A Care Compendium: Chapter One

"The word care made me feel angry for so long. Like an obsolete word in the dictionary, I struggled to understand it and more importantly, to feel what it meant or how I could relate to it. After all, had I not grown up holding my breath, fast forwarding in fantasies and daydreams as to what I would do when I grew up."

"This work was created at the start of the lockdown to illustrate all the ways in which we can and need to support each other in the pandemic. It highlights some of the practical things people have been doing such as starting mutual aid groups, sewing face masks and creating community hardship funds. When there is an environment of fear, it’s easy for people to become more individualistic. But it’s so important that we continue to have solidarity with each other, share our resources and come up with new ways of taking care of one another."

"For 2 years I’ve been working on a project called Social Practice Surgery.

In 2018/19 through a series of "surgeries"- interviews, workshops, and informal chats with socially engaged practitioners- artist Dan Russell and I, set out to ask and answer questions about the emotional, practical, financial impact of having a socially engaged practice. The series of drop in "surgeries" were conducted around the UK and we talked to around 80 practitioners.

From the information gathered we devised a number of resources for socially engaged practitioners. These include “sliding scales of silliness” (a video, template workshop plans and risk assessments for walking exercises), a Personalised Support Structure template and the Parameter Cards (a series of drawn scales -which can be used online /printed out- representing various parameters social practice artists have told us they find it useful to consider when making work.)

These resources and experiences have been collected with great care over the last few years. I feel they are currently urgently needed to support social practice specialists to deal with the, often ignored, fallout from working in such an involved way, particularly during this intense and complex time."

"Listen to Paparuda as performed by Surorile Osoianu, share it with a friend, talk about how it makes you feel and what you want to see, work out how to summarise that, sustain that energy, keep summarising, find joy in the process, call upon your family, demand joy from the work, expect joy from the world, demand joy for others, question your actions, hold your hands high, sustain the energy, pass it on to a friend, carry it together, make notes on How to Listen Better."

"A mundane domestic object- the ironing board is transformed into an uncanny totemic symbol of the carer / mother as a kind of May Queen monster riding a hobby horse. This work references English folklore, fetishistic materials and Victorian Hidden Mother portrait photographs (where the mother would be hidden under a blanket whilst holding her children) questioning the role of carer/mother. It also looks at self identity - how it shifts when you’re a mother and how care can often mean worry or burden."

Download the stickers and use them yourself: www.emmerwinder.co.uk/download

"We often walk by advertisements and brand publicity on the street, and although we rarely take much notice, they do subliminally stay in our conscious. Imagine the positive emotions and actions we could nurture by using this suggestive concept to promote messages of appreciation and encouragement.... We can take part in a community act of kindness, subtly displaying universal messages of gratitude and reinforcing positive mental health actions to strangers who may pass these endorsements each day. As a society we are learning, we don’t always make the right decisions. Therefore, the visuals act as reminders to share a smile, to reward your efforts, and ultimately not to forget that we are all part of the solution if we work together."

Follow Laura's workshop here: streamable.com/ksvq18

"This project idea came from an art session I was running with my nephew - he was struggling a bit with the lock down so we got together to make some art and came up with the idea of involving others in the project. Cardboard landscapes can be made from old cardboard you have lying around and doesn’t require any special equipment.

Remember to put your name and age on the back and we’ll add them to the display and record of participants.

You can request a pack of used cardboard by emailing laura@laurafrood.com and return your finished landscapes to The one eye-deer, Unit 28, 4 Rogart Street, Glasgow G40 2AA."