I'm thrilled to announce that Prompted by Nature has been shortlisted in the podcast category for a Bookshop.org Indie Champion Award. This was completely unexpected and I immediately felt sick when I got the initial email a couple of weeks ago!

I wanted to record a quick episode to share this news, and a little about my writing sabbatical, with you.

Thank you for listening and supporting this podcast. I'm so happy you're here; I'll be back soon (and remember you can always find me on Substack www.promptedbynature.substack.com , on Instagram @prompted.by.nature and my bookshop.org shop is here: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/promptedbynature )

And of course a HUGE thank you Bookshop.org for recognising the podcast and for having it on your shortlist - it means everyhing to me.

Sending you lots of love,

Helen x

Hello, welcome to series 6, episode 5 of the Prompted by Nature podcast.  I’m your host, Helen, and this is the final episode for some time.  I’ve made the difficult decision to put the podcast on ‘indefinite sabbatical’ so that I can be more present and consistent with my writing.  I have a short solo episode coming up to talk about it but you can get all the updates on my Substack newsletter.  Just search ‘Prompted by Nature’ on the app or website. Onto today’s episode.  Today, I’m speaking with Lucy Power from Rowanbank Environmental Arts & Education.  This is a conversation we actually had before the summer and with summer holidays taking me away from anything other than my kids it fell by the wayside a little.  I’m so happy to be releasing it now though as it’s full of hope and creativity. Lucy is the director of Rowanbank.  Rowanbank Environmental Arts & Education CIC is a social enterprise, combining science with the arts to bring people together to enjoy and learn how to better care for their environment.  They engage people in an imaginative and inclusive way, helping them to connect with and experience the magic of nature. Lucy is a Climate Ambassador with Climate Outreach, and has been awarded a Churchill Fellowship in creative climate communication and education. Lucy is a qualified Forest School Leader and an EcoHomes and BREEAM Assessor. Lucy is also an aerial performer and teacher for All or Nothing Aerial Dance Theatre and Dance Base, Scotland’s national centre for dance.  Lucy has worked successfully with schools, community organisations, government agencies and the private sector. In this conversation we discuss: What Rowanbank is and how it came about How Rowanbank merges art and science to make environmental education more accessible and exciting The Natural Flights of Steps and the part it plays in Rowanbank The importance of carbon literacy and finding a variety of ways to teach this Rowanbank’s commitment to sustainable transport Rowanbank’s collaborative approach to creating stories Sustainable costume design The advice she would give to her younger self What she has coming up that she’s looking forward to You can find Lucy on her website www.rowanbank.org.uk and social media @rowanbank_environmental_arts Episodes that would go really well with this one are: 1.13a Dawn Nelson, Rewilding the Self through Storytelling 5.6a Angeline Morrison, Folk Music as Storytelling 5,10a Moya Lloyd, Building a Creative Community at the Boundary Way Project As always I’m on Instagram @prompted.by.nature, on my website www.promptedbynature.co.uk and on Substack, where you can become a free or paid subscriber - Prompted by Nature. I’ll be back soon with the writing prompt that accompanies this episode.  Sending you lots of love.  Happy listening and I’ll speak to you soon.  Bye!

Episode transcription available here:  https://www.promptedbynature.co.uk/podcast-transcripts 

Welcome to series 5, episode 14 of the Prompted by Nature podcast.

Action point: See episode page on my website.

Substack newsletter: Sign up for the free subscription via the link in the show notes or by searching ‘Prompted by Nature’ on the app. If you’d like to go paid, I’m offering this at 30% off the monthly option until 30th April.

Onto today’s episode!

LiLi K. Bright is a writer and workshop facilitator who’s obsessed with city nature. They write climate fiction and ecopoetry, and their main poetry project is about migration, liberation, London, Freetown, Accra, and the painted lady butterfly, exploring textile arts as part of their creative process. They love supporting people to connect with nature and creativity by facilitating writing workshops, climate science training and nonviolent communication training.

In this conversation we discuss:

• LiLi’s insights into a multi-media approach to their creativity
• The merging of science and art in their work and the ways in which these disciplines can interact
• Their relationship with nature, how it developed and how it has shifted and changed
• LiLi’s fascination with trees and birds
• Wellbeing for writers and reframing ‘time management’
• How LiLi approaches their creative practice

All link to the website and events that LiLi mentions in our chat are in the show notes on the episode page of the website. You can find LiLi on their website https://cherrytreewalk.com and Instagram @cherrytree_walk

Companion epiodes:

1.8a Ian Solomon-Kawall: Biodiversity, Creativity and Safe Space in Urban Settings

2.1a Avni Trivedi: Reconnecting with the Wisdom of the Body

4.5a Cheryl Duerden: In a Land of Giants, Empathetic Forestry

5.1a Bryony Benge-Abbott: Exploring the Intersections

As always, I’m on Instagram @prompted.by.nature and the website www.promptedbynature.co.uk where you can find upcoming nature writing courses and day retreats here in East Sussex.

Happy listening and I’ll speak to you soon. 

Helen x

A meditation that takes you through the five layers of the energetic body to the space of oneness that we all have.  

First I guide you into the visualisation of moving through each layer surrounding the body and then into the centre of the rib cage, the still, unchanging space in which we can find peace and unity.

You are then left for 3 minutes to focus on this space and then invited to write whatever comes up and through.  As always, no judgement, no expectation, just write in whatever way you feel drawn to at that moment.

Enjoy!

Helen x

Hello and welcome to episode 12 of Prompted by Nature.  This week you are in for a treat as I’m releasing the conversation I had with the wonderful Dr. Sheree Mack a couple of weeks ago.

Sheree is the Project Coordinator for a Heritage Lottery Funded project where she works with Northumberland National Park Authority, Durham Wildlife Trust and the National Trust, to offer opportunities to BAME communities to spend time outdoors to develop and deepen their relationship with nature.

Sheree’s practice manifests through poetry, storytelling, image and the unfolding histories of black people. She engages audiences around black women’s voices and bodies, black feminism, ecology and memory and facilitates national and international creative workshops and retreats in the landscape, encouraging and supporting women on their journey of remembrance back to their authentic selves. She is currently writing a mixed-genre memoir around a black woman's body with/in Nature.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Her background and time as a teacher in inner city schools
• Her desire to support and encourage BAME creatives in the North East and beyond
• Her own connection with nature and her passion for sharing this with others
• The inspiration behind her Earth Sea Love project and some news about her new podcast supporting this initiative
• The importance of BAME visibility and representation in natural spaces and the marketing of nature-based brands as well as the need to motivate a new generation of black women leaders
• The financial side of accessibility in nature
• Land as holding trauma and associations with enslavement
• Nature as a space of oneness
• Trauma and grief as a manifestation of our disconnection with nature
• Self-care as a revolutionary act
• Love as the source of everything and the importance of being in nature in order to re-connect with this
• Her first memory of nature
• Her hopes for the future and what she would like to pass onto you

Sheree contacted me a couple of months ago and I jumped at the chance of having her on the podcast. We had had the conversation ‘booked in’ about a month before it happened and the week we spoke turned out to be a real tipping point in our history with the death George Floyd happening just a few days before and the Black Lives Matter campaign ramping up with protests and marches across the globe. The conversation then became all the more pertinent and important in discussing the link between social justice and environmental justice.

You can find Sheree at www.earthsealove.com and on Instagram @earthsealove and also Sheree’s personal page www.livingwildstudios.com and on Instagram @shereemackwrites

As always, if you enjoy the interview, please give it a five-star rating and a positive review - it really does help to push these voices out there. And you can find me over on my website www.promptedbynature.co.uk or on my instagram @prompted.by.nature

Remember to stay around until the end when I’ll be giving you a little insight to the meditation and writing prompt that follows this episode.

Enjoy the conversation and I’ll speak to you after!

The Climate Reframe list can be found at www.climatereframe.co.uk

For this meditation and writing prompt you will be taken on a journey to connect with a 'wild' character in your imagination.  This can be used as a creative writing exercise, to develop a character you may be working on in your own writing, or as a journal prompt for your work around wellbeing.

I guide you into the meditation through visualisation techniques, leave you for 3 minutes and then guide you out.  You can use this as a 'traditional' meditation or as an exercise in free writing by using the questions as prompts.

Enjoy!

Helen x

www.promptedbynature.co.uk

Hello! Welcome to episode 11 of Prompted by Nature. I hope you enjoyed your Solstice and were able to make the most of the extra long day!

In this episode, I’m speaking to Jan Stannard, founder of new rewinding charity, Heal Rewilding.

Jan Stannard is a co-founder of Heal, the new UK charity which is crowdfunding for rewilding. Jan has a business background and is a resilience specialist and former coach. She still serves on the boards of two businesses she helped to found. Her work with wildlife has been local and very practical. She founded a swift group which has the world record for the most swift boxes installed in under a year; she was a co-founder of Wild Maidenhead and leads the group's Wild About Gardens scheme; and she project managed the largest installation of amphibian rescue ladders in England. Nature is what makes her heart sing, she says.

Heal's mission is to buy land for rewilding in the English lowlands, to help with nature's recovery, to combat climate change and for wellbeing.

In this episode we discuss:

• Jan’s background and how she realised she could make a difference
• How Heal Rewilding came about and Jan’s desire to create a large scale refilling project that we could all feel a part of
• What Heal is and how it works plus a look into their Heal 3x3 initiative
• The importance of affordability and accessibility and ‘doing this together’
• Definitions of rewilding and some core considerations
• The role of semi-wild animals in the project
• The role of education, young people and their Heal Future initiative
• Creativity and nature and Heal centres as artistic as well as scientific bases
• The need to loosen the grip on gendered approaches to nature e.g. women as caring about nature vs. men as the scientists
• Her advice for staying creative and what she would like to pass on
• And Jan asks me a question

I’m really excited by everything that Heal are up to and the possibilities that it could open up for the UK. If you’d like to donate to the charity, as I did, you can find them at www.healrewilding.org.uk You can also find the team on Twitter and Instagram @healrewilding

As always I’m at www.promptedbynature.co.uk or on Instagram @prompted.by.nature. Remember to stick around until the end of the episode to hear about the meditation dn writing prompt that follows this episode.

Enjoy the episode and I’ll speak to you after!

Helen x

Welcome to my meditation and writing prompt for my interview with Jini Reddy.  For this one, it's more of an explanation.  You'll decide on your own prompt - fractals, patterns, similarities, synchronicities, details, reflections and such - and use a walking meditation to help you to slow down body and mind into a state of deeper 'noticing.'  

At the time of recording we are in the latter part of 'lockdown' and so if you are still shielding, this is still possible to do inside your house, in a community garden or in your own garden.

Please do let me know how you get on - www.instagram.com/prompted.by.nature or www.promptedbynature.co.uk

Happy writing!

Helen x

Welcome to episode 10 of Prompted by Nature. I hope this one finds you happy and well wherever you are!

This week I’m excited to release the conversation I had with the lovely Jini Reddy back in mid-May.

Jini is an award-winning author and journalist, originally born in London to Indian parents who grew up in apartheid-era South Africa. She was in Montreal, Canada and has a passion for writing travel, nature and spirituality. She has been published in publications such as The Guardian, Time magazine, The Times, Sunday Times Style, National Geographic Traveller, and BBC Wildlife to name just a few! Her first book Wild Times, which I highly recommend, was published in 2016 and she is a contributor to the forthcoming Women on Nature anthology.

Her book Wanderland, which we discuss in the episode, is utterly beautiful and charts Jini’s search for the magical ‘Other’ through her travels around the UK. From the blurb, ‘along the way she tracks down ephemeral wild art, encounters women who worship the goddess, falls deeper in love with her birth land, and struggles, but mostly fails, to get to grips with its lore. Throughout the book she rejoices in the wilderness we cannot see and celebrates the natural beauty we can.’ This is a book full of magic and if you’re feeling a bit disconnected from nature, I highly recommend this as a gentle nudge to get back into it and remind yourself that you and nature are both as magical as each other!

In this episode we discuss:

• Her background and her inspiration for the book
• What she means when she talks of the magic in the landscape
• The concept of the magical ‘Other’ and how this relates to ‘Othering’
• Accessible nature and the need to shift the dialogue around visibility in green spaces
• The importance of hearing a range of voices in nature writing
• Following your intuition and the source of creativity
• Writer’s block and how she stays creative
• The link between Belonging and Nature
• Nature as an animate entity
• The joy of being given freedom to what the book you want to write
• The link between travel writing and nature writing
• What she would like to pass on

Before we get started, we had a few connection issues, which you’ll hear in the episode, it doesn’t detract from Jini’s words, but explains if there are a couple of fuzzy bits.

If you would like to find out more about Jini, you can find her on her website www.jinireddy.co.uk and on Instagram @jinireddy20 and Twitter @jini_reddy Jini also offers mentoring and consultancy for writers which you can find out more about via her website www.jinireddy.co.uk/work-with-me

As always, you can find me on the website www.promptedbynature.co.uk or on the ‘gram @prompted.by.nature and if you like this or any other episode, please do leave a five-star review wherever you are listening or share with your circle via social media or in real life. I’m passionate about getting these words and voices out there, so anything you can do to share the podcast is always welcome!

Remember to stick around until the end when I’ll give a little insight into the meditation and writing prompt that follows this episode.

Enjoy the conversation and I’ll speak to you soon!

A meditation centring around envisioning a utopia constructed by your hope and optimism for the future.

I guide you into the meditation and then stop speaking for three minutes.

The prompt is to create a description or other piece of writing around the world that you see in your imagination and to then write a set of action steps that can help to create this world.

Happy writing!

Helen x

www.promptedbynature.co.uk

www.instagram.com/prompted.by.nature

Hello and welcome to episode 9 of Prompted by Nature. Today I’m speaking with Lucy Jones, the author of the amazing book ‘Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild.’

I came across Lucy via the Extinction Rebellion Rewilding group on Facebook, where someone shared the book when it had just come out. The title took me and I immediately bought it from Waterstones. What I love about the book is that not only is it beautifully written, mixing forms and genres, but it is also thoroughly researching, covering every aspect of the argument for ensuring accessibility to high quality green spaces for all in our journey to see everyone in mental wellness.

Lucy Jones is the author of Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild (Allen Lane). She previously worked at NME and the Daily Telegraph, and her journalism on culture, science and nature has been published in BBC Earth, BBC Wildlife, The Sunday Times, the Guardian and the New Statesman. Her first book, Foxes Unearthed, was celebrated for its 'brave, bold and honest' (Chris Packham) account of our relationship with the fox, winning the Society of Authors' Roger Deakin Award 2015.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Her journey through addiction and post-natal depression using nature as her ally
• The opening and ending of the book and the power of mixing genres
• The importance of accessibility to high quality green spaces for all
• How nature influences her own creativity
• The scientifically proven mental health benefits of nature and the power of sharing our stories
• The creativity of pregnancy and early motherhood
• The physiology of awe and seeing Beauty in the seemingly mundane
• Techno-nature and the studies surrounding its use
• Her hopes for the future
• What she wants you to know
• The balance between urgency and hope

This is such a pertinent conversation to be having right now. Lucy and I had this conversation back at the end of April and the subjects we cover show just how complex a topic this can be whilst at the same time highlighting that more needs to be done not just by governments and local councils, but by us as individuals and communities. This conversation follows on beautifully from my conversation with Ian, which I released last week, and is the scientific grounding we need to prove why projects such as his work. I urge you, whenever possible, to get this book and be inspired by all the amazing things people are doing to support those facing mental health challenges. And I really did mean it when I said a certain someone in power needs to read this book! Maybe I’ll send him a copy!

Lucy has given me permission to read a little extract from the book, which begins as a look into a collective dystopian future (after which it switches form to non-fiction) so I thought I’d start with the opening pages.

You can find Lucy over on her website www.lucyfjones.com and on Instagram @lucyfjones You can buy her book over at Waterstones. Why not buy it from here or from your local small bookshop and then post a review over on Amazon?

As always, I’m at www.promptedbynature.co.uk or on Instagram @prompted.by.nature and if you’re local to Brighton, keep a look out for some new small-group meditation and writing events for women popping up from July onwards in woodlands in and around Brighton and East Sussex. And if you’re able to a 5-star review wherever you’re listening to t his would be amazing and really helps gets the podcast and these voices and conversations out there!

Remember to stick around until the end when I’ll give you an insight into the meditation and writing prompt that follows.

Enjoy the conversation and I’ll speak to you after

A guided meditation in which you will be invited to create and explore your safe space.  This could be done just for your own self-care to help with your creative writing or if you are working on creating depth in a character, narrative or setting.

I begin my guiding you into the meditation and then there is a gap of 5 minutes for you to explore and spend time in your space before you are guided out and invited to begin writing.

Enjoy!  

Helen x

www.promptedbynature.co.uk

www.instagram.com/prompted.by.nature

Hello, my love! And welcome to episode 8 of Prompted by Nature - episode 8, can you believe it!

So, this week, I’m sharing with you the conversation I had with Ian Solomon-Kawal, co-founder of the May Project Garden in 2007 alongside Randy Mayers, back in May. Ian spent his youth as a carer for his mum who suffered from mental illness. When she died he wanted to do something positive in her memory and to set an example to others facing similar social and economic hardships.

MPG work with urban communities, to address poverty, disempowerment and access to resources and influence. They provide practical, affordable and collective solutions for people to live sustainably and disengage with power structures that don't serve their interests. In their own words, MPG thrive for an alternative system and lifestyle based on nature, community, biodiversity and creativity. Despite recent formalisation, they've remained independent, informal and egalitarian in their values as well as in how they work with people and interact as a team.

Some of the topics we discussed were:

• His background and what led him to create the project
• His desire to create safe space and the importance of safe space in encouraging creativity, confidence and trust in the young people with whom he works
• The impact of accessible green spaces on mental health, especially in urban settings
• Nature as art
• The importance of making mistakes
• Biodiversity and celebrating difference
• Looking inwards to create change
• Sustainability and environmental development as being central to political decisions
• Learning cultural assumptions and why it’s crucial to observe first, ask questions and then help
• Creativity as an internal practice and ‘doing the work to make the difference’
• The need for councils to invest in projects such as MPG
• His metaphor of trauma as compost and the power of listening

It really was an honour to speak to Ian, who serves a community in an area with which I worked as a teacher for a long time and many of his frustrations at the education system in particular echoed my own both during my time teaching in South London and now as I watch my own children move through the system (albeit the very early years). The work that Ian and the whole team at MPG does is of vital importance to our young people and I really enjoyed hearing about his commitment to diversity and inclusivity, and how he has created a safe space, something I speak of a lot, for the young people he works with to express themselves creatively and to enjoy and learn about nature, permaculture and biodiversity in an urban setting.

If you would like to find out more about MPG and their work, or to donate to them as I did - it’s really simple and you get a nice than you note from the team after, you can find them at www.mayproject.org where there are also links to their shop to purchase tracks and t-shirts, and what you can do to help them grow. To find out more about Ian and his creative work, garden workshops and opportunities to hire him as a speaker, you can go to www.3kmt.co.uk

If you’d like to get in touch with me, as always, my website is www.promptedbynature.co.uk or you can find me on Instagram @prompted.by.nature And if you’d like to leave a 5-star review wherever you’re listen to this, or share it with your friends in real life, that would be an amazing way to support all of the people behind the voices on this podcast.

Enjoy the conversation and I’ll speak to you after!

The transcript for this episode can be found here: https://www.promptedbynature.co.uk/podcast-transcripts

Hello and welcome to your writing prompt for my conversation with Caro Giles.  So, obviously, this one is going to be moon-related!  I often write with the moon and have created materials helping others to do the same.  About 7 years ago, back when challenges were in, I ran the Follow the Moon challenge, followed by the ‘Create by the Moon’ challenges a couple of years later and this latter piece of work I’m in the process of turning into a workbook, which will be out in the summer - free to Substack subscribers on the paid level.

To get us started though, I wanted to think about how we can use the energy of each moon phase to influence our writing and then extend this to consider the names of each full moon, as Caro does in Twelve Moons, and how these can form ongoing prompts for our words.

Over on the blog, you’ll find a post about turning each phase of the moon into a character (link is in the show notes) and this is a really good exercise to familiarise yourself with the energy of each phase if you’re newer to it all, or just want another perspective.

So going from new to full moon:

• New moon - intention setting
• Waxing crescent - planning
• Waxing half - balance, making decisions
• Waxing gibbous - problem-solving
• Full moon - manifestation, clarity and understanding
• Waning gibbous - self-evaluation, patience and letting go
• Waning half - cleansing and transformation
• Waning crescent (balsamic) - reflection/introspection
• Dark moon - quiet/silence

Once we are familiar with the energy of each moon phase, we can start to see how these could be articulated in the settings and characters we create.  For example, a setting that might reflect the waning half moon, could be a cascading stream in the early hours of the morning.  How might that feel?  What does the natural world feel like at that time of day?  If the full moon were a character, perhaps they might be a creator or agitator, an activist or someone who works to shed light on a subject.

Then you might like to start looking at the different names given to the full moon by different cultures and traditions throughout the world.  There’s the wolf moon, the cold moon, the harvest moon and more!  Use your imagination and envision settings and events that might happen under each moon, each taking on the energy and meaning given to it by the ancestors.

Pop over to the post on the blog for more ideas, get researching and see how you get on.  I love working with the moon in my own life and using its phases as a creative prompt is such a wonderful way to enrich your own practice, especially if you’re ever feeling a bit lacking in inspiration.

Keep looking up, my friends!

As always you can find me on www.promptedbynature.co.uk where you can find links to my Substack newsletter and get information on my forthcoming day retreats and nature writing courses down here in East Sussex.  I’m also to be found @prompted.by.nature on Instagram.

Happy writing and I’ll speak to you soon!

Helen x

Something a little different for you this week!  This week's writing prompt asks you to spend some time with a tree in your local area, noticing all the little details that so often go unnoticed as we walk by.  This prompt is about telling the story of the tree, perhaps in the style of a fairy tale or a fable, or maybe something more modern, telling the story of everything the tree has seen in its life, the changes and people and so on.

Please do share any writing with me if you'd like!

Happy writing!

Helen x

www.promptedbynature.co.uk

www.instagram.com/prompted.by.nature

Hello and welcome to my interview with Nana Tomova from The Story Apothecary. So, how are you? Things are changing quickly, aren’t they? I hope you’ve been able to find space to breathe, write, and do whatever you need to stay creative and centred.

Nana is a storyteller based in Sussex. She is a storyteller of oral stories, of poetry and of images through her photography. She is drawn to stories about nature and our relationship with her. Nana loves to tell transformational tales about strong women, and Bulgarian and Slavic Stories. Nana was born by the Black sea in Bulgaria and loves telling stories of the deep blue sea and translates and tells Bulgarian tales which have not been heard before. Her telling has been described as “An ocean of inspiration”, “Spellbinding” and people say that she "Has the power of making the audience feel in safe hands".

Nana’s background is in mental health where she worked as a pharmacist for a decade, and this inspired her to create the Story Apothecary podcast where she dispenses medicinal and healing stories for the whole world. Nana’s inspirations for her poetry and photography is nature, which she finds rich, beautiful, inspirational, wise, and healing. When writing about or photographing nature, she is in conversation with her.

In this conversation, we talk about:

• Nana’s background as a mental health pharmacist and how she merges this with her work as an outdoor story-telling.
• Psychiatry and the stigma surrounding mental health pharmacy
• Her exciting plans for the future and her creation of a ‘real life’ ‘Story Apothecary’ along with her beautiful podcast
• Her ‘wild’ childhood in Bulgaria, the transition from this to an urban setting and her journey back to ‘wildness’
• The liberating effect of Nature
• The joy of being an enthusiast
• Her journey to embracing her Bulgarian roots and how this influences her creativity and story-telling
• The responsibility she feels for respectful updating of traditional Bulgarian tales
• How she takes care of herself and her creativity
• Her hopes for the future
• And Nana shares a story with us, which was such a treat!

Nana has the most calming energy and I loved listening to her thoughts and insights. Please do go and listen to her new podcast and get signed up to her new Patreon, and be soothed by her stories and words. Stories have the power to transform emotions and mindset and therefore the world, and I’m such a big believer in the impact that these stories can have on our actions, especially traditional stories, which, when we explore their teachings and bring them into our own contexts, can expose us to perspectives we perhaps hadn’t encountered before.

You can find Nana on Instagram @Nana.Tomova and her storytelling walks are @walkinthewild.uk. Her website www.nanatomova.com and you can find more information about her Patreon on www.patreon.com/nanatomova

As always, stick around until the end and I’ll pop back to give you an insight to the meditation and writing prompt that follows this episode.

And if you use the prompts from any of these conversations, please do share them with me as I love reading your words and am working on setting up a section of my website dedicated to your writing. You can find me on www.promptedbynature.co.uk or on Instagram and Facebook @prompted.by.nature And please do leave a five-star rating wherever you are listening and, if you have a little review would be wonderful too.

Enjoy the conversation and I’ll speak to you after!

Ps.  The link to Layla Saad's, Me and White Supremacy book is here.

A meditation and writing prompt for my interview with Tiffany Francis-Baker in which you will guided through a visualisation that takes you under a night sky.

As always, if you find your mind running somewhere you don't want it to go, stop, take a few moments and come back to it.  It that doesn't work, stop and come back another time, releasing all judgment of yourself.

Please do share any writing that you create from any of my meditations and writing prompt with me - I love reading your words!

Find me on Instagram @prompted.by.nature or on my website www.promptedbynature.co.uk

Happy writing!

Helen x

Hello and welcome to episode six of Prompted by Nature. How are you this week? It’s been a bit of a funny one all told, as we begin to tentatively emerge from our cocoons. I have to say, my little family and I are still remaining close to home and enjoying the delights our local area, learning about the newly-bloomed flowers and the bees, birds and butterflies around us.

In this episode I speak to Tiffany Francis-Baker, a write, artist and environmentalist from the South Downs in Hampshire. As with many people I interview, I came across Tiffany’s work on Instagram and was immediately drawn to her third book published through Bloomsbury, Dark Skies, which I quickly ordered and flew through. Here’s a little extract I loved from the book….

With a mixed background in the arts rural heritage and conservation, Tiffany’s work is fuelled by a love for the natural world and a passion for protecting it. She writes and illustrates for national publications and has appeared on Radio 4 and Channel 4 and was Writer-in-Residence for the Forestry Commission's centenary year in 2019.

In our conversation Tiffany speaks about:

• How her relationship with the dark skies began and her inspiration for the book
• Her earliest memory of nature and how she came to her work as a nature writer, artist and environmentalist
• The place of social media in youth activism
• Creative Conservation and how we as Creatives can contribute to the environmental movement
• Valuing your work and creativity
• Disconnection from nature and the power of risk-taking
• The importance of space in one’s creativity
• How she moves through creative blocks
• Her hopes for the future

Listening back to this this week has been a real tonic for me. Seeing images of how things have pretty much returned to earth-ravaging normality in many parts of the post-covid world this week has left me feeling bleak on so many levels, and reflecting on this conversation, which took place a couple of weeks into lockdown, has given me the little push I needed to pull myself up and remain active in doing what I can to be a part of the healing of our planet in any and every way possible, however small these actions may seem sometimes. I really do encourage you to get hold of Dark Skies, which explores our changing relationship with darkness in nature. Why not order it from your local small bookseller and then post a review on Amazon to help more people get to know tiffany and her work?

If you would like to connect with Tiffany, you can find her at www.tiffanyfrancis.com or on Instagram @tiffany.francis.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Please do stick around until the end when I’ll pop back and give you a little insight into the meditation and writing prompt that follows this episode.

And if you use the prompts from any of these conversations, please do share them with me as I love reading your words and am working on setting up a section of my website dedicated to your writing. You can find me on www.promptedbynature.co.uk or on Instagram and Facebook @prompted.by.nature And please do leave a five-star rating wherever you are listening and, if you have a little review would be wonderful too.

Enjoy the conversation and I’ll speak to you after.

In this meditation, I'll guide you through a breathing practice known as Bramhari, or bumblebee breath.  

In the first part of this episode, I explain how the meditation works; I then guide you into a state of focus and relaxation and then you will practice the breath in your own time.

For the breath, take a normal inhalation and then for the exhalation you make a humming sound until you have no more breath left to exhale (allow it to fade naturally rather than trying to make it as long as possible).  We practice three of these with hands below the navel, three with hands either side of the chest, three with hands either side of the top of the head.

Focus on the vibration that is created in your body and any images, words or phrases that come up.  You don't have to write about bees in this one, just allow whatever comes through after you've tried the breath to come through, without judgement or expectation.

Let me know how you get on.

Enjoy!

Helen 

www.promptedbynature.co.uk

www.instagram.com/prompted.by.nature

Hello and welcome to episode five of Prompted by Nature! How are you? Have you been able to get out and enjoy the sunshine?

It’s World Bee Day this week so I thought, what better way to celebrate than to share my second bee-inspired conversation? A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of chatting with the lovely Faye, the Founder and Creative mind behind BeeVive. I first came across BeeVive via Instagram and was immediately drawn to their ethics and commitment to helping to protect and care for our bee friends.

By way of introduction to Faye and BeeVive, twenty-six year old Faye is an enthusiast for fashion design, saving bees and creating sustainable, healthy ways of living! Together with her partner, on the outskirts of Exeter, she founded BEEVIVE, a product-based company (and soon-to-be initiative - they have some exciting plans, as you’ll hear!) inspired by a spontaneous encounter with a tired Bee whilst on holiday in Cornwall. BeeVive is bee revival keyring that help you to be ready to help a bee in need. Each keyring is a plastic free pod that contains a glass vial of the same sugar solution used by beekeepers like Jonathan, who we heard from in episode four.

In the last year their community has grown and they are thrilled to have the revival kits stocked around the world, from Australia to Brazil team of Bee-savers, equipped to rescue a Bee in need and spread the word, meaning that even more people have an essential solution for a tired bee to help it continue its mission pollinating planet Earth. Faye and her partner design and assemble each keyring (by hand!) in Exeter, UK and have a strict no-plastic policy - my kind of people!

In this episode we discuss:

Their company ethics including their packaging and supply chain choices

What the product actually is and what’s it’s for

How to know if a bee is in trouble

Their vision for the future and future plans

How Faye herself stays creative

Her views on ‘fast fashion’ as a ‘sustainable fashion’ graduate

The joy of saying ‘yes’

Faye’s enthusiasm for her work was infectious and I was genuinely inspired by both the product and her company’s plans for the future. At the time I didn’t yet have a revival kit but I have since bought one and love it. My six-year old daughter especially loves it and is constantly looking for bees to ‘save’ - I’ve told her we’ll know one when we see one and that we can’t just go shoving sugar water down bees’ throats if they don’t need it! It’s on her next birthday wishlist too :-)

If you’d like to found out more about BeeVive and buy a kit, just go to www.beevive.com or you can go to their socials to found out how people are using theirs. I especially love their instagram feed, where they often share videos of their customers reviving flagging bees they come across in their areas - very much cuteness! Their instagram is @beevive_uk and their facebook is @beevive.

As always stick around until the end when I’ll give you an insight into the meditation and writing prompt that follows this episode. Remember to come and say hello on any of my platforms: my website www.promptedbynature.co.uk and on instagram or facebook @prompted.by.nature. And please do pop a five star review wherever you get this podcast as it really does help to push these conversations and prompts ‘out there.’

Enjoy the conversation,

Helen x

Meditation and Writing Prompt for my conversation with Jonathan Alawo (episode 4a).

As always, if you find your mind wandering off to somewhere you don't want it to go, and you can't bring it back to the focus point, stop and come back later releasing any judgement or expectation.

If you'd creating a piece from this prompt, I'd love to read it and share it on the blog.  Just pop to the website and go to the contact page www.promptedbynature.co.uk/contact or share it with me on www.instagram.com/prompted.by.nature 

Happy writing!

Helen x

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of the Prompted by Nature. This week you’ll meet Jonathan Alawo, a bee-keeper with a quiet passion for bees and protecting our fuzzy friends. Jonathon tends to a hive in one of my favourite places, and where I’ll be holding my day retreats once we’re all allowed out again, the beautiful Wilderness Woods in Sussex.

As you’ll hear, Jonathan knew from a young age that he wanted to become a bee-keeper after seeing hives from the car window whilst out driving with his Dad. After his wife, Nina - who I connected with via Instagram last year, and who runs hypnobirthing classes at Wilderness Woods - bought him a beekeeping taster session for his birthday 5 years ago, Jonathan began to tend to his own hive and, in his own words, ‘has been all-in ever since.’ Jonathan sees his beekeeping as 'a small contribution towards a shared responsibility as stewards of the planet we call home.’

Jonathan’s passion for and dedication to the bees he cares for is clear all the way through our conversation and I loved learning more about bee behaviour and how we can ourselves tend to the bees in our own area.

In this conversation, we discuss:

How hives are formed and the science behind beekeeping

The symbiosis of beekeeping

His sadness at losing a hive and his sense of responsibility for the bees

Responsible beekeeping

How we can help bees

The meditative nature of beekeeping

And he shares his biggest teaching from the bees

I loved this conversation and to me it highlighted just how important it is to push those in charge for more wild, biodiverse spaces and also how we ourselves can help to ensure the safety and health of bees by creating these very spaces in our own back gardens - or even in a window box…nature doesn’t need much - in order to do what we can to see our fuzzy friends flourish. A one point, Jonathan shows me a photo of some wax, and I’ve put the image of this in the show notes on my website if you’d like to have a look and get a sense of what he’s talking about.

You can find Jonathan on Twitter and Instagram both at @bees_inthewild; on Facebook @beesinthewild (all one word) and his website, which is currently under construction is www.beesinthewild.com

Just a little note on the sound: There were a couple of muffled patches of the conversation, possibly connection-related, that I didn’t realise until I began the editing process so if it seems to jump in a couple of places, that’s why! Technology’s great when it works, not so great when it doesn’t!

Please do stay around until the end when I’ll give you a little insight into the meditation and writing prompt that follows this episode…all inspired by the bees, of course.

If you’d like to connect, as always my website is www.promptedbynature.co.uk or I’m usually to be found on Instagram @prompted.by.nature. If you like this or any of my other episodes, I’d love it if you’d leave a 5-star review, which I’m reliably informed by other podcasts I listen to helps getting the podcast ‘out there.’

Enjoy the conversation, and I’ll speak to you after!

Welcome to your meditation and writing prompt for my conversation with Nathaniel and Fiona of Weeds in the Heart.  There are two parts to this meditation, one gives you instructions as to the outdoor part of it, mentioned at the end of the interview, the second is the actual meditation.

For this meditation and prompt, you'll need:

Some time outside

A space in which you will not be interrupted

Your notebook and pen

Please do feel free to share your writing with me - I love reading your words and would love to share them on my blog as time goes on.

Happy writing and enjoy your meditation!

Helen x

I’m really excited about sharing this conversation with you as it’s with two people whose work I adore. Nathaniel Hughes and Fiona Owen are the writer and artist behind the incredible book Weeds in the Heart. As I mentioned in the episode, I found their book completely by accident in a little bookshop in Stroud when I was away with my partner and children over the new year. It was Fiona’s artwork that first drew me in and upon opening the book I felt myself transported into a world of plants, weeds and utter magic!

As they mention, Fiona and Nathaniel have been working together for around six years creating the Weeds in the Heart books, a living, breathing project that will continue to develop and change with the seasons and the years.

In this conversation, we cover:

Their paths into Herbalism

Working with plants as spirits and allies

Why we don’t always have to ‘consume’ plants as food (something I needed to hear, as you’ll see when I speak of my hunt for wild garlic!)

The need to find our own herbal medicine path that is unique to the place in which we reside

I really do encourage you to practice the meditation that follows this conversation to really get a sense of what Fiona and Nathaniel are speaking about. I also encourage to get their book - it really is the most therapeutic book to read; the combination of Fiona’s illustrations and Nathaniel’s words creates an ethereal experience and it’s a book I often sit and gaze at when my brain needs some time out. It would be a perfect gift for someone need some reassurance or comfort at any time.

You can find the book on the main website:

www.weedsintheheart.org.uk

And Nathianiel’s main school page is:

https://www.schoolofintuitiveherbalism.weedsintheheart.org.uk

And Fiona’s stunning artwork can be found at:

https://johnandfionaowen.weebly.com

Please stay around until the end when I’ll give you a little information about the meditation and writing prompt I’ve created in the follow-up to this conversation.

As always, you can find me over at www.promptedbynature.co.uk or on the Instagram squares with my daily writing prompts @prompted.by.nature

The transcript for this episode can be found here: https://www.promptedbynature.co.uk/podcast-transcripts

Action point: donate if you can, to the Turkey/Syria Earthquake fund appeal through the DEC (www.dec.org.uk) if you’re in the UK or through the charities working in your country to help. Please ensure they are legitimate, reputable charities before donating.

Before I tell you about today’s conversation, I wanted to remind you that my Substack newsletter is now available via the Substack app or in your inbox when you sign up. You can sign up for a free or paid subscription - £5pm or £40pa (a saving of £1.70 on the monthly price). All information about what is included in each option is over on my Substack page https://promptedbynature.substack.com/ and in the show notes for the this episode. I hope you’ll join me for more prompts, workbooks, e-zines and nature-inspired creativity and community.

Back to the episode!

Today, I’m thrilled to release my conversation with the lovely Caro Giles, whose book, Twelve Moons is now available and published by HarperNorth.

Caro Giles is a writer based in Northumberland. Her words are inspired by her local landscape, the wide empty beaches and the Cheviot Hills. She writes honestly about what it means to be a woman, a mother and a carer, and about the value in taking the road less travelled. Her writing appears in journals, press and periodicals, including a monthly column in Psychologies. In 2021 she was named BBC Countryfile's New Nature Writer of the Year.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• The story behind the memoir and how Caro came to write Twelve Moons
• The part a master’s played in Caro’s work
• Accountability in your writing practice
• How she found her unique voice following motherhood and the breakdown of her marriage
• How her role as a parent-carer has impacted her voice and the way that she approaches her work
• Caro’s personal relationship with the moon
• How Caro approached the book and her writing process
• Caro’s life as a singer and musician
• What she’s learnt that she wants to pass on
• Her vision for the future

You can find Caro on Twitter and Instagram @carogileswrites and her book Twelve Moons is available via the Prompted by Nature bookshop on bookshop.org or at your local bookshop.

Accompanying episodes:

2.10a - Marchelle Farrell, My Garden, My Teacher

3.2a - Stella Tomlinson, Priestesshood and Earth-Based Spirituality

4.2a - Rebecca Schiller, Earthed

4.7a - Ben Myers, Writing with the Land

As always, I’m over at the website www.promptedbynature.co.uk where you can find information about my upcoming day retreats and writing courses in East Sussex as well as all the links to the bookshop and the Substack newsletter. I’m always on @prompted.by.nature on Instagram.

I hope you enjoy the episode. The prompt that accompanies this will be out on Tuesday. Happy listening and I’ll speak to you soon!

Helen x

A mediation to follow up Anna's interview based on fire!

For this meditation you'll need:

• Something comfortable to sit on
• A candle
• Your notebook and a pen
• A quiet space in which you won't be disturbed 

Please do share your writing with me if you try this!  As always you can find me at www.promptedbynature.co.uk or www.instagram.com/prompted.by.nature

Enjoy!  Helen x

Hello, lovely one! I hope you’re safe and well wherever you are. Welcome to the first conversation episode of Prompted by Nature.

We’re currently in week 7 of lockdown here in the UK but just before we entered this liminal space, I spoke with Anna Neubert-Wood of Wanderwomen, Scotland. Anna has been running WanderWomen Scotland Ltd for almost two years, encouraging groups of women to connect with nature through a combination of survival skills and mindfulness. A connector, facilitator, adventurer and wellbeing guide, Anna loves sharing her passion for the outdoors, inspiring others to pause and notice things, inside and out, and re-awaken the inner child. She firmly believes that we are all stronger than we think, and that we are so much more capable than we give ourselves credit for. Empowering and inspiring, WanderWomen has found an international market for re-connecting to self, to nature and to those around us.

I’ve known Anna for a couple years, having initially connected with her through the wonder of the Instagram yoga world. I’ve been following her journey setting up and running Wanderwomen since its inception and am constantly inspired by Anna’s big-hearted sharing and her ability to create and hold space for the women in her groups, whether that be on overnight wilderness camping trips or weekly sea-swimming groups. As she mentions, Anna runs Wanderwomen from her home in Edinburgh, seeking out the wild spaces around her and supporting the women in her groups, many of whom are taking their first tentative steps into these.

In this interview, Anna speaks about: 

• how her love of nature came in her early childhood growing up in East Germany in the then divided GDR, 
• the importance of boredom in not just children but adults too and how this creates rich opportunities for our creativity, 
• her dream for Wanderwomen  
• what she does to ensure that her cup remains full when giving so much to the women in her community. Anna also speaks of her hopes for what these ‘lockdown days’ could lead to, in nature and in ourselves.

It was a wonderful conversation and, for me personally, a real moment of calm amidst the chaos of the early Covid days here in the UK, when no one really knew what was going on but we had an inkling that things were about to change beyond recognition, something we also touch upon.

For more information about Anna and her work with WanderWomen Scotland go to www.wander-women.co.uk or you can find her on Instagram www.instagram.com/wanderwomenscotland 

Please stay around until the end when I’ll give you a little information about the meditation and writing prompt I’ve created in the follow-up to this conversation.

As always, you can find me over at www.promptedbynature.co.uk or on the Instagram squares with my daily writing prompts www.instagram.com/prompted.by.nature

Until then, I’m sending you lots of love. Enjoy the conversation and I’ll speak to you soon.

A brief introduction to the Prompted by Nature podcast and your host, Helen.  Today, I give you some insight into who I am and what this podcast is all about, my inspiration and motivation behind it, and what to expect.

The sound isn't as I'd like it but I'm learning, learning :-)

Enjoy!

Helen x

Welcome to your writing prompt for my conversation with Elin Manon.  This is one of those prompts that doesn’t have to be written - it can be if you’d like, and know that these prompts are always more of creative prompts that you can make of what you will - but could be one to use to inspire a piece of artwork like a collage or painting.  Whatever direction you’d like to take this in is fine!

So the invitation here is to do a little background research into the folklore of your area.  Folklore came up a lot in the conversation and Elin spoke of her connection to the stories of Wales and also of their connection to the folklore of Cornwall.  (And by the way did anyone pick up on the link in her story about the horse that comes in the night- the Night Mare?  Was I the only one who, upon listening back to the conversation, saw the light of realisation of ‘oh!  Nightmare!!’)

Folklore and landscape are bound together - one, I believe, reflecting the other.  We see folklore in a landscape when we notice things like standing stones and stone circles and when we visit a space and are told, ‘they say this is where X happened with Y, many, many years ago.’  The land holds these stories and, as humans, it can be a way for us to connect with it.  Folklore is what is created when those who know the land the best begin to notice patterns, signs and symbols and transform these into stories we can learn from.  For example, in Sussex, where I live, there is a story about how the Wilmington Giant got there.  For those who don’t know, the Wilmington Giant is a huge chalk person carved into the side of a big hill.   If you look closely, most areas have some kind of folklore attached to them; these may vary depending on landscape, of course, but even my hometown of London has its urbanised versions of folklore, usually involving the devil in some way!

The invitation here, then, is to do a little research into the folklore of the land on which you now live.

• What are the stories that exist in this place that may have been forgotten?
• Where did they come from and how have they moved and changed with the times?  If you can’t find any, why not spend some time outside in your local area connecting with a particular tree or space over the course of days or weeks and see what stories arise from it.
• Perhaps you are lucky enough to live close to a natural spring or well - where stories does it hold?
• If you live close to a river, what does it say as it moves and flows on?
• Perhaps your local park - or even graveyard! - has something in it that has always interested you - what stories might there be in that thing?

Get curious and let your imagination run wild!

A couple of previous writing prompts that might help get you started are the meditation I did for my conversation with Nathaniel Hughes and Fiona Owen, 1.3b, as well as with Nana Tomova, 1.7b.  And then the prompt for my conversation with Dawn Nelson (which would actually also be really good to listen to in connection to my conversation with Elin), 1.13b, tells the folktale of the river of Banorie, which you can then use as a writing prompt.

Let me know how you get on with this one.  The folk tales of the world are always rich, diverse and, oftentimes, wildly entertaining.  

All book recommendations in the 'Folk and Stories from the Land' section in my bookshop:  https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/promptedbynature

As always, you can find me on the website, www.promptedbynature.co.uk or over on Instagram @prompted.by.nature, where I post most of my social media content.

Happy writing!

Helen x

Action point:  www.ecotalk.co.uk 

Welcome to series 5, episode 11 of the Prompted by Nature. How have you been? Imbolc has just passed here in the UK and I can feel the very tangible promise of the lighter months slowly creeping up. The full snow moon has just passed and has been illuminating the early mornings with an almost solar glare - it’s been so bright! I’m in the midst of planning my upcoming e-zine in time for the Equinox as well as working on a few pieces that I’m feeling really inspired by.

Onto to day’s episode.

Today I’m speaking with illustrator, Elin Manon. Elin is a freelance illustrator from Wales now based in Cornwall. Her work is inspired by the natural world, folklore and folk traditions, particularly those Welsh and Cornish. A passion for storytelling and the celebration and protection of our natural world has been a constant drive within her work. Through the power of imagination and imagery, she aims to deepen our connection to the natural environment, reflecting stories of the landscape, in a world that is often focused on the modern and material.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Elin’s creative journey
• How Elin’s distinctive style emerged
• The place of storytelling in her work
• The boundary between Self and Art
• Finding the balance between work and creativity
• Charging what you’re worth as a writer
• Elin’s creative process
• The impact that Elin’s early encounters with nature and storytelling (especially the Mabinogion) had on her future work
• Why speaking and using Welsh is so important to Elin
• Why connecting with creatives can be an important part of enjoying and appreciating their art
• The lesson that Elin would like to pass onto you
• Elin’s vision for the future

This conversation was so rich and I loved speaking with Erin about her incredible artwork. you can find her on her website www.elin-manon.com and on Instagram @elin_manon_illustration

Past episodes that would work well with this one are:

2.5a Nick Hayes, The Book of Trespass

3.6a Jamey-Anne Redway, Illustration and the Natural World

3.8a Chloe Valerie Harmsworth, Nature-Inspired Creativity

4.10a Elizabeth Gleave, Restoring the Earth through the Arts

5.2a Amy-Jane Beer, The Flow

Please do sign up for the Substack newsletter and, if you’d like, join me in the paid subscription where you’ll get all the usual offerings like weekly writing prompts, the discussion board and PbN updates every six weeks, plus 10% off all online courses, a free seasonal e-zine, sneak peeks into my WIPs and much more!

Come find me over on the website where you can find all events, my blog, past episodes and link to the Substack and the PbN bookshop. On Instagram, I’m @prompted.by.nature, Facebook it’s @promptedbynature and Twitter I’m @promptedxnature. Remember that the writing prompt for this episode will be up on Tuesday.

Until next time, I’m sending lots of love and creativity. Happy listening and I’ll speak to you soon! Bye.

Helen x

Welcome to your writing prompt for my conversation with Moya Lloyd of the Boundary Way Project. In the conversation, Moya talked about her love of using found objects such as plants, mushroom and pieces from her family history to create art. For this prompt then, the invitation is to get creating using things that already exist.

Perhaps you will create a collage out of old books (although I kind of shudder when I think about tearing up books, even old and decrepit ones!), photographs, till receipts, play programmes, your own drawings or sketches, photographs of the landscape, leaves, dried flowers or similar.

Maybe you’d like to stick to writing and find old work that you’ve never done anything with and create new piece - a word collage perhaps, a kind of tapestry of old phrases you’ve already conjured up and then sew them together with newer ideas.

The idea is here is to create something new out of the old. Make the most of what you already have and reshape and refashion it into something completely different. This is similar to a prompt I did way back in series 3, episode 4, inspired by my conversation with Grace Hull so do go and have a listen to 3.4b (and the accompanying conversation, of course!) if you want to extend this idea. That one also includes a short meditation, just to get your creativity flowing.

I’m going to take a break from writing for this one and create a collage similar to the style that Moya uses in her personal work. I’m then going to write a short story or poem inspired by whatever comes out in the collage. I’ll post both on my socials and blog once they’re finished and I’d love to see yours if you try this.

Remember no judgment on your own creativity, please - just experiment and enjoy!

Happy creating and I’ll speak to you soon,

Helen x

Action point: Right to Roam campaign www.righttoroam.org.uk

Today on the pod we have the lovely Moya Lloyd of the Boundary Project in Wolverhampton. I first heard about the Boundary Way Project and their work on Instagram during lockdown and have been inspired with their creativity and arts projects ever since. This episode is quite close to my heart due to my work with Benfield Valley Project and I came away with lots of ideas for creative initiatives we could run. It was an absolute pleasure to speak with Moya, who is a quiet powerhouse of creativity and inspiration.

Moya is visual artist with a passion for and background in community arts. She studied History of Art and Fine Art and uses these two disciplines to inform her work with Boundary Project, for which she is Project Lead. Boundary Way Project evolved through a series of arts and heritage projects inspired by people, nature and place at the Boundary Way Allotments and Community Garden, where is has been based since 2015. Through the Boundary Way Project, Moya works with a diverse and wide range of the community, organising arts events and projects such as art exhibitions, creative workshops and health and wellbeing sessions.

In this conversation we discuss:

• Moya’s work at Boundary Way Project
• Her creative background and how she came to work in community arts
• Making art accessible and moving away from elitism in the arts
• Using found materials to help reduce materials’ costs
• Connecting with her family history through her creativity
• What the Boundary Way Project is, what they do and how Moya got involved in it
• The importance of connecting people with their creativity through nature
• The Boundary Way Writer’s Group initiative
• The biggest challenges and biggest joys that Moya has encountered through BWP
• How Boundary Way Project inspires her creativity

All of Moya’s pieces that we talk about are on the episode page on the website:  https://www.promptedbynature.co.uk/series-five/510-moya-lloyd-of-the-boundary-way-project-building-creative-communities. I’ve also popped a link in the notes about the research that Moya mentions in the episode that makes the link between creativity and cultivating deeper relationships with the natural world. https://www.derby.ac.uk/research/centres-groups/nature-connectedness-research-group/

You can find the Boundary Way Project on www.boundaryway.co.uk and on the social @boundarywayproject and Moya can be found on Instagram and Twitter @artsandhealth

Linked episodes:

1.2a Anna Neubert-Wood - Creating sisterhood in the Wild

1.8a Ian Solomon-Kawall aka. KMT, Biodiversity, Creativity and Safe Space in Urban Settings

1.9a Lucy Jones, Why Our Minds Need the Wild

5.5a Bella Gonshrovitz, ‘Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear’

As always, I’m at www.promptedbynature.co.uk, where you can find all episodes to the podcast, writing prompts, my own writing and a link to my newly-relaunched Substack newsletter. I’m also @prompted.by.nature on Instagram .

I hope you enjoy the conversation. Happy listening and I’ll speak to you soon!

Helen x

Linked episodes:

1.10a Jini Reddy, Magic in the Landscape

2.10a Marchelle Farrell, My Garden, My Teacher

4.2a Rebecca Schiller, Earthed

4.7a Benjamin Myers, Writing with the Land in ‘The Perfect Golden Circle’

Hello!  Welcome to your writing prompt for my conversation with Kathryn Aalto.  I got a lot out of the chat with Kathryn and it was lovely to be able to catch up with her and go a little deeper into her own creative life and practice.

For this prompt, I’m combining two ideas that came up in the conversation.  Firstly, Kathryn’s definition of ‘sense of place’ and secondly her thoughts on ‘show don’t tell.’  Both of these concepts we covered in the course I took with Kathryn and the ‘show don’t tell’ technique is something I used to use a lot with my groups as a school teacher and still use now with my nature writing groups.

Kathryn spoke of ‘sense of place’ as being ‘That invisible layer of memories, history and emotions that covers a physical landscape with this invisible strata.’

For this prompt, I’d like you to create a description of a place.  This could either be a space new to you, or that you know well, a place in which you feel a sense of belonging.  Perhaps it is a space close to where you live, somewhere you once visited, or somewhere you’re new to.

Wherever it is, you are going to take your reader there using the show don’t tell technique.  For this, you are avoiding telling your reader anything but are rather trying to show them it.  For example, if you are in a woodland space, rather than telling them explicitly that that’s where you are, show them that that’s where you are.  If you need any ideas, consider the following:

• How does the air feel?
• If you close your eyes, what sounds can you hear - close up and far away?
• What colours, shapes and shades catch your eye?
• Consider Kathryn’s definition: what layers, memories, history and emotions exist in this place.  Maybe you have no emotional connection to this place as yet, and aren’t already aware of any history or memories held in the place.  What comes through when you are here?  What can you imagine about this place?

When you read your work through, any sign of you telling me something, edit it to be more descriptive.  Remember this is just an exercise in which you are training your descriptive muscles to be more perceptive, to create more detail and to entice your reader, inviting them into this world with you as their guide.

Please do reach if you use this prompt.  You can find me in my favourite online places - on the website, www.promptedbynature.co.uk and on Instagram @prompted.by.nature

Happy writing!

Helen x

Welcome to series 5, episode 9 of the Prompted by Nature podcast. I hope this one finds you well. 

Action Point: WhenToPlugIn app: https://www.nationalgrid.com/cop26/when-to-plug-in-app

Today, we hear from one of my teachers, the wonderful Kathryn Aalto.

Kathryn Aalto is an American teacher, designer, speaker, and New York Times best-selling writer of creative nonfiction. For the past twenty-five years, her creative practice has fused nature and culture: teaching the literature of nature and place; designing beautiful and sustainable gardens; and writing about the natural world. Based in England, she teaches popular online and live writing courses, mentors emerging writers, and leads writing retreats in England and the United States. Kathryn is the author of three books including Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World (2020), The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh: A Walk Through the Forest that Inspired the Hundred Acre Wood (2015), and Nature and Human Intervention (2011). Her personal essays and book reviews, appear in Smithsonian Magazine, Outside, Sierra, Buzzfeed, Resurgence and the Ecologist, and more.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Kathryn’s childhood and youth growing up in Southern California
• How her love of the personal essay came about and how this influenced her writing
• How Kathryn’s connection to nature and place has changed and developed through her life
• Her definition of sense of place
• How her perception as an ex-pat enriches her understanding and encounters with nature and landscape
• The circumstances that surrounded her stepping into what she always knew she was meant to do
• The impact public speaking has had on her writing
• Kathryn’s writing tips and what it means to ‘show, not tell’
• The lesson she’d like to share with you (and it’s a good one!)

I took Kathryn’s nature writing course last summer and absolutely loved it. I’m not often able to invest in myself or my ongoing learning so it was amazing to finally take a writing class. I’m so used to teaching that it was joyful to be a student again. I can highly recommend any of Kathryn’s classes and workshops. You can find Kathryn and all information about her forthcoming writing courses at www.kathrynaalto.com and over on social media @kathrynaalto. I’ve also added Kathryn’s books to my bookshop over on bookshop.org so please do pop over there and have a browse. https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/promptedbynature

As always, you can find me over on my website www.promptedbynature.co.uk and on social media @prompted.by.nature on Instagram, @promptedxnature on Twitter and @promptedbynature on Facebook. I have a few local in-person courses and day retreats coming up so do have a look on my website events page if you’re local to Brighton and Hove.

The writing prompt that follows this episode will be up on Tuesday.

Happy listening!

Helen x

Welcome to series 5, episode 8 of the Prompted by Nature podcast.  This episode is a bit of a pep talk and a follow-up to my latest blog post, which you can read here:  https://www.promptedbynature.co.uk/writing-prompts/tending-the-compost

I discuss my own thoughts around new year's resolutions and why I use a 'word for the year' instead as well as how I'm using all the fear, doubt and indifference to compost what comes next.  Please do read the post as well as listen here.

As always, I'm over on the website www.promptedbynature.co.uk and on the socials Instagram: @prompted.by.nature, Facebook @promptedbynature and on Twitter @promptedxnature

Happy creating!

Helen x

Ps.  Just a note that I talk about 'allum lilies' in the episode, but of course I mean 'arum lilies' - I don't know why I always get it wrong! :-D 

Hello!  Welcome series 6 episode 4 of the Prompted by Nature podcast.  I’m Helen, your host and today I’m thrilled to release a conversation I had earlier this week With Marchelle Farrell.  Long-time listeners of the podcast will remember Marchelle from series 2 episode 10 - a conversation we recorded what feels like a lifetime ago, in November 2020.

Marchelle has a new book out, Uprooting, and it was wonderful to chat up with Marchelle and talk all things gardens and writing.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What Marchelle has been up for over the past two years
• Her new book, Uprooting, what’s about and how it came to be
• The reciprocal nature of the garden
• Redefining difficult conversations
• The importance of grief and mourning
• Non-verbal communication and writing
• The creative advice she’d give her younger self
• What she’s looking forward to

Uprooting has already won an award in the shape of the Nan Shepherd prize for underrepresented voices in nature writing.  I urge you to read this book - it is profound and complex and explores Marchelle’s relationship with her garden as well as how these brings up connections to her beloved Trinidad.

Uprooting is out now in your local bookshop or library - and remember that you can always ask them to order it in if they don’t already stock it.  Marchelle is usually to be found on Instagram under the handle @afroliage and on her website www.marchellefarrell.com where you can find upcoming dates of her book tour and speaking events.

Just a little note that the connection was a little sketchy at times but I don’t think it affects meaning.

Episodes that would go well with this one:

2.10a - My Garden, My Teacher - Marchelle Farrell

6.1a - All My Wild Mothers - Victoria Bennett

5.9a Writing in Place - Kathryn Aalto

As always, I’m on instagram @prompted.by.nature or on the website www.promptedbynature.co.uk .  You can also sign up for my Substack on www.promptedbynature.substack.com

Sending you lots of love. 

Happy listening, and I’ll speak to you soon.

Welcome to your writing prompt for my conversation with Rebecca Beattie.  Something Rebecca said really resonated with me while we were speaking and that was her approach to creative blocks.  I’ve done episodes on creative blocks before (links below to previous episodes and blog posts on the website here: https://www.promptedbynature.co.uk/series-five/57-rebecca-beattie-rediscovering-natures-seasons-amp-cycles if you want to have an explore) but I loved when she said ‘find where you’re not blocked.’

The idea of focusing on what is working rather than what isn’t, isn’t a new one but sometimes it can be so powerful to be reminded that blocks are a. not forever, and b. may not even exist at all.  It all depends on your perception.  The areas in which I personally feel most blocked when it comes to my creativity, and especially my writing, is in the actual action of creating.  I have all the ideas and all the notebooks containing many, many fragments of these ideas, but I often struggle to actually sit down and start.  I know for myself that I benefit from working with others in a writers’ circle, having a mentor or setting myself clear but small goals for anything I want to write.

You may not need this prompt right now, but I want you to bookmark it for the times when you might do in the future.

So, if you are feeling blocked creatively right now, I want you to do the following:

1. Firstly consider whereabouts you are blocked.  Which part of the creative process feels hard for you right now?  The beginning, the middle or the end?  Is it approaching one particular piece of work?  An article you want to submit, a poetry competition you’re trying to create something for, or writing anything at all down on the page?  Only you will know how to answer that.  For me, for example, I often feel blocked out of fear that what it is I want to create won’t be as good as I want it to be and that I’ll just let myself down and then be worse off than if I hadn’t started at all.  I often compare myself to others, telling myself that they, whoever ‘they’ are, could do it better than I could so I shouldn’t even start?
2. Secondly, to help you find where you’re not blocked, just create anything.  So, for me, that always seems to look like the morning pages, or some kind of stream of consciousness practice in which I just sit down, set my timer for thirty minutes, or tell myself I’m going to write just three pages in my notebook, and then start writing.  For you, it might be that you would benefit from experimenting in an entirely different way.  So, if you are a writer, do some doodling or painting, or play with clay.  If you're a painter, do some writing or sculpting and so on.  What about getting out into nature, collecting whatever natural objects, like pine cones or leaves, you can find and making some seasonal decorations.  Sometimes we need to totally change our perspective to jolt our brains out of this blocked state and return to ‘manufacturer’s settings.’
3. Lastly, do this for as long as you need to before you return to your regular practice or that piece you have been working on and can’t get through.  Perhaps return slowly and just create some small, manageable goals for yourself - one paragraph at a time, work on a different section of the story, poem, or piece you’ve been stuck on.  Take it slowly and see what happens.

The idea is that you give yourself whatever time is available to you (and I realise if you’re up against a deadline, things can become pressing!) to move through whatever has been getting in your way.

As I say, you may not need this right now, but feel free to save it and come back to it whenever you need.

Happy creating,

Helen x

Welcome to series 5, episode 7 of the Prompted by Nature podcast.  I hope you’re doing well and keeping warm if it’s as cold where you are as it is here.  Well, it’s the final episode of 2022 and I’m very excited that this week’s guest is the one who will help us draw it to a close.  i’ll be taking a short break but will be back to continue series 5 in the new year.

This week, I’m speaking with Dr Rebecca Beattie.  Rebecca is a Wiccan Priestess with a PhD in Creative Writing, whose childhood growing up on Dartmoor gave her an early appreciation of the power and joys of nature.  She has been practising solitary witchcraft for twenty years and an initiate of the Gardnerian Wiccan tradition for fifteen. She is acclaimed for her highly informed teaching of witchcraft subjects at Treadwell’s Books in Bloomsbury. By day she is a professional in a major charity, with advanced degrees in Literature and Creative Writing.

In this conversation we discuss:

• Rebecca’s creative journey
• How Rebecca found modern Paganism and how this led her to find her path as a Wiccan Priestess
• ‘Life as a Training Ground’
• How Rebecca approaches creative blocks
• How her ‘Wheel of the Year’ book came about and what makes it different
• The connection between creativity and spirituality
• Walking as an opportunity for stillness
• What the wheel of the year is and how it can be used
• The interfaith nature of the wheel
• Storytelling as a learning tool
• Rebecca’s early life living on Dartmoor and what drew her back there
• Connecting to nature in an urban setting
• Hiraeth is the word Rebecca uses to describe her feeling of homesickness
• Rebecca’s tips for connecting with each festival

You can find Rebecca’s book, ‘Wheel of the Year: A Nurturing Guide to Rediscovering Nature's Seasons and Cycles’ is available at all good booksellers and in the Prompted by Nature bookshop over on bookshop.org (link in show notes).  Remember to support your favourite indie bookshop by buying through them and then post a review on Amazon.  Rebecca's website is www.rebeccabeattie.co.uk and she's on Instagram @rebeccambeattie

Some episodes that would go well with this one are:

1.10a Jini Reddy, Finding Magic in the Landscape

3.2a Stella Tomlinson, Priestesshood and Earth-Based Spirituality

4.11a Annabel Abbs, Walking into Creativity

4.12a Soraya Abdel-Hadi, ‘Finding my Creative Voice through Nature

As always, I’m on www.promptedbynature.co.uk and on the socials @prompted.by.nature on Insta and Facebook.

The writing prompt for this episode is available straight after this one if you want to use it to inspire your Winter Solstice celebrations.

Have a wonderful festive season, whatever you’re celebrating.

Happy listening and I’ll speak to you in 2023!

Helen x

Welcome to your writing prompt for my conversation with Angeline Morrison.  A shorter one for you today - either a prompt or just an opportunity to pause for a moment and consider the wider impact of your work and creative practice.

In my conversation with Angeline, she discussed how she sees her work as one part of a whole, something that feeds into a greater body of work started generations ago and contributed to by all those working to tell the forgotten, ignored and hidden stories.

For this prompt, then, I’d love you to consider your own work as a single thread in a much bigger tapestry, or, if you’re musical like Angeline, a note in the symphony of life.  This tapestry is beautiful, with every colour you can imagine, nothing is out of place and everything is as it should be.  It tells the stories of nature and envisions a world in which humans and the other-than-human collaborate and dance together to create beauty and to live in a way which nourishes us all equally.  The human footprint is a mere whisper of a shape in this tapestry and moves in a way that does not interfere or smother everything else but rather honours the small things, considering its impact before taking a step.

The work that you are creating is just one thread in this kaleidoscope of experience but without it, it wouldn’t be the same.  Whether the thread be your words, your images, the shapes you are moulding with your hands, your voice, the way you move or any other way creativity moves through you, it is an integral part of a piece of art that extends back through time to meet our ancestors, and reaches forward to hold hands with those who will follow us, nourished by what you have created.

Take this prompt in whatever way you need or want to.  Put ‘A Thread in the Tapestry’ as a title and see where it takes you; create your piece of the tapestry; or just take this as a pep talk that, whatever your art form, and whoever it is created for, it is important, it is valued and, most of all, it is a sacred part of you that affects the world in ways you will never know, whether you choose to share it or not.

Let me know what comes out if you use this one.

Happy creating!

Helen x

Welcome to series 5, episode 6 of the Prompted by Nature podcast.  THANK YOU for the 10k downloads!!

Action point: Go to on my website to see this week's action point and all the links that I suggest. 

Onto today’s episode!

Angeline Morrison is a singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter who explores traditional song with a deep love, respect and curiosity. Angeline mostly makes music
in the genres of wyrd folk and psych folk, her work infused with elements of soul music, literature, ‘60s beat pop sounds, folklore, myth and the supernatural.

With a feral approach, a handmade sonic aesthetic and a belief in the importance of tenderness, Angeline’s original compositions and re-stitchings of traditional songs focus on storytelling and the small things that often go unnoticed. Sounds like solitude, memory, nostalgia, a rainy walk amongst trees…

In July 2022, Angeline was announced as the fourth winner of the prestigious Christian Raphael Prize at the Cambridge Folk Festival. Her latest album, The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience (released October 2022, Topic Records) is a work of re-storying. The historic Black presence in the UK dates back to at least Roman times, yet is often hidden, forgotten or  unacknowledged.

In this conversation we discuss:

• Where Angeline’s love of folk music and where that comes from
• How her uncle instilled a love of playing and performing music
• How she overcomes creative blocks
• Angeline’s creative inspiration and her practice of ‘welcoming ideas’
• The natural voice and story-telling
• ‘Creative singing intervention’ and how the Sorrow Songs came about
• Angeline’s concerns around creating Sorrow Songs and why she did it anyway

Just a little note about the connection in the first half of the conversation. We had a few problems and then it cut out completely. The sound quality was much better after we reconnected but it doesn’t get in the way of the interview, I don’t think.

You can find Angeline on Instagram @angelcakepie and on her website www.angelinemorrisonmusic.com You can also buy any of her EPs or albums via her Bandcamp page www.angelinemorrisonmusic.bandcamp.com 

As always, I’m over on the socials @prompted.by.nature on Insta and @promptedbynature on facebook. I have some in-person nature writing courses and day retreats up on the website too so go to www.promptedbynature.co.uk and follow the link to the events page.

Thank you once again for the 10k downloads, I’m utterly thrilled. Thank you for your support as always.

Happy listening and I’ll speak to you soon, Helen x

Books mentioned in the episode (all are available on my Bookshop.org page):

• Daphne Du Morier, Monte Verita (from The Birds)
• Sharon Blackie The Enchanted Life, If Women Rose Rooted
• Amy Ray, https://www.amy-ray.com/ , https://countryqueer.com/stories/interview/amy-rays-queer-country-story/

Angeline's Jools Holland performance:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBnahOo1GBo 

Happy listening!  Helen x

Welcome to this writing prompt for my conversation with Bella Gonshorovitz.  For this one, it could be done purely for writing but I feel like it’s more of a general prompt for whatever creative practice you want to try at this point.

Bella talked a lot about her process in terms of the circular economy structure and the inspiration that this can provide to not just our work in the garden or growing things but in our creativity.  I want to encourage you to choose one of the verbs, grow, cook, dye or wear (as in, sew) and see where it takes you.

Perhaps you could take some time to think about what you’d like to grow come Spring, or do some winter seed sowing for your garden, window sill or balcony space.  Maybe you’d like to dive into foraging and what might be around at this time of year - Bella’s book, as well as my conversations with Ebony Gheorghe (4.2a) and Nathaniel Hughes and Fiona Owen all the way back in 1.3a, are great for finding inspiration for this - and how you can plan your year in foraging to really get to know the plants and how they can support you and your health.

Perhaps you have a few bits of fabric scraps lying around or have some budget to raid the charity shops for the amazing fabrics they so often have in stock and want to experiment with sewing your own clothes or something simple, like a tote bag or a face cloth to help you gain confidence in sewing and making clothes if you don’t already.

Once you’ve decided, you could sit down and plan - perhaps three month ahead or so - how you might develop this knowledge or skills set.  So for me, for example, I’d like to try the full process that Bella suggests but I don’t want to overwhelm myself so I’m going to get to know onion a bit better, purely because I can hold of it at this time of year and Bella’s glow when she spoke about it was infectious!  I want to save the skins and start to experiment with dyeing with it.  Then, once my garden is ready for planting, I’m going to try and plant some of my own.  I’m following Charles Dowding’s No Dig method, so I’m going to follow this and what Bella says in her book about tending to onions and see how it goes.

I’ll then use this process as creative fuel for a Solarpunk piece I’m working (and if you don’t know what Solarpunk is, just get on Ecosia and give it a search.  You can thank me later ;-).  I want to see how it feels to grow something that I will later eat and then use to create something that I will wear.  I want to experience how it feels to fully close that circle.

I’d love to hear from you if you use this prompt and how you get on.

Remember you can get hold of Bella’s book, Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear via the PbN bookshop on bookshop.org - the link is in the show notes or you can go over to their website and search for the Prompted by Nature shop and have a browse.  There’s also a direct link on my website www.promptedbynature.co.uk

Happy creating!

Helen x

Action point: Earth Hero app.  Download the app via your app store or go to their website for more information: https://www.earthhero.org/app/

A little apology for the tardiness of this episode.  I was hit by a car whilst cycling to work last Thursday and it pushed everything back a bit.  I’m ok with thankfully just bumps and bruises to recover from and the only thing that broke was my helmet - thank goodness for helmets!

I was thrilled to have been included in a list of the 7 best nature podcasts for wildlife enthusiasts on www.bestpodcasts.co.uk

Onto todays’ episode…

Bella Gonshorvitz is a multidisciplinary fashion practitioner, author, natural dyer and allotment plot grower. Her debut book ‘Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear – From seed to style the sustainable way’ was published this year by DK/Penguin Random House. The book captures her miniature circular economy process through the prism of five crops: grow-your-own and foraging advice; vegan recipes for the harvest; instructions to creating natural dye from the cooking waste and full-size patterns with sewing instructions to creating your own Onion dress, Nettle duster, Rhubarb bolero, Blackberry shirtdress and Cabbage shorts.

In this episode we discuss:

• How the book came about
• Her work in clothing design and (truly) sustainable fashion
• Making gowns for hospital staff during COVID
• The magic behind the book
• The importance of emotional connection with the clothes that we wear
• Connecting with the soil
• Community and unlikely friendships
• Composting as a creative process
• Tips for natural dye newbies

Bella’s book, as well as the book she mentions, Wild Colour by Jenny Dean, is available in the Prompted by Nature bookshop over on bookshop.org .  Buying through bookshop.org is a great way of supporting the podcast as for ever order I get a little kick back, which helps me to create more of these episodes and lot more free content for you to enjoy!

Bella’s website is www.bellagonshorowitz.com and you can find her @bellagonshorovitz on social media.

A few episodes that would link well with this one:

1.11a Heal Rewilding, Jan Stannard

1.14a Supporting Local Economies through Land-Based Crafts, Karen Collins

2.4a Creative Sustainability and the Joy of Buying Less, Erica Purvis

2.10a Marchelle Farrell, My Garden, My Teacher

3.1a The Plant Scientist, Rebecca Lazarou

3.4a Holistic Sustainability, Grace Hull

3.5a The Timeless Wisdom of Plants, Barbara Wilkinson

Remember you can find me on www.promptedbynature.co.uk on Instagram @prompted.by.nature, where I’m currently adding more prompts and extracts of my own writing.

Happy listening!

Helen x

In this prompt, I invite you to consider Catherine's thoughts on creatives as visionaries, something she speaks about in the main episode.  Consider a future you want to see, what part might you play in that?  Where is nature and how do we embrace and protect her?  What would happen is humans 'got it right'?  

If creating a future society feels a bit much for you, perhaps keep it local and create a piece around your garden and/or favourite natural space.  What do you envision it to look like in 2, 5, 10 years time?  How might it feel?  What might live or flourish there?

As always, have fun with this one and let me know how you get on.

Happy creating!

Helen x

www.promptedbynature.co.uk

www.instagram.com/prompted.by.nature

Welcome to series 5, episode 4 of the Prompted by Nature podcast.

Action point:  Pop over to https://unfccc.int/ and https://www.cop27.eg/#/ to find out about the COP27 conference.  Also follow @mikaelaloach on Instagram or Twitter if you don't already, as she has been at the conference, both attending and presenting.

Catherine is a ceramic artist based in West Cornwall specialising in Raku clay ceramics, who draws on her English/Ghanaian heritage for her stunning pots. She is passionate about the Cornish landscape and uses this as inspiration for her work. Drawing on her African heritage, she specialises in traditional hand building techniques, such as pinching and coiling with many surfaces burnished to a smooth sheen using her favourite beach pebble.

Her work has appeared on BBC’s The Great Poetry Throw Down and her Raku ceramics are available through galleries in Cornwall, London and Scotland. Catherine also hosts regular open studio events where she demonstrates the Raku firing process.

She also runs grief retreats, using a combination of nature and art therapy create safe spaces for those going through grief and wishing to take time out within a supportive and nurturing community.

In this conversation we discuss:

• Catherine’s creative journey
• Embracing and celebrating her Ghanaian ancestry through her work
• Her work with the adinkra symbols and what they mean to her
• The meditative aspects of creating ceramics
• The creative process as ritual
• Where Catherine gains her inspiration
• Catherine’s love of the Cornish landscape
• Her grief retreats and the healing power of nature and creativity
• The importance of creativity in our modern world
• Art and hope
• The lesson she wants to pass on
• Her vision for the future

Just a note that my microphone cuts at one point - I am getting a new one imminently!

Episode that would be great to listen after this one:

2.3a Lorraine Tindale, Nature-based EMDR

2.8a Punam Sanghrajka, Skyscapes and Art as Meditation

3.7a Rosalind Lowry, Land Art: Celebrating our Boglands

4.10a Elizabeth Gleave, Restoring the Earth through the Arts

You can find Catherine at her website www.lucktaylorceramics.co.uk and on social media @lucktaylorceramics Definitely check out her shop, especially if you are looking for something extra special for yourself or a loved one.

As always, I’m www.promptedbynature.co.uk and @prompted.by.nature and @promptedxnature

Happy listening!

Helen x

In this prompt, I introduce you to the Intentional Creativity workbook that I've created inspired by my chat with Eleanor.  You can download the workbook via my Substack newsletter - https://promptedbynature.substack.com - by visiting my website www.promptedbynature.co.uk where you can find the link.

Let me know how you get on and what you create if you use it.

Helen x

@prompted.by.nature

-------------------------------

*From the introduction of the workbook*

Welcome to this short Intentional Creativity workbook.  This book accompanies episode 5.3a of the Prompted by Nature podcast and is inspired by the conversation I had with writer and facilitator, Eleanor Cheetham,  In our conversation, Eleanor spoke about the part that embracing a more intentional creative practice has played in her work.

If you are a regular listener, you'll know that I usually create more specific writing prompts for each conversation but for this one, I wanted to do something more tangible that you could use in your creative life.

How to use this Workbook

Similar to the 30-Day Writing Prompt Project Workbook I created last year, this book can be started at any point.I've designed it so that it runs for 8 weeks, roughly the period of time between a fire festival, like Yule, to a cross-quarter festival, like Imbolc, but you can increase or decrease this timescale as works for you and your life.

The main idea is that you are creating a cycle of creativity with one or two creative projects in mind and a focus of mind that lasts for the length of that cycle, after which you'll take a break or work on your creativity in a more unstructured way.

A few things to consider:

• Be realistic about your end goal and the amount of time you can dedicate to this each day/week. Every day will be different so move and flow with your time and the demands on it so that you are enjyoing this process rather than turning it into yet another item on life's to-do list!
• If the more structured approach that I discuss in the episode doesn't work for you, feel free to adapt the daily planning sheets so that they do; everyone works differently and you know yourself the best.
• There is an invitation to have two 'rest and reflect' weeks, one in week 4 and in week 8.  These are to give yourself space to look at where you are and make any necessary adjustments.  Perhaps you could use the final week to look ahead at what you might do with this piece of work, write that pitch email,  or turn it into something bigger as and when you are ready for another cycle of creativity.

Enjoy the workbook.  I hope it helps you to create something you can feel proud of and maybe even share with others!

Welcome to series 5, episode 3 of the Prompted by Nature podcast.

Action point: Contact your MP about standing up for nature, whether that be asking them to speak out against fracking, reading the state of nature report and asking them what they’re doing to support the transition to renewable energy, or the move away from fossil fuels. Here in the UK you can contact you MP or local councillor through the website www.writetothem.com .

Onto today’s episode…

Today you’ll hear my conversation with the wonderful Eleanor Cheetham.

Eleanor is a writer, editor, mentor and teacher, intrinsically connected with the land, inspired by ancient British folklore and stories, and the soulful relationships that our ancestors had with the more-than-human world. She believes that words and stories are medicine for our mind and food for our soul, and that we are all storytellers. You'll find her at Creative Countryside, an independent publishing press, Wild Writers, a sacred space for soulful words, and The Wild Academy, a home for untamed learning.

In this episode we discuss:

• What the concept of creative spirit means to Eleanor
• Her creative practice and how she removed the pressure
• The importance of following our own creative flow
• Finding our ‘tilt’
• Creating an intentional creative practice
• Eleanor’s journey of creativity
• The problem with permission slips
• How Creative Countryside and the Wild Academy about
• Intentional, sustainable publishing
• How Eleanor overcomes creative blocks

A little note before we start that I seemed to have had microphone issues in this conversation, which I didn't realise until after we had recorded.  Hopefully it's not too distracting and Eleanor's is fine so I don't think it detracts from the chat.

You can find Eleanor on her websites www.creativecountryside.com and www.thewildacademy.co.uk and on Instagram @creativecountryside

Episodes that would accompanying this on well are:

1.8a Ian Solomon-Kawall - Biodiversity, Creativity and Safe Space in Urban Settings (composting words)

1.13b Dawn Nelson - Rewilding the Self through Story-telling

2.10a Marchelle Farrell - My Garden, My Story

3.2a Stella Tomlinson - Priestesshood and Earth-Based Spirituality

As always, I'm www.promptedbynature.co.uk or on Instagram @prompted.by.nature and Twitter @promptedxnature

Bookshop:  https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/promptedbynature

Hello and welcome to your writing prompt for my conversation with Katie Holten.  For this one there are a couple of invitations.

The first is to, of course, download Katie’s tree alphabet as a font to your computer and have a play.  It’s really fun turning your words into a forest and seeing that forest come alive on the page. You could write something new, inspired by the letters as trees, or translate an existing piece into the tree alphabet.

www.treealphabet.ie  

The second invitation is to put the title of this episode on a sheet of paper and see where it takes you.  The title is ‘I write with the trees.’  I love this title because it could go in any and all directions.  for me, it conjures up images of future communities and societies in which humans dream things into being in collaboration with the trees and the more-than-human world.

It might be that, having listened to the conversation, or even read the book, you have been inspired to created something totally different from these suggestions, in which case, go for it!

Have fun with it and let me know how you get on if you use this one!

Happy writing!  Bye!

In this writing prompt I invite you to write with water.  You will need to be in a quiet space in which you feel comfortable to take some time for yourself.  We begin with a short breathing practice to get you feeling a little more relaxed and to help release off any tension.

You will then hear a soundtrack of a stream running through a forest.  This last for about 10 minutes.  

Please feel free to write as you listen or wait until the end to start writing.

Enjoy!

Helen x

www.promptedbynature.co.uk 

@prompted.by.nature

Welcome to series 5, episode 2 of the Prompted by Nature podcast.

Action point: Find out more about the Right to Roam campaign www.righttoroam.org.uk that Amy speaks about.

Amy-Jane Beer is a biologist and nature writer. She earned a doctorate studying sea urchins before swapping the microscope for a keyboard. She was editor of Wildlife of Britain magazine, and of Wildlife World magazine for the People’s Trust for Endangered Species, and is author of several non-fiction books on science and natural history. She writes regularly for The Guardian, BBC Wildlife and Countryfile magazines, and is working on her first, nature-inspired novel. She contributed to the 2018 People’s Manifesto for Wildlife, commissioned by Chris Packham and sits on the steering group of Networks for Nature. She lives in North Yorkshire with her husband, nature- and Lego-obsessed son and turbo-charged Border Collie.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How Amy’s work and writing practice has shifted in recent years
• Amy’s relationship with water and kayaking
• The inspiration behind her book, The Flow
• Water and stories
• Water as shapeshifter
• How writing the book strengthened her connection to the land
• How Amy connects to nature
• Access to nature and creativity
• Amy’s work with the Right to Roam Campaign
• How nature interacts with her creativity and vice versa
• What she’s learnt on her path that she wants to pass on
• Her vision for the future

You can find Amy on social media @AmyJaneBeer on both Instagram and Twitter. Her book The Flow, is out now wherever you get your books - and you know we love an independent bookshop! Remember you can purchase any books discussed don this podcast and lots more in the Prompted by Nature Bookshop over on bookshop.org - I get a little kickback when you buy through the bookshop, which helps me to fund all the things on the pod! The address is: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/promptedbynature

As always, I’m on the website www.promptedbynature.co.uk , on Twitter @promptedxnature and Instagram @prompted.by.nature

In this writing prompt, we explore the ideas conjured up by Bryony in her interview around gaze and using our creativity to interpret nature.  The prompt questions I ask are:

• What’s your earliest memory of nature?
• What part has that played in how you see nature?
• What landscapes are you most drawn to in your creative practice?
• How do you feel when you encounter nature and how might that influence your creative voice?
• How can you use your creative practice to explore different landscapes and those which you have less knowledge of?
• How can you play around with tone in your writing and experiment with ways of expressing your ideas that feel less familiar?

You can answer the all the questions thoroughly, or just use them as jumping off points for an exploratory piece.

Have fun and let me know how you get on if you use this one.

Happy writing!

Helen x

www.promptedbynature.co.uk 

@prompted.by.nature