Breaks & Joins Podcast

I’m a gardener by trade and have spent most of my waking moments in the last 8 years, tending to and communing with plants. At the heart of my practice is helping people reconnect with their immediate surroundings, creating green spaces in difficult places and using gardening as a vessel to connect with self, ancestors and other human and non-human beings. I also welcome any opportunity to create...

Dr Georgia Bowers is a leading Creative Ageing practitioner, academic and pro-ageing activist. Her work explores how theatre making with older adults can tackle ageism and takes place in care homes, hospitals, sheltered housing accommodation, day centres and via online video platforms. Georgia has worked for arts organisations such as Royal Opera House, Brighton People’s Theatre, Chichester Festiv...

In my role of Arts Manager for Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust I am responsible for delivering an arts programme to support the health and wellbeing of our patients, staff and visitors. Our projects encompass all art forms, using music, dance, creative drawing, and arts and crafts to provide individuals with the means for creative expression and to help alleviate stress and anxiety. Visual art an...

Gaynor Tutani (Art Adlib) is a curator, producer and writer who merges her various arts, culture, community and educational passions to produce exhibitions, events and commentaries on art and curating. Her speciality is in Public Programming – of which she extends as part of her practice as the Creative Programing Officer at Museum of the Home. She is the Co-founder of EARTHworks [Artists], a cura...

Following a Masters in Applied Theatre at Goldsmiths, Megan completed her PhD in Psychology at the University of Limerick in 2023 and received an Irish Research Council scholarship for her research: "Community Solidarity Initiatives as Spaces for Connection, Resistance and Change". This project investigated how people living in Direct Provision and members of the wider community engaged...

Arji Manuelpillai is a poet, performer and creative facilitator based in London. He was the Jerwood/Arvon Mentee mentored by Hannah Lowe. Arji’s debut pamphlet ‘Mutton Rolls' was published with Out-Spoken Press in 2020 and his newest book ‘Improvised Explosive Device’ was released in the Autumn of 2022 with Penned in the Margins. This highly acclaimed book was noted in The Telegraph’s Top 20...

Merel works as a freelance accompanist and vocal coach besides teaching singing and piano. She is choir leader of the Long Covid Choir and the Long Covid Kids Choir. Merel also works as a Supporting Artist for feature tv/film, such as The Crown. In her free time she takes Art Classes with Lucy Freud. Merel fell ill with Covid in 2021 and has been living with Long Covid ever since. She loves using...

Amie is a writer, theatre maker, musical theatre teacher and the Director for Fun Palaces.  A Fun Palace is a free event made by local people for their own community. At Fun Palaces people come together to share their skills, passions and interests, and to show the world just how brilliant and packed full of genius their community is. Anyone can make one, anyone can go to one; it's a movemnt,...

Camille Dawson is a critically acclaimed comedy writer, performer and director. She is founder and Artistic Director of Frisky Arts. Camille has a multi art, anarchic and comedic style.  The War Inside is inspired by her experience of struggling with autoimmune disease. The show shines a light on invisible illness, and takes the audience on a wild ride, inside the body.  Alongside the show, The Ta...

Maria Amidu is a visual artist and PhD Candidate in the School of Arts & Humanities at the Royal College of Art. Her artistic concerns are influenced by the complexities of the relational – between people and between people and place. Through writing as artistic practice she tries to substantiate what might be going on in collective situations, paying specific attention to what is hidden, obsc...

Lee is the founder of Positive Carrickfergus and co-founder of Repair Cafe Belfast and Carrick Greengrocers. She has lived in Carrickfergus for most of her life apart from a few years in England and Italy like so many of her generation brought up in Northern Ireland. Lee has worked in the voluntary and community sector for around 25 years mostly in grant making and decided about 6 years ago to try...

Amahra Spence lives in the UK and works globally. Her practice is one of poetic pragmatism, exploring transformation and iterating change oriented towards liberation. In particular, Amahra engages this through spatial reclamation and social justice, design, performance and storytelling.  In all aspects of her work, Amahra contends with Black Imagination as a framework and the starting point for ch...

Madeline Tanoto is a designer-maker & teacher with a 20 year career in fashion & teaching across all things textiles. She is a qualified Mental Health First Aider & combines these skills with her textiles experience to explore the craft of mending within a supportive & inclusive environment. She is the founding Director of Mads do & Mend CIC whose aim is to teach people to mend...

Sally Jaquet is an Edinburgh-based community musician who believes music is for everyone - a human right that helps us connect, care and cherish each other and ourselves. Her projects include vocal and songwriting teaching; choir leading; music & wellbeing workshops for school groups, businesses; and music research and arts projects evaluation. As well as group music facilitation, Sally is a p...

Ellen works as a consultant for Seahorse Environmental, a specialist environmental communications agency. In this role she works with a number of NGOs and businesses on campaigns including the Lost Rainforests of Britain campaign. She has a background in research and is particularly interested in the circular economy, the arts and environment and behaviour change.  https://www.seahorseenvironmenta...

Kay Rufai is a Photographer, Poet, Filmmaker, Author, Mental Health researcher and founder of the internationally acclaimed S.M.I.L.E-ing Boys projects. He is currently the first Artist in residence for West Midlands Police Artist as part of Coventry City of Culture, using creative arts to improve relationships between police and marginalised young people.  His work  spans the past 8 years in a ha...

Yvonne Field is a serial social entrepreneur and change agent who has spent more than four decades working with grassroots organisations, front line staff, senior managers and policy makers in local, national and international government and civil society organisations.  Yvonne has worked across more than 20 European countries, the English-speaking Caribbean region, Asia and South Africa. She esta...

Sarah Pimenta is an experienced artist, illustrator and facilitator and has worked in education for over twenty three years including in over 250 primary and secondary schools nationally and two in Africa. She previously co-directed Arts Charity Cloth of Gold and is now known as Social Fabric. Sarah is highly experienced at leading, coordinating and delivering inclusive, high-quality participatory...

Chris Finch is an NHS Mental Health Worker. He has a passion for repair, fixing bikes from his garage, and many more things from his cellar, which is packed with tools, spare parts, and objects waiting to be mended.  Chris appears in The Breaks & Joins film. "My name is Chris and I am in my mid 60s. I have many interests and enjoy using my practical skills in my spare time. I studied Art...

Jo Cook is the founder and creator of Meet and Mend and runs sessions and projects within the West Yorkshire county of England. Meet and Mend focuses on textile activities that encourage sustainable methods, such as re-purposing and recycling wherever possible. Meet and Mend ran the Cost of Living Quilt Project in January and February 2023 and is currently running the Reusable Sanitary Pads Projec...

Award - winning writer Yomi Sode, and artist/activist Chloe Osborne together run 'The Grief Lab' an opportunity to explore, playfully, riotously, experimentally, grief and loss.  In this episode they discuss their approaches, the development of this work, and how to continually move the expectations of others and ourselves about how to deal with difficult feelings. Send us Fan Mail Explo...

Professor Hartley Jafine is an improviser, clown nose enthusiast, and Survivor superfan. He is on the faculty at McMaster University and University of Toronto, where he facilitates theatre and arts-based courses. As a health humanities artist-scholar his teaching and research focuses on the intersection between applied theatre, improvisation and health science education. "My work investigates...

Molly Syrett is a costume supervisor and buyer, currently training in millinery. Molly has worked with a range of theatre and dance companies on UK tours, site specific and immersive productions including for London Borough Of Culture, The National Theatre and on Harry Potter & the Cursed Child. Molly also works with Goldsmiths University of London’s Theatre and Performance department as a cos...

Toby is an Award-Winning theatre maker & Associate Director at interactive theatre makers, Coney, where he focuses on making work with, and for, young people & families that spark change through play. He has made pieces that live on National Trust grounds, at The National Archives and landed in schools across the UK.  In 2020, he created Beyond Arts CIC, who amplify stories of life beyond...

For this episode we made a site visit - a first for us. We spoke to Michael Breakey and Devon Goodrich who host and manage the Rotherhithe Shed , but also to some of the people who had popped in that afternoon to make, mend, paint and chat. Rotherhithe Shed, just south of the River Thames,  was set up by Time & Talents and London Bubble Theatre Company, and is based in Bubble's large work...