It’s been a very interesting week, I’ve attended a few different training courses and lectures. I was going to write an in-depth account about each one but I’ll just give you the bones and if you are interested you can find out more by clicking the links.
Yesterday I went to the IT Sligo for a talk by Dr. Larry K. Brendtro about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the Resilient Brain. This was fascinating, Dr. Larry is a really inspirational man and it answered quite a lot of questions for me.
I have written pages of notes but you’d really have had to have been at the lecture for it to make sense. The handouts from the day are online so if this is something you like to read more about you can do so here – the link is only going to be there for the next 30 days but you can download the pdf.
Earlier in the week I headed to The Spool Factory in Boyle for the Creating Creative Tourism Experiences. The day started off with me chasing women around a petrol station, quickly followed by me chasing cars – and no I’m not a member of Snow Patrol! I was looking for Oonagh and Orla who I was going with and I wasn’t sure what car I was looking for. I found them in the end and I didn’t get arrested so it was all good.
This was a really interesting event and one I’d like to know more about. The speakers included Lorna Watkins who was telling us about her studio near the sea and the inspiration behind her art. Gerry Brannigan told us about his surf school in Achill which is run from a double decker bus. Michael from Mimar Midea told us about telling your story with video. The event was run by ‘My Creative Edge‘ which is free to join so if you are in the creative sector is well worth joining. It’s also a great site to discover creativity from Europe’s Northern Edge.
Today I went to an event organised by Sligo County Libraries: The Art of Collecting and Recording Stories in the Community. This is another subject that I am very interested in. During the course of my work I get to spend time with older people and I find their stories fascinating. I’d love to be able to document some of them and give these people a voice. In many of the events I go along to it is the people themselves who are the story. We have so many characters in rural Ireland that I’d love to be able to tell their stories to the world and document them for future generations.
So that was my week of learning, plenty of food for thought and of course a million new ideas to think about. Who knows maybe some of these might lead to something.
Magnumlady Blog 
The documenting of stories is quite a trend at the moment. Several people going to courses on memoir writing and journalling so there is aomething to pass on when they pass on.
Interviewing people to do this for them has been a fascination to me, but find I am shy and thinking it is none of my business, and its up to them to write their own stories. Then I think of how can I help them to do that … especially with the language that senior people use.
Then I kick my own arse because for 60 years now, I have been collecting stories from seniors, but not of how they made bread, make a cup of tea etc. What I collect is their imagination, dreams, fantasies, own interpretation of legend and otherworls stories. However, I often knit them and mix them so so etimes I have to give a story credit to several people.
Mind you, I take for granted my own memoirs of things I thought were normal at the time, but people gasp! “How could you live like that?!” With me these are stories of living in different places though as I have no roots, yet the traditions at most places were much the same.
My fascination, now, is more video and sound. Writing has faded from me for awhile. So a learning time for me for awhile, the technicals of video and audio formats today and how to do all of the conversions, arrangements, stotyboards, and synthesis. So different to the analogue days. Today was very pleased to make a 10 second test merging WAV files with MIDi, looping, merging with video and even converting to printable notation. Quite headbanging though … still drives me out to smell the trees, in their winter form.
I hope you find a way to merge what you learn ro get your story out, Val.