Patricia Bryce
This week we are celebrating Patricia Bryce!
Patricia is the facilitator of Well Zen, a visioning workshop, which normally runs in the Create Place on the first Monday of each month. When The Create Place was able to open its doors again in the Autumn, Patricia was quick to reimagine her workshops and use the time to deliver a practical skill sharing on making reusable face coverings and masks in her Made By You workshops.
Patricia & The Create Place
Patricia has been committed to helping our community learn useful skills, which also promote sustainability and reducing the waste caused by disposable masks. These workshops allowed people to not only learn and be more environmentally conscious, but to take the skills with them and pass them on to their own networks and communities. Well Zen was due to return this January with a necessary focus on dealing with the unexpected and the uncertain in 2021. Although these have been postponed until we can reopen, we want to celebrate her determination to help our community respond positively to the great changes they have experienced.
After attending a workshop on ‘zines’ in 2018, Patricia got in contact with the Create Place’s Community Arts Manager and began planning a workshop of her own. At this time, she had just started up her company ‘Visioning You Visioning Me’, through which she provides an opportunity to have a full day experience of the visioning process - but done Patricia’s way!
“I call them visioning boards, not vision boards” she says,
explaining that when she started she didn’t realise that the term ‘Vision Boards’ came with a specific set of rules, connotations, and its own celebrity endorsement. Having attended many retreats where the Visioning process was an activity, Patricia had always found that she ended up doing it her way:
“Mine was always different to everyone else’s! I always managed to expand it. I would work through lunch and would end up finishing it when I got home - I would complete my process. I complete it when it feels complete.”
Patricia’s unique method is what forms the shape of her full-day workshops, and inspires the free workshops she runs at the Create Place each month.
We caught up with Patricia to hear about her experiences of running workshops during the pandemic
Patricia Bryce: In Conversation
When St Margaret’s House was eventually able to open its doors again in the autumn of 2020 you started running sewing workshops for making reusable masks instead of Visioning. What was the impetus behind this decision?
I was actually inspired when I phoned my mum while she was on the bus. As we talked I could hear her perfectly, so she clearly wasn’t wearing her mask. She said she found it difficult to breathe when she wore it.
So, I did some research on appropriate materials and set about making some for her. A few days later we were in the car, and she was chatting away and she didn’t even realise she was wearing the mask I’d made for her!
When I do go out I’m always seeing these disposable masks worn badly. The disposable mask is not designed for extended use. The other thing is they’re all over the street! I was so shocked to see so many on the ground and I despaired for our planet! This pandemic ain’t going anywhere soon - and if every human is wearing just one of these a day, we’re going to suffocate the planet.
2. What did you hope to achieve with the mask making workshops?
My desire was to help people understand there is a different way. I’m grateful that I get to explore that. You don’t need to keep wearing disposable masks that you won’t be wearing properly anyway. As a qualified nurse, I would never have worn one of those on my face in excess of an hour. You’re supposed to change it all the time.
You don’t have to have a lot of money, you don’t even need a sewing machine. All of mine were made from fabric from the charity shop or things I had lying around. Making your own mask means you measure your face, and you make a mask that is comfortable and fits you properly - which makes you more likely to wear it.
You can make them out of anything you have at home. The nose ridge can be made out of the kind of foil tray you use for cooking. The ear elastic can be made out of old tights! So it’s reusing materials that you have in the house. It’s not using plastic and it’s not going out to buy things. It’s using what we have indoors, recycling and sustainability.
It can cost as little as 10p, and even the most complicated design only takes about 20 minutes to complete! You can literally sit there and sew this by hand, and get a decent face covering that will protect you and your family. Also making your own means you can make them for different outfits - match to your coat or your shoes! These are going to be around for a while so you can make them fashionable!
3. What have been the benefits and challenges with delivering your creative activities now? Has anything surprised you?
What has surprised me is the commitment of the people who have attended. These workshops were just an idea in my head but I didn’t know if it was going to work - I didn’t know if other people thought it would be a good idea. But people have been so committed to learning.
The only challenge I faced was my own worries about delivering the workshops in a Covid secure environment. But it wasn’t as bad as I imagined when we got into it! The Create Place is secure and ventilated, and it’s been very easy to maintain distancing and hygiene - having fewer people in the space has been perfect. Having the visors available is so great as well, because sometimes I need to be more hands on with help.
One woman even brought her own sewing machine! She hadn’t used one before but it was a commitment to sustainability and learning. All of the people were local people, who hadn’t ever been to the Create Place as well, which was interesting.
4. What led you to the decision to pause your normal Visioning workshops and work on mask making instead?
I believe it’s very difficult to envision the future when everything around you is so unstable - and to be honest quite death oriented - which is the only way I can describe this time we’re living in. I can’t watch TV anymore because I’m finding it so triggering! It’s difficult to get to a point where you can look at your future and imagine how you can achieve the things you want. It’s of course possible to do it; I considered if it was possible to run workshops about visioning your present… But it doesn’t make sense to me to ask anybody to manifest a future when the present is so uncertain.
Like, I couldn’t see how I could put my workshops online. You can do visioning online, but it wouldn’t have worked for me. I just know for myself from day to day i’m struggling! It’s not about not being able to be positive, but it’s that I couldn’t wholeheartedly facilitate like that right now.
5. Both your visioning workshops, and your mask workshops deal with supporting people in their health and wellbeing through creativity. What drives you to create these opportunities?
It’s a big question, but ultimately, I think that if I am able to grow from these processes, then other people will be able to as well. It’s that simple. I don’t know what the tangible outcomes ‘should’ be for the individuals who come, but the experience of doing them creates visible changes in people.
During the visioning workshops it feels like time physically stops - it’s like a physical slowing down of their own metronome - it’s a sensation where the room is very quiet, but they drop down into themselves. Then all of a sudden they pop up again and they’re in this whizzy creative mode. Every time it happens I’m completely amazed at it.
Then in the sewing workshops, I had a woman come, who’d never sewn anything, and said “In French we say I have two left hands”. Well, Miss Two-Left-Hands left the workshop with a mask that fit her face that she had made herself- she phoned her mum back in France, who couldn’t believe she’d actually done it herself!
6. What advice would you give to someone who is interested in exploring their creativity?