Creageivity

The poet WENDY KLEIN believes profoundly in the curative powers of dancing, dogs, and reading poetry out loud, and hopes someone will humanely destroy her if she ceases to enjoy these pleasures! Fortunately no destruction was necessaary as Wendy engaged us deeply with her life story, reading three of her poems - a real treat.

Wendy describes herself as ‘The Crone Poet’ and writes highly personal poetry which develops into universal themes. She comes from a family background where if you didn’t write, you were the odd one out.

Born in the USA, Wendy studied drama and English at the University of Utah and San Francisco State University before leaving the USA in 1964. She was later to renounce her American citizenship. In England she qualified as a social worker in 1983, then as a family and couples psychotherapist in 1992. Her only novel, Listening for Nightingales, was published in 2002, after which time she has concentrated on poetry, with many of her poems winning awards and prizes.

A ‘very difficult project’ which Wendy talks about in the podcast is her video Let Battle Commence about her Confederate Great Grandfather’s role in the American Civil War. Wendy also mentions how being ‘a kind of hippy’ in her younger days saw her travelling around Europe and leading a highly independent life. He poem Three Dog Night which she reads in the podcast is a reflection on this time.

To hear powerful poetry and thoughts about aging, self-criticism, assisted dying and why dogs are generally better than humans, this podcast is a must-listen.

Wendy Klein's Poetry Website: https://www.cronepoet.com/

Let Battle commence video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2JlbpAdUcU

Music: Acoustic Motivation by Yuri Semchyshyn via Pixabay with thanks

If you feel you're too old to be creative, or too creative to be old, then Creageivity is the podcast for you!

JENNIFER LYNCH is a prolific writer covering topics as wide as dancing, children’s stories and an array of spiritual development books. She is also a reiki and massage practitioner and is a frequent broadcaster on spiritual and self-development subjects. 

In CREAGEIVITY 32 Jennifer talks about her path and how a serious car crash opened her way towards experiencing and writing about spirituality. 

In our podcast we talk about growth and change and how this leads to a wider spiritual awareness, and Jennifer describes how she senses the presence of angels and uses this to help her own direction, and in the lives of others. She also does Angel Card readings for clients.

Jennifer is based in Diss, a market town in Norfolk, England. In addition to her more esoteric activities, she is also an enthusiastic dancer, deriving background for her 2020 novel Salsa which she describes as ‘saucy’.

As a writer, her range is impressive, taking in another novel, William’s Wishes, through many self-improvement, lifestyle and spiritual books, to Woo the Clumsy Owl, her recently published children’s story based on Covid lockdown.

Join us for an engaging dive into creativity, and much more!

 Jennifer’s author page on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jennifer-Lynch/e/B004EFEDL4

Jennifer’s website:  www.angelwisdom.co.uk

Natural Co-Creators FB page: https://www.facebook.com/naturalcocreatorsshow/

Music: ‘Answers from Angels’ with thanks to Aberrant Realities, via Pixabay

If you feel you're too old to be creative, or too creative to be old, then Creageivity is the podcast for you!

For half a century STEFAN FREEDMAN has developed his talents as a multi instrumentalist musician, songwriter, circle dance leader, champion of world music, author, and poet. He travels the globe giving joyful workshops in dance and music, some of which focus on trauma release and wellbeing. In-person and online movement and voice courses remain Stefan's greatest ‘mission’, and his most significant book Dance Wise is published in English, Portuguese and Spanish.

In CREAGEIVITY 31 Stefan reads some lines from Dance Wise as well as sharing a wry poem written by a cat, and a love poem from his soon to be published new collection of poetry. In addition we get to hear excerpts from 'Sto Perigiali’, a traditional Greek song; 'Slow Down', an original by Stefan, and 'Carousel', a trad tune played on the accordion. This is used for a dance choreographed by Stefan that’s now popular in Belgium, Canada, Chile, Brazil, Bulgaria, Holland, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Slovenia, the UK and USA. 

His band Dark Flame also plays at gigs and celebrations around the UK.

Stefan's interest in wellbeing and trauma release grew out of many years of work with the charity Inside Out which promotes arts for mental and emotional wellbeing.

For an inspiring ride with a true Creative Magpie, tune in to CREAGEIVITY 31 with STEFAN FREEDMAN!

Stefan's Dance Wise website: https://www.dancewise.net/

Bursting with info, songs and video content!

If you feel you're too old to be creative, or too creative to be old, then Creageivity is the podcast for you!

HALIMAH COLINGWOOD, aka Halimah the Dreamah, has been making music all her life, even claiming that when she was born, instead of the usual scream on entrance into the world, she sang a high C, shattering all the windows in the delivery room. 

Her stories of a life in music are many and varied and feature the duo Blackburn and Snow from mid-sixties San Francisco, at a time when she went by the stagename of Sherry Snow. Many of her Bay Area acquaintances went on to become internationally famous artistes (although Halimah somehow only told us of her being in the room with Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey and Bob Dylan after the podcast was done!) 

With two singles and an album’s worth of songs completed – eventually released in 1999 as Something Good for Your Head by Blackburn and Snow – Halimah turned away from the music business after a profound inner prompting which began a spiritual journey that took her to Indonesia, and a Shepherd’s cottage in Scotland. This was not before she’d also become a vocalist with the highly regarded Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, a period she speaks of with affection.

After some time in Europe, Halimah and family moved back to the USA where she is now settled in Arcata, California. Along the way she returned to college to study philosophy, which she wryly describes as ‘something very practical’, and co-founded the Redwood Interfaith Gospel Choir – whose track He Made a Difference is our intro and outro piece. She also DJ-ed on the local radio station for many years with her Ethnic Excursions show. 

Her motto, borrowed from the I Ching, is Perseverance Furthers. We couldn’t agree more!

Blackburn and Snow: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYAKa9ZSpPw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2Cw0KxRLwY&list=RDH2Cw0KxRLwY&start_radio=1

Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks (with the song Halimah sings on our podcast):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTz7nABgIH4&list=OLAK5uy_lMEgr_MuA_OdLKR7oWkHJ2B0Z-KATGbkY&index=1

If you feel you're too old to be creative, or too creative to be old, then Creageivity is the podcast for you!

​Our special guest in this episode is the PRIME NUMBER 29 which gives us the chance to mention the 29 other guests we've had on our previous podcasts. And what guests! OK, on this occasion we probably overuse 'amazing' and 'incredible', but then these descriptions are actually justified.

Plus 29 the number is also pretty amazing and incredible: tune in for some very interesting 29-related facts and figures which you can astonish friends and family with.

Add to this the​ fact that the intro and outro songs are created with the help (well about 92% of help) from a very smart Artificial Intelligence, and we think you'll be intrigued and entertained by Creag​eivity 29.

PS: Our AI singer couldn't quite get her tonsils around the name of every guest, but she did reaonably well, don't you think?

If you feel you're too old to be creative, or too creative to be old, then Creageivity is the podcast for you!

One of the secrets to MIKE PAILTHORPE’s survival and success in music, education and - at one time, publishing – is simple: ‘Just talk to people.’

Mike grew up in Hounslow, and at school, started punk band The Milk (our first podcast track) which went on to play numerous Rock Against Racism gigs, with the encouragement of established bands Misty in Roots and The Ruts. 

Mike then, ‘Retired from punk’ to study English at Queen Mary College London, and from there found himself in Worthing, on the South Coast of England. With what seems like typical serendipity, he walked into a factory and got a very boring job, before being called by a book distributor to deliver books… and start a journey of fearlessly talking with people!

While in the book trade, Mike was also playing music, built his own recording studio, and then began work at the famous Jacob’s Farm residential studio.

The late 90s saw a tempting to offer to set up a Music Technology course from scratch, which after modest beginnings now has “over four million quid’s-worth of equipment” and runs degree-level courses. 

Mike’s family are all music makers, “A result of a home more full of musical instruments than toys,” and he has never stopped playing and exploring music. In the podcast we hear the Gospel choir, SPRING INTO SOUL that he helps run, along with a song by VICKY RAYNER AND THE REST, with Mike as bass player.

Creageivity 28 is an inspiring and uplifting listen, with a guest who seems to have a special ability (which at one point he likens to Forrest Gump) to be in the right place at the right time.

Music, all courtesy Mike Pailthorpe: 

Wake Me Up by The Milk 

I Open My Mouth by Spring Into Soul

Protect You by Vicky Rayner and The Rest

If you feel you're too old to be creative, or too creative to be old, then Creageivity is the podcast for you!

GABY WEINER has held various professorial and honorary research positions in universities in the UK and Sweden. Publications include Just a Bunch of Girls (1985); Feminisms in Education (1994); Closing the Gender Gap; Kids in Cyberspace, Reconstructing and Deconstructing Lives; Tales of Loving and Leaving (2016); Harriet Martineau and the Birth of the Disciplines; and Reintroducing Harriet Martineau: Pioneering Sociologist and Activist. In recent years she has also been an active contributor to the Lewes Holocaust Memorial Day Group and Martineau Society.

In this episode of Creageivity, Gaby talks particularly about her own family history, brought to life in Tales of Loving and Leaving, centred on the amazing stories of her father’s experiences across Europe, and her Grandmother’s murder in the Treblinka death camp. Harriet Martineau is something of a specialist subject for Gaby, and she makes a great case for why this almost-forgotten beacon of feminism, journalism and activism is overdue recognition.

Intro and outro music is a recording of Putta Nera by Giorgio Mainero (1585-1582) played by Gaby and the University of the Third Age recorder group.   

If you feel you're too old to be creative, or too creative to be old, then Creageivity is the podcast for you!

Ashton Applewhite is the author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism and a co-founder of the Old School Hub. She has written for Harper’s, the Guardian, and the New York Times; speaks widely at venues that have included the United Nations and the TED mainstage; and is at the forefront of the emerging movement to raise awareness of ageism and make age a criterion for diversity. In 2022 the United Nations named Ashton one of the Healthy Aging 50: fifty leaders transforming the world to be a better place to grow older.

In a wide-ranging and lively discussion Ashton challenges preconceptions and makes points that everyone of any age should consider - and it's fun too!

Music with thanks to Pixabay: 'Playing the Old Guitar' by NOVIFI

If you feel you're too old to be creative, or too creative to be old, then Creageivity is the podcast for you!

Architect and Designer, Londoner PETER BOSSON attended Hornsea Art School before going on to the Royal College of Art and gaining a degree in architecture. Working as a consultant for Olivetti (then the largest computer manufacturer in the world), Peter studied the lack of ergonomic thinking in computer and office design and saw the need to “Connect the disconnect between furniture and IT.”  The research conducted with Olivetti engineers lead to significant changes in how we now all work with computers. 

By 1990, Peter and two colleagues had founded the Colebrook Bosson Saunders design agency, creating ever more elegant ways of supporting and interfacing with computers and screens. The company’s products can be seen all over Europe and the USA, part of Peter’s drive to “Get rid of imprecision.”

Since his retirement Peter has had more time to pursue his passions of playing classical guitar, and drawing. He and his wife Liz - “40 years married and still going strong” – have designed and built their own Passive House on the South Coast of England. That’s ‘passive’ as in requiring no heating at all, and in our podcast Peter has a lot to say about how governments, local authorities and house builders could do so much to produce more efficient, effective and comfortable homes.

Is Design with a capital ‘D’ now over? Peter says that “Nothing’s rubbish anymore.” But why Colebrook Bosson Saunders products were named after Northern Rugby League Clubs remains an unrevealed mystery.

Enjoy hearing about the Architecture of the workplace and Peter’s journey through a highly creative life.

Some of Peter’s design work is at: https://pergoworkstyle.com/brand/colebrook-bosson-saunders/?srsltid=AfmBOorFFJoAh5ELQGDDJBtq7VqZseallpWahzmQMlydy0uNzc178VKE

Music from Pixabay by DVIOR SILVA with many thanks 

If you feel you're too old to be creative, or too creative to be old, then Creageivity is the podcast for you!

Brian Reynolds: A Storyteller Who Plays to Win

Brian Reynolds is an LA-based writer, director, and choreographer of movement—whether it’s the perfectly timed punch in a stage fight or the subtle, loaded pause between two characters on screen. With a background spanning theater, film, stage combat and storytelling, Brian has a knack for crafting narratives that balance sharp wit with emotional depth. His work moves fast, crackles with wit, and keeps audiences on their toes—whether they’re watching a film, a play, or a cleverly executed finesse at the bridge table.

His most recent feature film, The Nanny, which he wrote and directed, made waves on the festival circuit, collecting multiple awards and securing a sales agent. A storyteller at heart, Brian thrives in the unpredictable world of independent cinema where resourcefulness and relentless creativity are as vital as the script itself.

Brian Reynolds tells stories, whether through film, theater, or the elegantly played hand of a well-bid bridge contract. His career is a testament to the power of creativity, the joy of competition, and the art of making every move count.

Tune in to Creageivity 24 to be uplifted, stimulated and entertained!

https://thebridgeteachers.com

https://www.tubemanent.com

Music: Las Vegas theme courtesy Mykola Sosin, pixabay
 
 

If you feel you're too old to be creative, or too creative to be old, then Creageivity is the podcast for you!