In Conversation with Lyndsay Price
This week on the Comics Youth x Where are the Girlbands podcast we will be talking about how to facilitate safe spaces within workshops, how poetry can be a safe space to navigate experiences and how venues and organisations that host poetry events can make their spaces safer, and more with the fantastic Lyndsay Price.
Hello and welcome to the Comics Youth x Where are the Girlbands Safe Spaces podcast, a space for discussions with organisations and individuals who are creating safe spaces within the North West, with a focus on Merseyside.
Today we will be talking about how to facilitate safe spaces within workshops, how poetry can be a safe space to navigate experiences and how venues and organisations that host poetry events can make their spaces safer, and more with the fantastic Lyndsay Price.
As creatives, we form safe spaces for ourselves within our practices, be that visual art, poetry, journaling or anything that allows you to explore your experiences in a creative and mindful way. Within the Northwest there is a really active creative scene that is abundant with the experiences of Queer people, forming community through language, performance and artwork. We as Where are the Girlbands also do our best to facilitate safe spaces for people of marginalised genders, in particular women, to create and share their work with others, something which isn’t always possible if you don’t feel safe, or cannot access creative spaces such as gigs, workshops or poetry nights. We feel it is integral to have conversations about how we can continue to develop the policy and feeling of our events and the way we support creatives so as to keep these wonderful fountains of feeling and making flowing in the most inclusive way possible. So, on that note, it will be fantastic to chat with the amazing Lyndsay Price!
Interview with Lyndsay Price:
Lyndsay Price is a multifaceted creative, working with poetry, spoken word, journaling, meditation and more Lyndsay uses these practices to navigate her own experiences whilst also facilitating others to find safety and healing in creative practices too.
Lyndsay’s poetry is filled with the soft power of vulnerability, giving raw names to personal experiences that provoke impactful thoughts and feelings in the audience she speaks to. Seeing poetry perform feels almost hypnotising, she is so in the room, so present and so in the feeling of her words that you can’t help but find yourself wrapped up in her words too, your surroundings gently fading out of focus.
This attention and sensitivity runs through Lyndsay’s workshops too, where you feel completely safe, softened and grounded, led by Lyndsay’s steady delivery and warmth. Lyndsay delivers poetry workshops, incorporating meditative practices such as reiki, ensuring that the spaces she facilitates are not only blossoming with creativity and community, but are incredibly mindful too.
Ella:
It’s so lovely to have you here with us today! How are you doing?
Lyndsay:
I’m good thank you! Thank you for having me, yeah, it’s a nice day where I am, the suns out like a tiny bit so I’m feeling good.
Ella:
Amazing. I would love to start off the interview by talking a little bit about how we sort of met originally which was through the reiki meditation that you provided for us at our Where are the Girlbands event for us at Bloom Building. So you provided the meditation at our launch event which was lovely and also at our Mellow One gig and it was such an amazing addition to both of those events especially because they were sort of firsts for me and Eve. The launch event was our first ever event and the Mellow One was our first ever sort of standard gig, so it was amazing for us personally as organisers for you to make that space where we could settle in and feel grounded after having the whole day sort of running around and getting things sorted as well as for the performers and for the audience like I know we had a lot of performers there who were on stage for the first time, so you provided a really safe experience for everyone. And also something I found really interesting was that you created an environment that lasted for the entirety of the event. So I’ve never really been to an event before where everyone in the audience is sort of committed to the stage like you know eyes and hearts and everything properly drawn to the performer. It was just complete silence and presence for the whole day, and I maybe wanted to talk to you a bit about the reiki meditations that you provide and how you find delivering them in gig spaces.
Lyndsay:
Mm yeah. Yeah like firstly I’m so glad that I was invited to do it and that you guys asked me like I think it was a, I think it’s quite an innovative idea, and for me like I have been doing poetry for about nine years and I’ve also been interested in spirituality for about seven or eight, and it’s been a real interesting journey of mine to try and figure out how to link the two together because I’m trained like in reiki and a couple of different things like EFT, tapping, crystal healing and I wondered at times if I should just become a stand-alone practitioner of those things but that doesn’t feel right to me either. So for years now I’ve been trying to like find ways to thread it into my poetry and my creative practice and the arts which is primarily you know the industry that I work in and the industries that I’m a part of, so for you to both approach me and ask me to do that reiki meditation at the beginning of a music gig just ticked so many boxes in terms of my values and how I like to practice so, so yeah thank you for asking me because it was such a great environment. And erm it is quite remarkable when you go to a music event you expect loud, loud noises, chatter, music, you know the sounds of mics and speakers, the drinks getting made, but I do remember from both events you could hear a pin drop it was silent and that surprises even me because I sort of prepare myself that you might have to fight against some talking you might have to fight against some words but everyone just seemed to zoom in. And you know from being at those events and staying to listen to the music like I do think creating that space at the beginning, that intention, and that initial set up, like you said it does ripple through the whole event and seeing how engaged people were with the art like some of those songs like brought me to tears because I did feel so present with it. So it’s a lovely concept to bring in that meditation, and I hope, I’d love to see more you know events and spaces kind of providing that as well.
Ella:
Definitely and like you said it really helped people to emotionally tap into the performances I think which is so amazing because I guess often when you listen to music at home you can have like a real emotional response to the things you listen to or the things you read but when you’re in a social space you kind of like step back from that a bit. And for me personally like I felt incredibly tuned in in a way that I just definitely aren’t usually and especially given that I was in a position of sort of hosting the event it really surprised me how present and immersed in the performance I actually was and I think that is down to how you settled us all down into the space and you know I remember you speaking in the meditation about how we’ve all come down different paths through the day and I definitely felt that the whole event even though we’d all come through those different paths that we had all ended up here together and it felt really unifying.
Lyndsay:
Yeah, I think, I’m glad you picked up on that because the unification was something that I hadn’t originally planned to do but came through kind of during, it felt like quite an important element and I think you’re right, as an events organiser like I’ve done events and it’s so easy to get swept into the stress of it and usually for me like meditating or taking a moment to centre myself is the last thing I’m thinking of when I’m like I’ve got to be out the door in 20 minutes, like I need to run around, but actually it can be done, and I think that’s really interesting, like it can and, you know, I welcome people to try that, that little check in with themselves no matter what they’re doing, whether you’ve arrived at an event, whether you’re performing, you’re receiving, whether you’re about to do an interview or go to work, having that two seconds of like okay let me just forget about my journey, forget about what happened this morning and just be here now. If people can do that more throughout their days you do definitely feel the benefit of it.
Ella:
Definitely. How have you found incorporating these spiritual practices into your creative work?
Lyndsay:
It’s been a bit of a journey really. I still don’t feel like I’ve fully nailed it like cause I kind of I don’t know like I feel like my poetry is so vulnerable anyway and it doesn’t need a lot of the spiritual context because the themes already bring people into their emotions so that just seems to do that automatically. So sometimes I don’t really want to preach that stuff too much. I ran a conscious poetry circle before and I enjoyed it but I don’t know whether the ideas are fully matured yet in my head because yeah I’m conscious of I don’t want to alienate a bunch of people that would love my poetry and love the poetry workshops that if I put on they could attend, I don’t want to alienate them too much by talking about like chakras and spirituality and all of these concepts that they might not really resonate with, so it’s hard for me to find the line but I suppose now-a-days people are a lot more aware of those things and when I initially got started I was like there’s no way the two can possibly exist together they’re two separate things and now I’m finding ways, like your event, to thread them through and people do seem to be a lot more responsive to them. Even people that you wouldn’t think. Not that anyone comes across, you can tell that or not, you can’t from appearances but sometimes I’ve gone into like comedy gigs for example and been like okay no one’s going to be interested and they’ve been like taken to it, so it just goes to show like it can be really welcomed in the most surprising of places.
Ella:
Yeah it’s interesting because a lot of people I’ve spoken to, on this podcast but just generally as a person, about their creative practices whether it’s like song-writing or poetry or artwork have described it as like a meditative or a mindful process like I know for me my Fine Art practices, essentially, I do a repeated mark making practice and it completely functions like meditation for me, like is almost like a mantra, so I guess in a way directly incorporating those spiritual practices sometimes isn’t necessary if it already feels like a spiritual practice in a way. I would love to hear a bit about some of the themes you were talking about in your Halloween workshop about sort of the origins of poetry and how that sort of connects with spirituality.
Lyndsay:
Oh my gosh, yeah. I mean firstly I would just say like poetry for me feels like channelling. I know some people have like maybe not a positive connotation to that word but it just does feel like something that came through and I’ve no idea how I wrote that because my brain went somewhere else completely. And erm I had Amerah Saleh on my podcast which we can talk more about later, but me and her both agreed that we write first and foremost for ourselves, for our own healing and then it’s secondary that it’s like a finished poem at the end of it and I think a lot of poets are the same.
But yeah the Halloween workshop it was so interesting because initially I was just like oooo spooky theme workshop and like just totally delved way past that and became really in depth, it became like research and like an essay almost that I gave people at the end but there’s so much I could say on this. So, poetry is a very very old artform, but even older than that is spoken word, spoken word outdates the written word and what my belief is from like the pieces of history that I’ve looked at is that people were gathering in circles to share their belief their stories with their communities for a very long time. I do see it as a very ancient practice and for some reason you know some of the most prolific texts to this day are poems, a lot of spells are poems, a lot of prayers are poems, a lot of songs that are considered holy are poetry and I always like to ask the question that why do we think that is, why is it that poetry above a lot of other different forms of writing, not to diminish writing but, why is it that poetry as a form is so kind of revered and so magical in a way, and throughout you know many different cultures, there’s like Egyptian hieroglyphic poem, you have the Sufi poets, you have Icelandic poetry, you have Celtic poetry there’s so many different cultures which have really utilised that tool over the years and I don’t know why, I can’t profess to know but it is just really interesting to ask ourselves the question like why do we think that is. Especially with spells you know the kind of practices that are more kind of associated to this land here, some of the oldest spells are actually poems so like there’s a reason, other than the fact that it’s easy to remember and having a rhythm makes it easier to roll off, I think there’s a deeper reason than that. But as to what I’m not entirely sure.
Ella:
Yeah I definitely hear all of that and for me the stuff you were saying about channelling, or poetry as prayer as well really resonates with how I sort of use poetry and I was speaking to Amber Jay yesterday who’s a songwriter and we were both saying it’s amazing how you can spend so long trying to navigate a feeling and it’s only through writing it down in poetry or in like a rhythmic structure that somehow the answers are revealed to you, and it feels so strange that that has been with you the whole time but it’s taken that process for you to actually articulate it to yourself. And it’s like the poetry and the structure is this own thing which helps you to navigate experiences and feelings that otherwise you just don’t have access to or don’t have understanding of.
Lyndsay:
Yeah it’s almost like a shortcut to your subconscious because like you said I think a normal like I have a journaling practice and I love it, like I journal pretty much every day but there’s a lot of waffle that you can get out through a journal you know like I would just write about my day or something really mundane, and there’s real medicine in doing that as well. But it’s only when you get to poetry where it’s almost like a sword like it cuts through all of the chatter and goes straight to the point. So it’s like something you might have struggled to say to your friends and family for yours, you can put pen to paper and within minutes it’s like oh that’s it, that’s what I’ve been trying to say, that’s how I feel. And I don’t know what it is it’s a mystery that surrounds it really but there is some magic in that that allows you to verbalise your feelings in a really efficient way.
Ella:
Definitely I always think for me like journaling is like an unwinding or an unravelling of stuff which just pulls all of these things out of a place where it’s all knotted and then writing poetry feels like articulation and it’s like you’re accessing words in a way that you just don’t in day to day life or in journaling because you really feel the meaning of words and the power of what words can do and say.
Lyndsay:
Yeah, and it’s so interesting to think about like you know how many poems have been written and how many people are writing poems pretty constantly like regardless as people who class themselves as poets who perform and who are published like most people will have written a poem at some point in their lives and that just shows what a tool it is for healing and personal transformation because a lot of that poetry isn’t shared, there’s probably actually more poems not shared than shared in the world and I think that’s quite fascinating to think about.
Ella:
Yeah and how many poems can resonate with people who perhaps wouldn’t label themselves like you said as being interested in poetry like someone might have no interest in poetry but have a really sacred relationship with prayer or love to listen to music because of the lyricism of it or I always think it’s interesting how most people who write poetry write poems about really personal experiences that feel so specific that they themselves have never come face to face with them before and yet those things resonate with other people, in like a really universal way which just seems so amazing and interesting that that can happen.
Lyndsay:
Yeah there’s a TEDTalk by Olivia Gatwood who’s an American poet and she speaks about that as a concept, how zooming in on the personal can actually create more of a universal theme than trying to be like I’m going to write a poem about feminism or all women everywhere because that just becomes very generic or it can do or quite on the nose but writing something about like my first kiss when I was 11 it actually, even though it’s only I that was in that situation, most people can relate to that and it becomes political in and of itself. So I think for anyone try and zoom in on the personal because for whatever reason it does actually resonate with a lot of people.
Ella:
I think that might actually be a nice tangent to start talking about the stuff you’re doing with your podcast Salt Water Poetry because I think that’s sort of something that you’re doing there where you’re engaging with the personal and using that as a means to talk about poetry and processes of poetry.
Lyndsay:
Mmhmm. Yeah so so years ago I ran a spoken word night, it was called Rhymes and Records and it took place in the basement of the Jacaranda. I think it was about six years ago now when it actually started and it ran for about two and a half years and through that time I kind of created the title Salt Water Poetry and I was kind of practicing under that I had another Instagram under that name at the time and I was trying to figure out if that’s a company or an organisation or what it is but that was yeah the title that I was producing under and I think with the open mic night as much as I loved it, I felt like it was a bit of a shame sometimes to get an artist on stage and have all these people to listen and they’d do their poetry set and then they go, and maybe if you’re lucky you’ll get a five minute chat with them at the bar after and go “Ohhh what did this poem mean!” but that’s it. And it just feels like such a shame that I want to hear about their experience and how they wrote and how it came to be and we had a lot of Liverpool aritsts but sometimes we’d have artists from Scotland and London and it’s just a shame to not tap into getting more than that and also with a live event you’re quite limited in terms of numbers, you’re in a small space you know there’s a lot of people who may not be able to access that so organically the idea for the podcast just sort of came. And it’s never been kind of the right time to release it. And then this year I came across Liverpool Podcast Studios which has like a really affordable rate and a really accessible service because I don’t know anything about filming and editing and I’m sure I could try it myself but it’s a lot of learning to be good at technically. So yeah the idea of that was really, I’m trying to work with artists that I know in some capacity so whether it’s people I’m close with or just people I’ve met a few times because I felt like I didn’t want the interview to kind of feel like someone I’m meeting for the first time and I don’t know the background to their work very well so I’m hoping with that premise we can sort of skip past some of the surface level questions and go straight to the heart of like what makes them them really. So the first artist that we had on was Amerah Saleh who is a Birmingham based Yemeni poet. I am from here but I spent some time in Birmingham for a few years which is where I first came across poetry so she was my first guest in December. She was amazing we spoke about her book, she shared a piece of her writing and we spoke about all sorts of different topics we kind of talked about our family structures and growing up and you know our experience of the artform and yeah it felt like a very natural conversation, so that’s really the aim for the next few episodes. We have, I have Felix Mufti confirmed I have Gerry Clarkson confirmed I have Joseph Roberts confirmed who are all like really gems of Liverpool. So I’m really excited to kind of put out the first season as such. People who have really supported my work over the years as well and who have just put out work that I really admire and I’m confident that those conversations will be just as nourishing as the one with Amerah.
Ella:
It sounds absolutely gorgeous and I think something I sort of wanted to ask you is maybe why you think it’s important to give light to these behind the scenes almost discussions and for you, obviously you’ve already given a lot there in terms of how you’re skipping past the surface level sort of interactions that you have and even I know sort of through the Girlbands stuff that we do when you sit down to like script a podcast or even make any kind of content for online, there’s so much like introducing your audience to like who is this person, what if they don’t know what they do, blah blah blah blah blah, but often like what you want to hear is the sort of like 2am discussions you have with someone in a bedroom where suddenly you’re like discussing like a really specific memory you have from your bedroom when you were 5 years old and that sort of thing so yeah like I’d love to hear a bit more about that and why you think it’s important.
Lyndsay:
It’s so funny you say that because I had an old website, my old website when I used to sell my poems on Big Cartel before even Etsy really and when I described like the type of things I write it was like conversations with a friend at 3am, like, because there’s something in that vulnerability, that rawness and erm, one of my goals – I’m trying to fundraise for this podcast at the moment so I have to kind of keep my costs down as much as I can because I’m not like supported by an organisation and funding myself is challenging but why I’m sort of aiming for longer episodes is because I think by about 45 minutes in, you can sort of start to get to like the real stuff of like okay but tell me this or tell me that, but I’m kind of limited by hour slots, but I’m hoping to try and go for an hour and half in future because by that point I feel like you can really dive in.
Why’s it important? I suppose for me like I’ve just always been so fascinated by someone’s process and you can learn a lot about a poet from their poems and I think poems really are stand alone and they don’t necessarily require an introduction or an explanation for the most part but there is something for me that’s just like really delicious about getting to grips with what’s underneath that. Erm, and just hearing about people’s career trajectories, how they’ve moved through the industry, how they’ve sort of came up through poetry, why they chose poetry like there’s just so much to discuss within that and layered within that I’d say the majority of poets I’ve got lined up for this podcast are people who are also activists so I think it’s really important to give airspace to the poem but also the person behind it and their meaning for writing. I just think it will be a good introduction for people to poetry. I think a podcast hopefully increases the numbers of people who can consume it. I’m very conscious of like barriers to events which I know you are as well and I think there’s a lot of issues around getting people to in-person events, a lot of different factors, and there’s still barriers to online and for podcast hosting you know for people to access, but I think different ones. So I’m just hoping that through creating something digital it just increases the amount of people who can consume it and therefore increases the amount of people who are able to consume art, which is ultimately the goal really.
Ella:
Yeah. That’s amazing and I love what you’re saying about how you’re giving context around how poetry entwines with activism. I’ve just actually finished reading a collection of Audre Lorde works and some of my favourite quotes in that were about how poetry is a language is different to the sort of regular language that you speak and it’s a form of survival because it’s something which is so desperately needed to understand yourself as well as to communicate with others and that obviously ties with activism especially if you’re a marginalised person writing poetry. And I know for me my coming to writing poetry is definitely in that same sort of way of an act of survival for myself with trying to navigate trauma for example and things which maybe are unsafe for me to talk to other people about or even myself about through journaling because you can just like go down like a hole of traumatic memories whereas with poetry it almost like limits you to just like wordplay and into these really specific like lines and structures and how poetry can be a really safe place to deal with things that are dangerous in a way.
Lyndsay:
Yeah I find it so interesting because I hear people talk about like should poetry be political but really I think a poem is political in and of itself, like it’s radical it’s an act of defiance. And two things really, from the dawn of time poetry has been a tool of the people, like it’s relatively, especially spoken word it’s easy to access, you don’t need to rent a space and buy costumes it’s just yourself and a voice or a pen and paper if you choose like there’s something very immediate and accessible about that which lends itself to politics and activism quite well I think. And then also, even the poems, I think because nothing is written in a vacuum, I think if I was writing a poem about a flower and going for a walk as like a Queer person with like the different like intersections of my life applied to that, that’s always going to be through the lens of like Queer joy, you know even if it’s not overtly about my experience and my sexuality. And that’s not to cop out of the more real stuff but I just believe like lenses are important and people’s life experiences are important and that’s important to take into consideration when we look at poems and I think even years from now like any poetry now will probably always looked at and referred to as pandemic poetry by historians for better or for worse, regardless of whether we agree with that or not. If I write a piece about a partner or family or something that seemingly doesn’t mention those words once I think it’s always going to be looked at, if it you know made it through the tests of time, by historians as like oh well it was written during the pandemic era, like so it’s nearly impossible to not have life and politics thrust upon your pieces whether you want that or not, really.
Ella:
Yeah definitely and almost how we were talking about before with your meditation and the unification that you brough there, I feel like poetry does that in a way there like how we were talking about how the personal becomes universal, you can access that in a very universal way, but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t come to poetry through different paths and through paths which apply an important lens to the poem like you were saying. You know if I write a poem and someone else writes a poem that talks maybe about similar subjects, our contexts are going to really affect why that poem was written, how we’ve written that poem almost like how we want that poem to be felt, like you know if it’s written for yourself but what audience would you maybe want to share that with or feel safe sharing it with and all of those different things so I think it’s really important actually that you’re sharing those lenses which maybe like are difficult to access and you don’t always know the context of a poem when you read it, especially online like I know a lot of poetry gets sort of taken out of its original context and you know that’s how language and stuff works anyway, it gets passed on and re-interpreted, so it’s nice that you’re sort of centring people’s narratives and giving them voice over their narratives.
Lyndsay:
Yeah I think it’s important to consider and obviously poetry can be enjoyed as it is but for me and sometimes it’s a great exercise to do that, to not look into a poet and their background and think okay what do these words mean to me, but it’s just good to like I think, I think it’s hard to not have things viewed through the eyes of a lens so it’s good to remind people of that.
Ella:
Yeah definitely. It would be really nice actually to loop back to something you said before about like events and poetry spaces and stuff and I’d love to hear maybe your thoughts on the poetry spaces that exist in Merseyside and maybe the joy that you’ve experienced in those spaces or critique or just generally your thoughts as someone who’s navigated the poetry scene here.
Lyndsay Price:
It’s really interesting because I really feel like it comes in waves and like being here now like you know because I went to uni in Birmingham and stayed there for a year or two and then came back here, so I was really like a child when I left and you know a grown up or an adult practitioner when I arrived so it was like starting again for me when looking for scenes and people because everything had changed so much, but, I do see yeah like the waves of newness so like a new night will come out and it will get some people who’ve been doing this for years and then some new people and they might develop and do their own thing and I kind of see these almost like six month cycles and I felt like that when running Rhymes and Records just seeing the like expansion and contraction of like suddenly a lot of things popping up and then quietening down. There’s a tonne of amazing experiences I’ve had in Liverpool and honestly I owe so much to the poetry scene here for lifting me up, for one providing me with community, for providing me with friends for like my day to day live who like I love dearly, providing me a chance to improve my confidence and also the professional development I suppose is almost secondary to that. But you know I’ve had a lot of support from Writing on the Walls over the years, I’ve done a lot of facilitation work for them, performance work for them, I’ve gone into schools and just have had some real great experiences from that, I’ve worked with cruise Liverpool, I’ve worked with the City Council, I went to the impact 11 conference which was like the Capital of Culture conference but like 11 years on which was just insane to be a part of, I’ve had a lot of support from the Queer community so there are real erm gems of nights and opportunities that are doing some great stuff. But yeah it’s been interesting I think like anything there’s room for development. I think accessibility is always a conversation to have. I think it’s really important to if you’re creating a night that’s for public consumption there’s a responsibility there to choose people who are representing the whole of Liverpool and not just a select few, that’s something I feel quite conscious about. You know I’ve worked with a few literacy charities and I’m conscious that it can still feel like quite an elitist space, it can feel quite middle class, it can feel quite white, cis, straight, able-bodied, neurotypical like all of the things so there’s a lot of responsibility there. I suppose if you’re an organiser to just look at the variety of work that you’re programming and asking yourself if it does represent the true people of the city rather than just a small portion, I think that’s something that can always be improved upon. So yeah in terms of specific criticism I couldn’t give specifics, but I think just looking at that as a concept could do a lot of people like a lot of favours and there are some organisations who are great at doing that, who are creating real radical exciting thought provoking work and I’m thankful for those too and I just think it takes people backing those as well and making sure that they are getting out to things and they are supporting where they can and if they’re able to, I think that’s important as well.
Ella:
Yeah, Something I’ve definitely felt from attending poetry events and also putting on poetry events is that the audience sort of performs in a different way to other gigging spaces, not that musicians aren’t supportive of each other they obviously are, but what I find interesting about when you put gigs on musicians come to gigs to support their friends, maybe to experience new music but often as a social space and the audience does feel more like a social space, whereas the poetry event that we put on as part of our Bloom Building residency was really interesting because the poets who were performing had never performed before so they didn’t have necessarily ties to the poetry community it was their first time, they’d just come through a workshop but there was still a wide audience of poets who’d come because they wanted to hear poetry and they wanted to be nourished by poetry and to open themselves up to like new voices and new experiences through poetry and that was such like an impactful and an emotional thing for me that I’ve not experienced in many spaces.
Lyndsay:
I think that’s really important and I ran a spoken word night for two and a half years and for that whole time there were people who came every month religiously and never once shared and didn’t even write. And for me I always found that more profound than people who were like ah I’m just here for my friend or like I just like want to perform and that’s like a totally valid reason for going too but there is definitely something special about the people who come like who value that and that always spun my head out a bit to be like grown-ups have left their houses like think about how busy everyone is, how stressful, the stress we all have, how much stuff we all have to do but the fact that people with like kids and obligations have like left their house at night in winter to go to a bar or a restaurant or coffee shop to listen to poetry, it shows that there’s clearly some value that it’s bringing into their lives other than just performing or developing themselves or seeing their mates. It is truly providing value and yeah that’s just like it’s so lovely to see.
Ella:
Yeah like it’s so beautiful and I like feel so touched by it every time and yeah just it continues to amaze me like interacting with creative scenes and stuff and how healing spaces can feel. And yeah like I guess we’ve been talking for a good while now but I just want to ask you one last thing and that’s basically how you bring safety to the spaces that you facilitate and maybe like some methods or like things that you think about. Like you were saying you do such a wide variety of facilitation like you work through schools or through like poetry workshops through all sorts of things and maybe some things which are constants for you in trying to make people feel safe in what can be quite vulnerable environments.
Lyndsay:
Mmm. It’s a really good question and there’s so much to say on it like there’s a lot of factors that you need to take into account like what is the event, who are the people I’m trying to engage, therefore what are the barriers that they might come across. It would be really hard to you know in this conversation address all of the things, but for me I think for me just because I have a background in community arts facilitation, that was pretty much my degree community and applied theatre, so since maybe like 12 years now I have worked in so many different settings, people from all different walks of life imaginable really you know I’ve worked with people, I’ve worked with girls at risk of gang affiliation, I’ve worked on refugee projects I’ve worked on LGBT* projects like people with disability like people with mental health like the list goes on and I think just over time and just becoming older you naturally become a bit better at just appreciating the different life experiences that people have had before the moment they walked into your door. It’s important to be aware of the type of barriers people can experience especially with poetry because it does lend itself to being such a healing tool. The example I can give is a lot of people come to gigs of mine because they’ve found poetry to be a great tool for healing with addiction or people in recovery and some of the issues I’ve had to contend with are that a lot of nights take place in bars, and even for the Queer community as well there’s drinking and substances can be a problem and for a lot of people they don’t really feel safe in those spaces, there’s a tonne of other reasons why people might not feel safe in a space, but that’s just something that I’ve had to contend with like you know before the pandemic really it was something on my mind a lot so it’s important really if you’re trying to set up an event, thinking what is the event, why am I doing it, who am I trying to reach, and then you can make the adjustments accordingly. You know what works for one type of event might not work for another, and you know for some people it’s fine to hold this thing in one space and all the attendees are totally comfortable, so I guess what I’m trying to say is there’s not a one size fits all kind of approach but I think erm one of the best things to do is to speak to other organisers you know ask them how they’ve had to navigate through any difficulties and also just like check your privilege to an extent because as like a white person I might feel very uncomfortable in certain spaces and like okay just because this thing doesn’t provide a difficulty for me doesn’t mean that it won’t for other people, you know Liverpool’s notorious I think for not having great like wheel chair friendly spaces, there’s a lot of listed buildings, there’s a lot of places with stairs and basements and that’s something that frustrates me, it’s not necessarily the events organisers fault, but it might be good for people to step outside of the usual spaces they use and maybe think well what can I do for these people who might want to attend or a day time event for people who don’t want to be out at night or you know something with softer lighting and minimal sound for people who may be like autistic or have sensory issues, there’s just so many different ways that you can adapt erm and again it depends on the type of people you want to involve, you know obviously you don’t want to go up to a person with a disability and ask them to do all the work for you, you know tell me all the ways to make this right, but just reading up as much as you can on the issues and the barriers and I think over time the more people work and put on events, you can only learn over doing sometimes and I think through trial and error and mistakes and usually over time people are able to adapt their events to make them more inclusive.
Ella:
Yeah I think for us time and time again what’s important is like very much being aware that we don’t know everything, that we have one specific experience and that like not only like asking but like you said being open for critique and being a body who we constantly want people to give us critique and I think that’s maybe an uncomfortable place to sit but I think this is something we like really recommend to venues and spaces as well because I think a lot of people take critique as like I don’t know an attack or that you want to shut them down and you want nothing to do with their services anymore but really critique is like a loving thing and it’s something which is going to help you open your services to more people and be a safer and more inclusive space. So yeah completely hear what you’re saying and you know you can’t have one safe space that’s a safe space for everyone especially when you’re dealing with limited events spaces and stuff like that which is why your podcast will be so amazing because you can allow the person listening to form their own safe space from which to listen to the content that you’ve created, even in a sense of being able to tap out when they need to and be able to come back in at their own pace and that sort of thing so I think your podcast will be incredibly useful in that sense that people can meet it where they’re at and make their own adjustments as they need. So yeah.
Lyndsay:
Yeah, hopefully yeah. I mean in person events are amazing but there is definitely value in having more digitised, digital events. I think especially because during the pandemic we created so many events that were accessible from home, and then as spaces have opened up we’ve sort of forgotten about those and it’s meant some people have been sort of left on the side-lines again so I’m hoping to kind of you know pay homage to those people as well, and also celebrate in person events, but there’s space for all of them I think.
Ella:
Yeah definitely, and we’ll make sure to have our fundraiser linked wherever we share this. And if you can donate and share the go-fund me page around because I think what you’re doing is really special and really important for all of the reasons we’ve spoken about today.
Lyndsay:
Thank you so much. Like even just following the podcast on Instagram is so helpful because yeah it’s bigger than me and we want to make sure that as many people can access it as possible and we are able to continue to fund it and support it really and get some amazing artists in. Tehre’s so many ways it can expand so all the support is hugely welcome and we’ve nearly raised all the money on the just giving page so thank you so much for supporting!
Ella:
Amazing, of course! Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today, it’s been a pleasure.
Lyndsay:
Of course, and just well done to you as well for all the work with Where are the Girlbands and what you’re doing now, there’s real carefully considered events that you’ve really thought through and I can see the efforts you’re both trying to take to create safe spaces and inclusive environments. So the best of luck and I hope you keep it up as well.
Ella:
That’s so lovely, thank you so much!
Thank you so much for chatting with us today Lyndsay! If you want to support the amazing work that Lyndsay is doing, please go and donate to the Salt Water Poetry go-fund-me page. You can find Lyndsay on socials as @lyndsaywritespoems for poetry, @saltwaterpoetry for her podcast and @scribbleandstretch for her journaling and meditation work!
Our song of the week is ‘Come Home’ by Manchester based artists Daisy Harris. With vocals that feel deep and homely, Daisy Harris sings in melancholy tones about empty rooms and longing for empathy. This song would be the perfect accompaniment to a mellow walk home spent reflecting and leaning into your feeling and so we thought it would be the perfect song for an episode about learning to be vulnerable through making. You can find Daisy Harris on Instagram at @daisyharrisuk – we hope you enjoy!
Play Come Home by Daisy Harris
We are Ella and Eve from Where are the Girlbands working in collaboration with Comics Youth to bring you interviews with local organisations and individuals who create safe spaces. You can find us on Instagram as @wherearethegirlbands where we celebrate women in music and discuss how to make local music scenes more accessible for everyone through reviews, video series, interviews and events! You can find more about Comics Youth on Instagram at @comicsyouth or via the website comicsyouth.co.uk. Comics Youth is a youth led organisation that aims to empower youth across the Liverpool City Region to flourish from the margins of society, creating safe spaces where young people can harness their own narratives and find confidence within a creative community. Comics Youth provide a range of creative services designed to support and amplify the often diminished voices of young people, from zine creation to youth led publishing hubs and projects such as this podcast which highlights the voices of those working within our community to create safe spaces! Thanks for listening.
