Inclusion in the Hadrian’s Wall 1900 Festival is open to anyone who wishes to celebrate the 1900 years of the building of Hadrian’s Wall anniversary. There is an official form that needs to be completed and then you get the official seal of approval to begin. Then the event or activity is included on the festival‘s website.

This is what I wrote in my application, really not knowing what I was going to write when I came to the page:

Activity Description (long version): “The Creative Way is a process of gathering the bones and then breathing life into them”.

Taken from the text, Creatrix: she who makes by Lucy H Pearce, The Creatrix in Residence of Hadrian’s Wall aims to explore two vital components within this project.

The first is to be like a Palaeontologist, digging down into the different social, cultural, political and physical strata of Hadrian’s Wall to unearth the hidden bones of stories yet to be told a round creative women and people of colour. The second it to getting down to the bones of the creative process itself; documenting the magic that happens when an individual decides to accept the invitation to embark on the journey of creativity, into the labyrinth of the bodymind.

“For women poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. […] Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.” Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

Running parallel will be a shifting through the bones; the bones of lives from the past, lived lived along Hadrian’s Wall along with the bones of creativity so a more solid and understandable shape will emerge around the process of owning the power to create and transform.

From April, for a year, the Creatrix in Residence of Hadrian’s Wall will claim space and time at different places, sites and events for a minimum of two Wednesdays per month. In addition to these visitations, public walks, workshops and creative events will take place to share stories, practice and the Creative Way.

Activity Description (short version): Creatrix in Residence of Hadrian’s Wall is a experimental, experiential creative project exploring the strata of life, shifting through the bones in connection to the Wall as well as The Creative Way itself.