05/10/2026
Hello Monday ✨️
We had a wonderful weekend of connection, creativity and curiosity 🌿
It all started with a book.
The Lost Words, by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris, is a beautiful collection of poetry and artwork created in response to nature words that were disappearing from everyday language. It's about loss, but also about finding — and about using words, pictures and imagination to reconnect us with the natural world.
From that book came Spell Songs, a musical response that brings together poetry, music, art and the language of the natural world.
And this weekend, the Largo Communities Together group brought some of those ideas together through film, art, music, language and nature.
On Friday evening we came together to watch Lost for Words, exploring our relationship with nature, language and the things we are in danger of losing when we become disconnected from the world around us.
Then on Saturday, Kenzie and I joined artist Jill Calder for a Lost & Found workshop.
We slowed down. We made little books. We drew, painted, cut, stuck and collaged. There wasn't a right or wrong way to do it. We just followed an idea and saw where it took us..... for me, it was my own journey of reconnection from around 4 years ago, and it was lovely to remember, but also reflect.
And then, that evening, something happened that really stayed with me.
Kenzie stood up on the stage in front of the room and told everyone about what she'd made and what her drawings meant.
She was one of the youngest people there, speaking to a room full of adults — and she did it.
Not because she'd been told to be confident, but because she'd been given the opportunity to have an idea, make something, and then share it.
The workshop gave her something to say. The evening gave her the courage to say it.
And I think that's incredibly important.
If we want to pass on our stories, knowledge, skills, creativity and connection with nature, then younger people need to be part of that too. Not just watching from the edges, but having the opportunity to contribute, to be listened to, to try something that feels a little bit scary — and to discover that they can do it.
That, to me, is capability.
And perhaps confidence isn't something we need to teach people directly. Perhaps it grows naturally when we give people the opportunity to have a go.
The weekend came together again in the evening with music, poetry and Spell Songs — bringing together language, nature, creativity and stories.
And it left me thinking about how much is possible when people come together in the right place, with the right things to spark their curiosity.
People. Places. Possibilities.
People can share knowledge, stories and skills.
Places can give us the space to slow down, notice and reconnect.
And from those connections, possibilities begin to emerge.
Perhaps that's also why I'm so interested in preservation.
Not simply preserving things in museums or books, but preserving the knowledge, skills, stories, words, songs and ways of doing things that might otherwise disappear.
And then passing them on.
Because new isn't always better. Sometimes there's something incredibly valuable in remembering what we already know — and finding new ways to bring it forward.
There was talk over the weekend about doing something bigger next year, and I'd love to see where that idea goes. It feels like there's something worth continuing here.
And in a much smaller way, that's what we'll be doing at Elluminate this Sunday too.
We'll be gathering together to make lampshades — learning a practical skill, working with our hands, sharing an afternoon and making something we'll actually take home and use.
Different activity. Same idea.
As the nights draw in, let's not retreat. Let's gather. ❤️
