The beginning of a great adventure!

Safely arrived in Copenhagen yesterday! I was welcomed by Hannah and Frederick who kindly cooked me a traditional, very tasty, Danish traditional meal of plaice, new potatoes and pointy cabbage! Also homemade elderflower vodka and rhubarb ice cream...What a great start to my travel!
I am awear I have the potential to turn this into a food blog so I'll try to remain focused!

So the beginning of my exploration of 'Artists' engagement with life story work in care home settings ' has begun today. I am now at the 'Openspace' artists conference in Haslev, just outside Copenhagen. As I am typing I can hear some fantastic piano playing coming from the hall and drifting up the stairwell.

The conference is in an old school that has been turned into an artists centre. There are beautiful and inspiring works of art everywhere and lovely people and scummy food.  I've just presented some of the works from my latest exhibition  'Beauty in the Little Things' and there will be a q and a a little later. We've already had a glass of Champagne  in true Winston Churchhill honour!
There are a lot of artist'  here from all over the world and I've  been busy explaining  what the project is ready to interview them tomorrow. There are quite a few with a background of community arts and are interested in exploring how to engage with people suffering with dementia.

Visual artist and friend Sara Riesenmey with Hannah Brunn Hjorth the the train station.

Painter and musican Leah Robb with myself, sipping champagne  at the Illuminate exhibition 

The next step...

It's been a very busy and exciting two weeks! 'Beauty in the Little Things' exhibition launch happened on Tuesday 2nd June and was a great success. Over ninety people came to celebrate the creative arts in dementia care at Eten Cafe.  

Over the next month the exhibition will continue and I will be meeting people at Eten cafe on Saturdays. If you'd like a one2one tour of the exhibition please email me

storytellingwithatwist@yahoo.co.uk 

The fabulous Sheffield journalist Russell Cavanagh interviewed me. 

To watch the interview, click below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raJx_M9mKqM

Last week I joined all the Winston Churchill Fellows from the last 50 years at Blenheim Palace in Oxford for a special celebratory day.

We had a lovely day wandering round the palace drinking champagne, listening to inspiring talks and eating cream scones. A real treat. I was accompanied by my inspiring friend Jessica Elwood (pictured above) and my parents.

The talk which particularly captured my imagination was the one on Clementine Churchill and Eleanor Roosevelt.  It was by the author Sonia Purnell and was a fascinating insight at the influence these strong women had on their husbands. They do say 'behind every great man is a great woman' and appears to be particularly true in this case!