What I’m Learning from Motherline

Motherline is a project I am co-facilitating with Alice Robinson, at HOME MCR and The Yard, Hulme.

Facilitating with Alice

Motherline is one of the most creatively rich and emotionally resonant projects I’ve been part of. It’s a year-long journey into the themes of ancestry, identity, and womanhood, but half way through I am realising that it’s also something more fluid, something still forming. What began as a structured offer, with sessions shaped around writing, art, music and discussion, has grown into something led as much by the group as by us.

Across our sessions so far, I’ve found myself continually humbled and surprised by what emerges when you create space. This is not just for creative expression, but for presence, permission, and quiet transformation. At HOME, at The Yard, and in the spaces between, something beautiful has taken root.

Creativity as Reclamation

One of the key things I’m learning is that creativity doesn’t always look like a finished piece of writing or a striking piece of visual art. Sometimes it looks like a shift in perspective, or a small decision to reframe a narrative you’ve carried for years. In one session, someone described their story not as a line, but as a kernel—compact, potent, holding life. That kind of shift is creativity. It’s reclamation.

Shared Voice

We’ve worked with fragments—of memory, thought, language, song—and each time, the group has turned these fragments into something whole. I’ve watched as poems are shaped collaboratively, as spontaneous songs are born, as stories are told not for performance, but for connection. There’s an energy in this shared making that feels like a kind of alchemy: people come in a little uncertain and leave with something they didn’t expect to find.

Singing together, something we have been led to do so powerfully by Becky Wilkie, has also brought a different kind of resonance. There is vulnerability in singing your own words aloud, and there is also strength. The sound has changed over time. It’s more confident now, more layered, more alive.

Letting the Group Lead

Another big learning: creative leadership sometimes means getting out of the way. At some point in all of our sessions, Alice and I step back and became participants ourselves. That simple shift allows something new to surface. By loosening the reins, we gave permission for something more collective to emerge.

This doesn’t mean there’s no structure, we still hold the container, but the material, the movement, the metaphors, are being shaped by the group. That’s how this project becomes not just something we’re delivering, but something we’re all co-creating.

The Quiet Ripples

Not all creativity looks like an explosion. Some of it looks like someone picking up pens again after years of not making. Or choosing to stay in a space despite being exhausted, because they realise its okay to be tired and visible. Or making a quiet decision to share a song with their mum. These moments might not go in a funding report or on a gallery wall, but they matter. They are the quiet ripples of creativity and courage.

A Practice of Permission - Motherline

Again and again, what emerges is the importance of permission. The permission to be present without needing to perform. To create without pressure. To explore your own rhythms. To feel messy, inspired, tired, alive. This project is not about output—it’s about process, presence, and remembering what it is to be creative not just as an artist, but as a human being.

We are building something together here. Sometimes it feels like song, sometimes like a net, sometimes like a field being cleared to plant something new. The language isn’t always fixed, but the feeling is strong.

I’m so grateful to Alice, to the group, to HOME and The Yard for holding this project with such care. And I’m grateful for what it’s teaching me: about creativity, about co-creation, and about the power of showing up—honestly, vulnerably, joyfully—just as we are.

More to come.