Windy Gloucestershire (by sarah)

This is the song I won the bronze for in the Gloucestershire Creative Olympics - as far as I can tell it is ok for me to put this up now as the event has been and gone. I found out about the competition with three days to go so wrote the song, revised it and recorded it wrote on the CD and posted it. I had a cold at the time but I am still happy with it.

This is for all of you who moaned at me for not telling them I had this song!

Stroud Site Festival Slam and Career-ness (by sarah)

Friday saw me in Stroud for my frist ever poetry slam - and I was so nervous. It was part of the Stroud Site Festival and was run by Marcus Moore and Sara-Jane Arbury.

Over the last few years I have done quiet alot of poetry readings including some performance stuff but not a slam. Not a situation where I felt I had to have the poem memorised. I did a Flash Fiction Slam in Oxford about two weeks ago but again I was reading from sheets of paper. My mother keeps saying it's the same as when I did acting but I was mostly back ground people and had a few words or sentences punctuated by other people which acted as prompts.

As a result I performed No Wage Slave as that was the one I am the strongest with having performed it so much recently. I also now have I Hate Race Week and Hopscotch (most the time) memorised. I am working on memorising more.

On top of that I've been looking at Science Communication courses but then found myself being asked if I could come in and give a talk to scientists about using art and crafts to help with thought patterns and communication. So am re-thinking this especially as there are only burseries for doing it full time which would defeat it being part of what I have already built up.

As it is I am pretty much booked up for the summer and now have a couple of events already in the calendar for the Autumn.

I am trying to learn to drive mainly as my main limitation at the moment is how to get home from performances and events etc... I would love to do more stage stuff, maybe some TV and radio too. Which was part of why I was looking at the Science Communication courses - its the work placements and the science writing I would like.

Not sure if I told everyone I now have a home page / hub for my various websites - it is not all that good at the moment but I am getting little time to work on it at the mo!

Also I now only need £15 for the sensory cave to be built but I am running out of time! So please sponsor me there are lots of fab things I am willing to send people who back my project and extra money goes towards a science-art exhibition in March next year that I am organising with a local art gallery.

Science the Universe and Everything erm… including Cake Pops (by sarah)

So I have had my eye on a cake pop machine since before christmas and have bought one for basically £20 from lakeland as the amount of ideas I am having for them means I can't sleep and Jeany wants a darleck cake for her birthday so I would have to get one then!

But I have also been thinking on science and science communication and things right so two creative things that aren't cooking have come out of this already.

One is a bizar video of the cake pop characters that Jean and Alaric made called The Gape Mouthed One and is obviously part of a series not to mention the stills I tool will be finding their way onto the Wiggly Pets blog.

Then there is a poem. It is about the way I think basically and came out of Alaric's impression of me talking just after we got the cake pop machine. I have recorded as it was only written last night and I haven't had a chance to sort out the spelling issues yet 🙂

It is called ADHD The Polymath Dream.

On top of that I have found myself looking at Science Communication courses which is probably nuts but it occured to me that I now live in walking distance of a train station that can get me at least to either London or Bristol.

Me, Science, Geekery and Art (by sarah)

I have two thirds of the funding I need for phase on of Science-Art for all. It would be great to get that last bit of money in the pot so I start work on the project.

Also I am working hard on getting Ballads of the Scientifica in all of its forms ready. In case I haven't mentioned it before I have my Science-Art website and I also have Astronomy@Geology.

I am very happy about my science-art at the moment and where it is going. I feel that art is probably the best way in which to get the general public to engage with science and communication of the ideas and concepts to EVERYBODY is of upmost importance.

Science permeates every aspect of our lives and I do not just mean medicine and technology. Food, water, our clothing - all of it relies on science. But understanding that science is important - that it is the cure rather than the disease is still being lost.

Science is still seen as a dead boring subject - but it really isn't. It uses creativity as much as any art. The wonder of everything around us - this we need to show people. There has been some wonderful popular science programmes over the last few year which are helping to instill the awe of everything in people but we are a long way off.

I use art to try and communicate emotions and concepts. And am very pleased to have had some of my work likened to Carl Sagan.

I started the Ballads of the Scientifica to help me put all of my spoken and sung science-art in one place but have found it is linked to my visual art very much.

Here it is though it is still being worked on:

But my work is still infantile compared with the group I found yesterday called Symphony of Science. Mary and Jean both love the songs - that are made out of snippets of documentaries and the like.

And then just as I was thinking about it all I turned around to find the baby now 15 months had been selecting books off the bookshelf. She had a maths book, another on electrical experiments and the last was 40 More Gadgets For the Evil Genius - the geek in me found this halarious 🙂

I do still miss the lab - though and the deeper into art I sink the more keenly I feel the lose. I want to blast rocks with military grade lasers to see what they are made of - to make element maps and to piece together the evolution of systems be they life or rock.

But this isn't doable for me - not at the moment and I am over whelmed by the wonder of the naked ape infants I have in this house ie Jean and Mary. My main hope is that I am showing them the beauty of it all and how to think for themselves.

And I do actually feel very hopeful at the moment - I have a meeting about my science-art this afternoon then tomorrow I'm performing in Gloucester.

Flowing (by sarah)

Yep another song/poem thingy.

This one is about war.

Incase your wondering I am at the moment trying to finish off all those projects I have going and am working my way through note books etc... so there is likely to be a few more. Feed back welcomed.