10 August 2026

In a full circle moment, I was very pleased to be part of the *conditions apply collective and to co-lead activities  on this new project – having remotely contributed to Joanna’s Out of the Blue exhibition whilst still a neuro in-patient, in the context of many years of collaboration with originalprojects;.

I wanted to be true to my own practice and offer something which tunes into my current context when designing sessions for our project – acknowledging that most of my nature interactions in recent years have been glimpses or experienced vicariously through photos or found objects brought to me by others gathering and wandering.

Having spent a consecutive 7 months in hospital in 2022/23 for neurosurgery and rehabilitation, I created my own creative curiosity from the bed – once I was in a more stable state in rehab hospital, using simple resources and my neurologically impaired senses. These experiences and my memory/imagination were the groundings for my sense-based creative activity. I’ve always enjoyed designing activity that people can take as their own to adapt in their own scenarios with easy to source materials.

I based my sessions on a couple of principles: noticing in 3s: inspired by the “3 good things” wellbeing research and use of “the lighthouse technique” a neuro-rehabilitation method to negate sensory/vision/awareness loss, which I have to my left side from right sided brain damage.

I designed a gentle warm-up activity deeply inspired by the 1960/70s artwork by Yoko Ono ‘a hole to see the sky through’,  a conceptual piece spiralling out from  a dot on a postcard which could be visualised and imagined into any natural location of habitat. My warm-up guided our cohort in envisaging their own small circle as a portal to an imagined or remembered abundant natural world.

Before moving on to sensing the interior location (first at PRIMEYARC, then from home on zoom in the second session) by noticing things like quality of light/shadow, tones of colour and texture; as one would on a nature walk in the living world – I shared that these are the things I did for the weeks/months stuck paralysed in my hospital bed or more latterly in waiting rooms as gentle distractions. My intention for these prompts was to warm into considering what people might like to bring into the exhibition; considering the meeting of interior and outdoor environments, and how they might be sensed by visitors.

The cohort feedback that they enjoyed the act of noticing.

In the online zoom-based session, we repeated the same warm-up and noticing prompts,  plus, I invited each to bring a small nature object secretly to the session and then, in the session, I invited them to describe it without saying what it was focusing on its qualities (texture, weight, pattern or other texture/visual qualities) whilst we all drew along on blank postcards  from this verbal description, before revealing our drawings to the object keeper and them revealing what it was being described – this activity was positively received and the group feedback that they valued the sensory noticing prompts prior to warm into the attentive noticing and listening from the unsighted drawings.

I’ve loved observing how the group responded to the different creative prompts and the different nature experiences they brought to inform their expression! Personally, its been significant for me to be facilitating creative nature activity, especially based at
PRIMEYARC, where I have led much activity pre my Acquired Brain Injury, and it is in this context which I was able to trial my newly learned vocational OT rehab with new strategies for planning, reading and presenting! I learned a lot and I’m grateful for the group’s patience as I found my way with my notes.

…go gently into the garden of [im]possible dreams explores intersections between nature, chronic illness, and possibility.

It celebrates slowliness, different ways of being in the world, and creating together.

It is led by *conditions apply – a collective of artists based in East Anglia who all identify as living with chronic illness and/or as Disabled. We’re working in collaboration with originalprojects;, Norfolk and Norwich Festival and Unlimited.