Congratulations to Jayne Howard, our Woman of the Month for October.

Jayne is the Creative Health Associates Programme Manager at the National Centre for Creative Health and is also the founding Director of Arts Well CIC, a social enterprise that places arts and creativity at the centre of health and wellbeing.

Her belief in the power of creativity to transform wellbeing in communities and individuals is grounded in a career in education and public health; over 20 years of initiating, advising and collaborating on arts-based health projects in Cornwall.

We asked Jayne, what do you owe your mother?

“A love of literature, poetry in particular, which has been an absolute mainstay in my life. I can remember my mum reading poems to me when I was quite young – The Highwayman, Arabia, Kubhla Khan, Tarantella – and I know these off by heart now. Although I didn’t always understand exactly what they were about, I fell in love with the words and the feelings they evoked.” 

We are delighted to support the Women of Cornwall project given a shared mission to recognise women’s achievements in Cornwall.

Women of Cornwall is a project by Art Centre Penryn in collaboration with ceramic artist Katie Bunnell, helped by The Hypatia Trust through our Women in Cornwall online archive team, and Kresen Kernow. The project will create a new collection of 50 plates featuring women of Cornwall for public display in the new Art Centre in Penryn.

Currently the project is identifying women to be featured in the collection and everyone is invited to nominate women they feel should be more widely acknowledged. Women who have made meaningful contributions in a broad range of areas including: 

arts • sciences • engineering • literature • environment • farming • fishing • health • sport • social care • community • voluntary action • maritime • hospitality • education • performing arts • business • media & communications • leadership • politics

If you have someone in mind but are sketchy on details, our Women in Cornwall online archive may be able to help.

The selection of women is likely to span the ages including women who are alive, women from history and mythical women. Their Cornishness may be fluid, but their achievements will have a special connection with the region.  

Selecting the final 50 won’t be easy so an advisory group that includes Kresen Kernow, Black Voices Cornwall, Access Cornwall, ourselves and others is being assembled to help capture a diverse and inspirational group.

The project is funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and part-funded by the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

Libita Sibungu:

‘In Living Memory’

This month artist Libita Sibungu introduces ‘In Living Memory’, an exhibition of photographs, notes and research findings, showing on The Ramp Wall at The Exchange (4th October - 4th January).

Libita will present this research at The Exchange’s launch event this Friday 4th, at 7pm. The work will inform a main gallery exhibition in 2026.

'In Living Memory' documents Libita’s journeying from geological archives to neolithic monuments in West Cornwall.

This work has evolved from her earlier project ‘Deep Recovery’ which launched at Kresen Kernow in 2023. The Hypatia Trust is delighted to host an archival audio collection from this earlier work in the feature space of our Women in Word bookshop (open Wed-Sat, 11-3pm).

The voices in the audio collection are of mixed heritage women artists who live in Cornwall and who were involved in the making of the work. 

16 Days of Activism

(25th November to 10th December)

Returning to Penzance next month, this campaign will see a programme of events and activities calling for an end to violence against women and girls.

This is part of an annual wider global movement that aims to raise awareness of gender-based violence and inspire action to bring about real change.

As some of you may know, for the last 2 years Hypatia has helped the PZ contribution to the 16 Days of Activism programme. We are delighted to be involved again this year organising and hosting some of the events and workshops taking place. 

Keep a look out for more information coming soon.

Sorry for the Inconvenience But This Is an Emergency: a talk from Lynne Jones

Thursday 7th November | 6.30pm - 8.00pm | Hypatia HQ | £10

Join us for a talk from Lynne Jones on the subject of her newly published book Sorry for the Inconvenience But This Is an Emergency: The Nonviolent Struggle for Our Planet’s Future. The book is an insider’s candid account of our new era of mass protest, calling passionately for action against existential threats. More about the book here.

The talk will focus on how can we create a more democratic society, where we all have a voice? and will be followed by an opportunity for an open discussion.

Lynne Jones OBE is a child psychiatrist, WHO and UNICEF consultant, and author of acclaimed books including Outside the Asylum and Then They Started Shooting. BBC Radio, The New Statesman, the London Review of Books and O, The Oprah Magazine have featured her field diaries from conflict and disaster areas. 

Battery Rocks:
A Poetry Reading with Katrina Naomi

Friday 1st November | 6pm - 8pm | Hypatia HQ | £8

Katrina Naomi is an award-winning poet, performer, poetry judge & mentor, who lives in Penzance. In this intimate reading, Katrina will read from Battery Rocks (Seren, 2024), which recently won the Arthur Welton Award from the Society of Authors.

Exploring the sea in all its mercurial forms, Katrina questions the world through the lens of nature and the more than human. Poems like ‘And if there were no sea?’ - which recognises both the power and danger of the sea, as well as all that would be lost if it didn’t exist - approach the climate emergency from aslant, offering a new take on one of the most pressing concerns of our times.

Battery Rocks contains the poem 'in the kelp forest' which won the Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry. Katrina will take questions on her writing, inspiration & wider publishing issues.

Katrina featured in an article by BBC3 on Battery Rocks released on 29th August 2024 - you can listen here.

www.katrinanaomi.co.uk

Wednesday 2nd October | 6.30pm | Women in Word bookshop  

Our Women in Word reading group returns this month, when we’ll be looking at two stories from The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. It is a friendly and informal group focussing on short stories and shorter fiction — new members are always very welcome.

Contact readinggroup@hypatia-trust.org.uk for further details.