sarah in waterloo

typographicverses:

The greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13.

(via jess-haines)

I love screen printing and I love nuns, so what could be better than the discovery of this amazing woman, Sister Corita? A sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles, she ran the art department at the in the college there and became well known for her screen prints in the 60s and 70s.

This sums it up well: “Corita’s art reflects her spirituality, her commitment to social justice, her hope for peace, and her delight in the world that takes place all around us.”

Find out more about her here: https://www.corita.org/

thingsorganizedneatly:

SUBMISSION: home studio

Soundcheck 2012: A challenging, creative, joyful and ultimately hopeful weekend. 

More than 150 people gathered in the Rag Factory for the weekend of Soundcheck, the annual gathering of SPEAK Network, transforming it from a blank canvas into a colourful community with its own kitchen, café and even a pop-up cinema. 

We were joined by members of the SPEAK International family, with delegates coming from the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Denmark and Nigeria. On Saturday, Ruth from SPEAK Nigeria shared some moving stories about oil spills in the Niger Delta, giving some powerful context to our corporate responsibility campaign. We linked up with our friend Shane Claiborne over Skype and he reminded us to be a community, have fun, play pranks and maybe turn ‘Shell’ into ‘Sheaven’, then in the evening Rose Hudson-Wilkin challenged us to think about who might be the future MPs among us as we seek to speak truth to power. The evening finished with DJing and VJing from our friends from Time to Turn. During the days we enjoyed workshops on everything from prayer to permaculture, community art to the arms trade, and learning how to make new things out of rubbish! 

Sunday saw 12 baskets of bread arrive at the Rag Factory for an agape meal where we were challenged to think about food waste, inequality, and how sharing bread together can be a powerful levelling experience. Then we heard encouraging stories from around the country and the world about what people in the Network a getting up to. In the afternoon we had an opportunity to consider what real economic justice looks like in a panel discussion with voices from the world of banking, the Church, Occupy and the student community. On Sunday evening we watched ‘Just Do It’, a documentary about climate change activists, and discussed how we could do more direct action as a network. 

On Monday, we took to the streets of London for our own campaign actions, bringing our Corporate Accountability campaign to the doorsteps of three less-than-ethical corporations with prayer, song and creative actions involving some black paint outside Shell, and a ‘die-in’ of a sandblasting worker outside Dolce and Gabbanna. We finished the day in parliament, meeting our MPs and handing in our MP3 petition calling for greater access to justice for victims of corporate abuse. 

Everywhere you looked at Soundcheck, people were busy making it happen before your eyes. Cooking up a vegetarian feast in the kitchen, participating in a community art project, welcoming people as they arrived or jamming in the noisy space, it was the creative energy of the people in SPEAK that made Soundcheck so inspiring. 

To me, SPEAK Network is a stream in the desert, a sign of hope in a sometimes weary and cynical world. From turning old drinks cans into flowers, sharing dumpster-dived bread together, to turning an old factory into a hive of creative activity, Soundcheck 2012 was a demonstration of how we can reclaim the broken, refresh the weary and surprise the cynical with colour, life and newness. 

Gosh I am so bad at blogging. But I thought this warranted a post.

I spent yesterday afternoon with some lovely ladies from Climate Rush and Good Stewards making valentines cards to send to bishops, asking them to stop the Church of England from investing in oil. Last year, the Church of England held shares in oil companies including Shell and BP worth £170.8 million. I was pretty shocked to find this out.

We are asking the church commissioners to ‘love your global neighbour’ and help protect people in developing countries who contribute the least to climate change and suffer the most, by disinvesting in oil. Read more about the campaign here: http://goodsteward.org.uk/

Those are some lucky bishops who are going to receive my incredibly artistic high quality cards (see above).

A few snippets from Occupy London Stock Exchange. Perhaps a few of these people are rebels without a cause, but I thoroughly enjoyed my visit: drinking tea and talking with people who are demonstrating that is IS possible to envisage alternative ways of living. 

I have recently been geeking out investigating the history of my new flat in Walworth and have been interested in learning about the life of Octavia Hill, pioneer of affordable housing for the poor who designed and commissioned my building and lots of others in the Walworth estate. She believed that tenemant houses ‘should not exceed three stories in height’ and should have the ‘maximum amount of sunlight and the freest circulation or air’, access to recreation land and a backyard. A shame these principles were disregarded in the design of the majority of social housing in London over the last 50 years.

Octavia Hill was criticised by left-wingers for disagreeing with women’s suffrage on the grounds that men and women ‘have different gifts and spheres’ (on these grounds I should probably dislike her), but she definitely knew how to design a decent tenemant building, and I’m a fan of any social pioneer, especially if they’re a woman.

Hello blog! I have been away for a while. So I thought I would restart with a little post about a good discovery I have recently made - Elephant and Castle Urban Forest.

It’s a secret woodland hidden amongst the high-rise buildings of the abandoned Heygate Estate. In its secret glades you can find vegetables growing, walks to go on, art exhibitions and feasts and probably lots of other things. Last night I attended a candle-lit ghost storytelling session, accompanied by songs about ghosts and witches by someone called Nigel of Bermondsey.

It was rather good, I would thoroughly recommend looking out for further events at the Forsest:

http://elephantandcastleurbanforest.com/

I spent the last couple of days hanging out in our teepee and yurt and by the camp fire on the Catholic Worker Farm. The Catholic Workers at the farm live with volunteers and eight women asylum seekers, practice hospitality for lots of visitors, grow organic vegetables, go skipping for food, make jam, and protest at nearby military bases and other places. And lots of other things too.

A very peaceful and inspiring visit.

http://www.thecatholicworkerfarm.org/index.html