end, just wanting to know. And so I'd seen this advert and thought well, yeah, I could do this. And so I applied and you just write, they give you a name and you write to them. And then about three weeks later, I got a letter back and it was just, it sat on my fireplace because I was by then, I was single with my three-year-old daughter and I'm thinking, what have I done?
[00:15:04] I've got a lab on death row here. I mean, God what have I done? And all the kind of normal things that people think, because we do think death row, mass murderers, we, we have some, that's what we're led to believe. But anyway, after about three days I opened this letter and it just said all, hi, Carrie, thanks for your letter. I see you do mosaics. What kind of mosaics do you do? Cause I have done some I'm including a picture of some that you might like, and it was just like,
[00:15:31] Lynne: Amazing.
[00:15:32] Carrie: Humanity hitting you in the face, all your pre-con preconceptions, just disappearing. And then what took place is a really beautiful five-year relationship where we wrote to each other a lot, maybe once a week, maybe, or once every couple of weeks, but it was a, you know, an intense relationship and loads of people always have very misconceived idea. I think about when you write people on death row, what a nice person you are and how you know, what you do for them. But my experience is it's not like that. I used to write to Louis about my problem. And I used to write in them and say, I'm so sorry, I'm complaining about my weight or my boyfriends, or, and it'll just sit in a cell waiting to die off or really bad.
[00:16:23] And Louis was an amazing writer, used to write back and say, look, Carrie don't please. Because you know, when I write to you, you give me my humanity because this is where I can be the man that. The side of prison, this gives me something to give back. And so it's a really beautiful, receptive relationship was formed where, it became a very close friend. I wrote to him, and then after five years, he, they executed the murder, the, they killed him and I flew out there to be with him for the two years. The two days before they executed him, I went and sat and visited him in death row in Texas.
[00:16:58] Lynne: And that was the first time you'd met him in person?
[00:17:01] Carrie: Yeah. Yep. I had had quite a fear of flying up until that time. I was really, I'd had a bad time flying once and I didn't like flying and I had to overcome a lot of things. For me, writing to Louis was one of the most life-changing things for me, because up until that point, I'd suffered an awful lot with mental health problems, and also I had real trouble speaking. Because I pronounce my words wrong. I really hated speaking. There was a time when we came in a March when we do a public art piece and they'd say, does any of the artists wants to say anything? Hang our heads down and go, no, I'm not saying anything. None of us would speak. You know, I think this is one of the things about activism. One of the things about doing this type of thing is that it's empowering because you find a voice I'm very good at finding a voice for other people. And when I had children, I had to find my voice. But prior to that, I was chronically insecure about things and didn't have an ability.
[00:18:02] I, in fact, I spent my whole life with cleansings and boils and having Angelina fever and all these things. And I'm absolutely convinced that the more I found my voice through speaking out for things that I care about and found my voice creatively, the less these problems, I don't have any problems, particularly with my throat now.
[00:18:22] Lynne: Yeah.
[00:18:23] no. I mean our mind, body and soul in my opinion, are just so very closely connected that, we do get reactions like that. And our fear goes back very deep in being heard, being seen. And I think it's also a thing that at all, for a lot of women particularly suffer from is actually that confidence to be seen and be heard. Uh, and we need it. We need it badly. So talk to me about feminism because a lot of your work goes back quite a long while really in your.
[00:18:50] Carrie: I don't even feel confidence. Talk about feminism anymore that we live in.
[00:18:54] Lynne: Oh, yes, no, we always have to be what is feminism? The other
[00:18:58] Carrie: The thing for me is that I'm an old school feminist. I'm sorry. I am. I've been brought up in a certain way and I have a certain belief systems and I'm a product of going to university when it was a Polytechnic and it wasn't all universities and it was when it was. Free and they pay gave you a grant, but I went in 88, 87, 88 when no, 1988.
[00:19:22] I started my degree. And it was just on the tail end of like in the eighties of the feminist art that was exploding everywhere. Like Julie, Judy Chicago, or, I was very influenced by the guerrilla. Girls were like, wow, who does this? I arrived at Leeds, not very long after the Yorkshire ripper had been. And I lived in my road. The bottom of my road was the nightclub, popcorn, the gaiety, which was very rough. And I've come from Chiswick. I ended up in here. And so I was incredibly influenced by feminist art of the eighties. If you were to look at my degree show, it's the most feminist show you'll ever see, it's hysterical because I did all body costing and I titled all of my work, the name I wanted to get, and then a title that some tutor had said about my work. So I had one that was called every woman's dilemma where I cast five females in their knickers. And then I had a patch of dish embedded into that tummy, which had had a title contraception in it and written on it. Your probability of getting pregnant. And then I had these wombs on a chairs, sat in like a doctor's waiting room and behind it, there was a framed interview where I asked these same five women had all had abortions what the experience was like.
[00:20:45] And it was really, and and that work was called ya every woman's dilemma or you just another woman fraternizing about her wounds, you know. And like one of my pieces was called pretty woman, or you must be a feminist then. Because, it was derided when I was at school, when I was at college, it wasn't in vogue, it was very much not. But now I know, because prior to doing my degree, I did an art foundation. And the summer before that I'd been sexually assaulted, walking home late at night, which for me, I think had been the, one of the things that had created a lot of lifelong issues y'all never know ever. I would have been more confident or whatever I wouldn't have had such mental health problems had that not happened to me. It's impossible to know,
[00:21:30] Lynne: Yeah.
[00:21:31] Carrie: but it definitely was a moment in my life where I went from. Do you know what I'll do? What I like, no one tells me nothing. I'm not going to be held back because I'm a female to not being able to go out my own bedroom probably for six months.
[00:21:45] Lynne: Horrible. And how many women has that happened to all over the
[00:21:48] Carrie: You know, It took me at least 15 years to feel comfortable walking to the garage. Even now I carry keys, ready to punch someone, you know? So that kind of thing that it does too. There's a shift in you. There was A shift in me when I was 21. So this happened, I spent my entire foundation basically making work around been attacked without anyone really noticing. And then when I went to do my degree, I think it was all cathartic art therapy for me.
[00:22:18] Every one of my pieces was either about how women were objectified about abortions, you know, They used to call me Hannibal Lecter at school at college because I cast everyone and I would make them into suits. And then I would hang them in a wardrobe. In fact, the centerpiece of, one of the pieces I did for my degree show was a full cost of me laying down that was made in latex and put in a glass coffin, surrounded by flowers, but it was very of its time, so I was very influenced by these things.
[00:22:52] Lynne: Yeah. Yeah. But I think, do you not agree even now in today's world or especially now? It shouldn't be that way. We still do need to hear women's voices.
[00:23:02] Carrie: I think that we need feminism even more now when I see what's happening, because when I look, when I went to university, I was that protesting against prostitution. And now that gives you guides and how to do safe sex safely. This is just I know I'm of an older generation, but this is stuff that's like deeply opposed to what my old, my, my views are.
[00:23:21] Lynne: Yeah I'm even older generation and it's deeply opposed to my views too. And I just think that we live in a world where we still have so much misogyny, and we still live in a world where the people are in our so-called so-called control, or our leaders are predominantly men or women that play the men's game so that. Be PA up there with them. We look at our own government, see that. And we still have so much to do. And that's one of the things I love about your work is the community aspect of it. Because for me, the future is about women taking leadership roles in communities, small communities, quite often, whether it's city, whether it's six years old towns or villages, where we can through creativity as much as wellbeing and as much as that whole nurturing aspects of women when they allow themselves to be safe can really create a societal shift. That's my whole thing. And that's, when I look at the multilevels of your art and that's such an important part of it. The fact that you would go and do this piece of art in Finsbury park, but make sure there were months of talking to the community, finding out what they want, who they are, what their stories are for me that's that makes sense. So much bigger. I mean, I don't even think that craftivist is really remotely describes who you are, what you are. I'm not sure that there are words to say it, but I think it's such a such important work.
[00:24:41] And I know that you work a lot with young people as well, because we've talked before about how can we can do something even together because I'm working with young people as you know, as well uh, in how we. Bring them into understanding the power of their hands, as opposed to just sitting on a screen all day, they can do these things. So tell me about some of the work you've done with young people and in communities, generally.
[00:25:02] Carrie: Oh, the thing is for a time I did nothing but community work. I even worked in orphanages. I went to Romania for three years in a row and worked in orphanages there, which at that time were the ones that you used to see on TV, it was awful terrible. And I worked in St Vincent's mental hospital when I first started. So I did do an awful lot of community art work. And then I kind of, even, I suppose I developed my own career. I had, I'm successful in selling art or doing street art. And then I did public art and I think, partly because of your own artistic ego, there was a time where it was just, I wanted to make the most beautiful public art.
[00:25:38] I could to show the merits of myself as an artist, but it's gone full circle now, because now we're trying to, now I've achieved that. It's now I'm trying to incorporate the stars, incorporate the community into that work. And so recently up in Coventry where I did the front of pullback Metro bus station, that was in that was during a.
[00:26:00] Locked down these things, the last couple of years have not been easy. So it seemed even more important to try and get people to physically make things and do things. So for the COVID tree, one, me and my assistant, Sean went to COVID training. One day we did 90 stars. We went to two schools and every kid made a clay star and all of those stars are then run up the side of the bus station which was amazing. And at the same time I was doing the Boston Boys which are two navigational boys that tell the story of by land, by sea, in Boston, Boston being Lincolnshire, not America. But there was no chance to actually work with people there for me because of the lockdown. And so I worked with a local ceramicist there, Greenfield, I think it is pottery. Sent him little trays with fish, with clay and cutouts and gave it to kids in schools and they got it back and they fired it and they sent it to me and then done for 50 people, did designs, which I had as a ceramicist then transfer onto fish. So on the boy, one there's 150 fish made by the local community.
[00:27:08] And on the, by land one, I had flowers made by all my friends in the mosaic world. You send them in all around the world. So you've got this, I really liked the whole idea of the collective or coming together, making little bits or having a little voice. And then that becoming a collective voice, just, because I do believe that's how you unify people or how you bring them together.
[00:27:29] I'll tell you a good example. I did I did a six week project up in Birmingham at the Custard Factory with craft space, which was DIY. And craftivism where they put a call out for young people between the ages of 16 and 24, who I had an interest in mental health, which generally meant they had problems with mental health though not all of them, but it was just, they put that out. And so we had a small group of young people that came. The in the first week sat in a circle and couldn't make eye contact. They can, some of them couldn't even say what their name is, when you go around them and say, hi, I'm very, pretty young people with a lot of problems, social anxiety and things.
[00:28:08] But over the six weeks to. Two days a week for six weeks, we ran all these craft of his things and craftivism, I got them to cross-stitch messages and they run around and stick them up around Birmingham. And then we did cross-stitch we did don't worry, be happy on a bridge. They all sat there together sewing it, and a guard came along and said, you can't be doing this. And I was like, yeah, really? We got permission to go find management. And they were all so excited. The idea of them breaking the law, they were also excited about, it's also empowering for them.
[00:28:42] But it was amazing project. And then over the six weeks at the end of it, we talk over the basement of a coffee shop and they invited the public and the same group of young people sat there and taught strangers how to do craftivism.
[00:28:57] Lynne: Oh, my God. That's brilliant.
[00:28:59] Carrie: one of the sadness, one of the terrible things about that course is that one of the reasons it was successful tragically is because, Hey, it was very well sought out and it was very well, there was a lot of us to help them. And they had young people and did a lot with using, peer people who were only a little bit older helping people younger than them, but because they gave these young people, their bus fares.
[00:29:22] Dinner, which enabled them to do the project in the first place, because what we did discover is the poverty was one of the main factors. That was the thing that was really killing all these kids. The lack of opportunity. And it was just, it's sad because it was just a little thing that happened. And it proved the point to prove that if you brought all these people together for these young people that gave them that little opportunity, gave them some food, gave them their fair money, put them in a place together, let them be creative. It had wonders for their mental health and that they were extremely capable young people.
[00:29:55] Lynne: Oh um, well, I hope we can persuade you to come back down Southwest, at some point when we start this project off in Somerset, but all semi instructions, how to do it. But I think the fact that you've had your own mental health issues, which you've been talking about and your own kind of story really has given you much more understanding when you're working with other, with young people now where they're coming from, it must have.
[00:30:19] Carrie: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think you'll find that me and Kevin and Mark and nearly all the people that I work with in the treatment room, collective understand how the power of art to have healed themselves. That's why we believe in it. So passionately, you know, my life has been saved by art, for sure. I used to be a chronic self Homer. I used to I've ODed about four times. I've cut my wrists twice. I come from a position of. Acute having acute mental health problems and absolutely, you know, using art as a way to communicate at times when I really couldn't. And so now I've had therapy for five years and I'm a very different person, but it means I'm very aware and I've got empathy and understanding of how powerful creativity is.
[00:31:05] Lynne: It's beautiful. So I started off this talk with you, talking to you about art and activism, which is what I came in thinking we were going to be talking about, but really what we're talking about is art as a creative healer, that's what it is, whether it be with human rights, let's go back to the subject we were talking about with human rights or with the environment, or really just people in community. It's about healing, and it's about using all these amazing facilities, whether it's so improv stage or working with clay, all the things you talked about that you work with as part of the healing. And I suppose the fact that you do call your beautiful house the treatment rooms, and the fact that you do talk about the work, it was the way it was for you as a therapy. It really brings it back to one thing. It's very interesting. It's so started off this conversation as one way, I thought it was going to run, but really when you get to the grassroots of what you are all about, and your work is all about, it's about healing and it's about healing in the community, and it's about healing, young people, and it's about working collectively, which for me is What the future is all about.
[00:32:10] I'm going to ask you, as I add all my podcasts with the question, how do you see the future? What could the future look like to you?
[00:32:18] Carrie: For me personally, I'm thinking of hopefully moving to your neck of the woods, actually
[00:32:22] Lynne: Oh yeah.
[00:32:24] Carrie: probably more than the preschool side, but personally, I would like to go and set up live with my friend. I've always joked about the fact that we're going to have an old people's home, but it's going to be like an arts call me where we can share our skills with the next generation and,
[00:32:38] Lynne: Beautiful.
[00:32:39] Carrie: Yeah. I've always been troubling, says I'm a Londoner and I've always lived in London. So it's hard for me to envision not being in this house. Cause I've been here my whole life, but I love the idea of moving somewhere where people can come together and we can build like our houses and, and I'd love to be that artist that made the entire mosaic environment.
[00:33:00] But as people, I think like you, I think we're going to have to come together collectively. It's more and more important that we do. I think things may well start to go more local, that it is to do with, being it's difficult in London, but, but to be. Aware of your neighbors and to be aware of people in your local community and to reach out and to do things, collectively together.
[00:33:23] I think the trouble is for women is that we've been sold a lie that we can have it all that we can have work and we can have kids and we can do everything. And I think the trouble is women are the most capable of being the ones who nurture and bring everyone together. But then we're also the most put upon, we call it the weld leads is cause we usually went too busy getting the laundry, you know, and if you don't, then you have this endless guilt trip because you're not the mother that's at home making pie juice to mean? you
[00:33:50] Lynne: I know exactly what you mean. Cause I've constantly getting blamed for my children that I wasn't that mother at home making the pie, but they still got fed and had a roof over their head that a pretty good time.
[00:34:01] And now see, that's why the why's w we move on and our children get older. I don't know how old your kids are now, but that gives us the space and the time really that we can move into that powerful
[00:34:11] Carrie: No, definitely. I totally agree with that. That's why I have a, like a, my alter ego is called the unfit mother, but I think, yeah, because, I think it's pretty hard to be anything, but if you're the breadwinner and you're the person, if you, especially, if you've been bringing up your kids on your own, that's, it's very difficult to be anything other than that. I was used to joke that as soon as you had a baby, you should have multi stamped on your forehead, because there's and then, for me, that was always a real big sense of guilt because I'm on the one hand, I know that I need to create, it's not just, I want to work. It's that, that's what self suits me, what deals my mental health issues. So those 18, eight hours a day wasn't for money or fame, it was to just keep sane. But that meant I wasn't all around with my kids all the time.
[00:34:56] But luckily I think like you were saying, my children are older and every single one of them is now come full circle. I think my daughter to now just, she's very driven and, I like to think I was trying to be that role model.
[00:35:09] Lynne: Yeah. How exactly how old is your daughter now?
[00:35:11] Carrie: My oldest is 25, just turned 25. My son is 19 and my youngest is 16.
[00:35:18] Lynne: All right. Yeah, no, that's it. They, when they get to a certain age, I would like to think in my children's case, I'm not sure that they actually respect us for what we've done And how we've gone forward and how we've juggled the way we have. And it made me, we weren't always around when they perhaps wanted us to be, but we were showing them an example of what can be.
[00:35:36] Carrie: And the struggle is that once you do get into your prone age or your, that stage where you've got the confidence, you've realized. Your own history. You've got more time. It's that? That's when they try to shut you up. Isn't it. Bernie
[00:35:50] Lynne: Well, that's what they used to do. But we talked about that a lot here in my community. Last week, we had two very powerful, which is visiting us, who are my podcast last week. And we were talking about, the, what happened 500 years ago, then they would shut us up by the healers and the herbalists and the wise women would get tortured and drowned and put on the fire. And now 500 years back. Here we are and you know what? We're not going anywhere now. We're ready to step in our power. I'm not, that's why I live in this area that I live in. I know that. So it's interesting. We've ended up talking about what we were talking about last week, or I was talking about last week.
[00:36:25] I think that is it. We are now the crones. We are the wise women, which means wise women. And whether you as a brilliant artists or whether me with my work I do and the work that we're all doing, we chose to be here. Now to be the change makers and to get that future sorted out for young people and the generations to come.
[00:36:43] So that's brilliant. Thank you so much. What a pleasure kerry, right? That is fantastic. I really that's so exciting. And just so fantastic. And as I said, as a podcast, people are not going to see all the brilliant mosaics you do. So all of you listening, go online and check out Carrie's work because you're going to love it. And and I hope I'll see you down here in the Southwest very soon. So thank
[00:37:06] Carrie: Well,
[00:37:06] Lynne: Lots of love. Bye.
[00:37:12] One of the many things I love about Carrie's work is how she brings the messaging into her creativity. So I would like to suggest a special exercise. You may want to do yourself as a result of being inspired by her story. Why not create a piece of art yourself with some strong messaging. I know you have a creative gift. So whether you want to do a painting or maybe like Carrie could do some ceramics or mosaics with broken bits of China, why not bring those two ideas of a message about something you are passionate about and the creativity, the color, and the tools that you wish to use and do something very special to hang on your kitchen wall.
[00:37:54] Thank you so much for listening and taking part. Remember, we'll be putting up episodes in this new series every two weeks, and I do hope you will join us again.
[00:38:09] If you like what you hear and wants to learn more practical methods to help you plant the seeds in your own journey of empowerment and creative leadership, then please subscribe to this podcast rate and review. Also make sure you join our Seed network, our community. If you haven't already and together with thousands of like-minded women, make friends promote your business, share your stories and experiences. Visit seednetwork.com to find out more. Until then. I'll see you next time.