Roisin Markham

March arrived so it’s officially Spring and the last month in Q1.

These studio notes are a reflection on the week just gone by, where my energy, attention and time is spent both in paid and unpaid work. As a technologist I had thought about funnelling it all through AI for gleaming insights and writing in a way that I had lost confidence to do. I rejected that idea. No AI is used for these notes. They are a sense making process into its 10 of 52 weeks. My purpose is to write, flex that muscle, practice, get back in the habit of writing, using it as a reflection and thinking practice also. Through this process I’m distilling my week, within that my work benefits.

Reflection

Already I’m seeing benefits of my Studio Notes. It makes the value of the thing more obvious. Last week I was like nah these notes are doing nothing for me what’s the point? This week staying with the process I’m the value becomes clearer.

Before Christmas I was really struggling with writing for work. This week I wrote the report for the facilitation I did in Lough Neagh Discovery Centre ~ Conversation on renewable energy and community ownership. It flowed, the first draft completed in a day is gone to the client for feedback and some points requiring clarification.

Writing and being able to write well is an important part of my work – to document, report and share knowledge. So it’s good to see the practice here paying off.

As a small business owner it was a stressful week, reality biting hard on delayed client work not going to land in March. Contractually tied in, the reality is no work. Up until now a waiting unknown and trying to keeping resources available. Do people talk about these things? The reality of work, of running a business? It’s been a real balance of if I should say yes to other work and really go out, after other work. The decision to wait has proved to be the wrong one and our business is about out of time.

I had started the work in December, it got paused in January… it was meant to be an excellent piece of work to get two of us to April! Because of that security of a contractual piece of work, I was at capacity. I stopped business development for Q1 and was hiring several others to support that work. Roll on to the last month in Q1 and it’s obvious that work will not begin till April, if it begins.

This is causing me significant stress and constricting financial situation. It’s one of 2 pieces of work that has happened. It’s so wasteful of time, intelligence and administration. Do people in large enterprises know how this impacts those of us who run small businesses?

I’m in the process of making some hard decisions. Now would be a great time to work with me, get in touch if you need a fractional PMO, strategic design or facilitation work.

I’m concious this is a safe soft ask on my blog. Would I post this to Linkedin? Possibly not, but I will be writing to my clients and people who’ve said they wanted to work with me in 2025.

I’d an interesting start to my week, UCD invited me to deliver an introduction to Doughnut Economics as part of their Green Week. Because of recent experiences offering Step into the Doughnut with wheelchair users, I decided to not use that (much loved) methodology. The ropes were barriers. I had explored People People Planet as an alternative methodology and one of the students was interested to learn the methodology. The challenge was plenty of people signed up but not really enough showed up to run People People Planet… so I improvised, I rapidly thought on my feet adjusting as I was delivering. Not sure I’d recommend this approach going forward. In the end the session was more like a hybrid between the two with no ropes. Participants used their imaginations about where the boundaries were and the feedback signalled it was still impactful.

I think I’ll convert the rope to ribbons, I have a large spool of ribbon I got from Recreate before they closed. Recreate was a great end of life materials resource shop, a true circular economy option, badly missed by us creatives.

I made time this week to meet people some good friends I’ve not seen in an age and others new connections. There is more of that planned.

Sustainable supply chains and circular economy work progress, it developed significantly this week. I’m enjoying that work.

What else was I up to…

I got a book in the post from someone whom I am enjoying getting to know her and her work. We are exploring how I can support her develop a more experiential approach to her teaching. I’m looking forward to reading the gift she has shared.

When was the last time you went to a physical bank and spoke to a bank teller? This week I had to physically go to the bank. I’ve not been in our local bank in a year if not longer.

International Women’s Day

51% of our population are women.

I’d started writing a blog post yesterday about my sense, feelings and emotional burden of the day. About how I choose to use my public voice and attend a public consultation on a local area on International Womens day.

On how every day how I work, show up is about femnist values of care. It frustrates me we still need a day to focus on it. I may write more and publish that post later, or not, perhaps it will languish in my drafts.

Insights

My skills to improvise on the spot are still on point. It’s an important skill for facilitation, knowledge sharing and generally being in rooms engaging with people.

Am I clear with people on how they can hire me?

I have a question forming for myself on how I am using writing to create future work? To draw it in… I’m yearning to be more creative in my expression of work, play and communication.

BUGBEAR alert:

If you want people to collaborate don’t set it up as a competition! Business as usual facilitation is difficult for me to experience. In the 7 ways to think like a 21st Century Economist we work with Nurture Human Nature.

On the Doughnut Economics Action Lab Website it states

Promote diversity, participation, collaboration and reciprocity. Strengthen community networks and work with a spirit of high trust. Care for the wellbeing of the team.

I actively use these 7 principles in my work.

A question for you?

Who inspires you? More specifically what woman influences or inspires you? Is there someone whose work you seek out, or a historical, cultural, activist, sports woman?

Love you to share a bit of that story with me either in the comments or via email.

Resources

We lean on each other to make greatness happen. Soul Fire Farm

this week I came across the beautiful and generous work of Leah Penniman.

A Black Kreyol farmer, mother, soil nerd, author, and food justice activist from Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, NY. She co-founded Soul Fire Farm in 2010 with the mission to end racism in the food system and reclaim our ancestral connection to land. As Co-ED and Farm Director, Leah is part of a team that facilitates powerful food sovereignty programs – including farmer training for Black & Brown people, a subsidized farm food distribution program for communities living under food apartheid, and domestic and international organizing toward equity in the food system.

Thru asking and delving into the question of how do we create a future worth living into? food and food production are significant, they are also political and local economy acts. The multiple ways food and soil health nourish us from a wellbeing health, ecological, social and psychological field is deeply important. The depth of inspiration from Urban City projects in Detroit and Chicago have been on my radar for some years. Lighthouses we learn from.

Soul Fire Farm is beautiful, long may it shine, nourish and feed us all.

This Zine, feed to me by Meta’s Instagram Algorithm I instantly fell in love with and am inspired by it.

The butterfly referred to is also beautiful.

Let’s be clear there are two women’s brilliance at play here. I’m consciously calling out both, the training and framework by Leah Penniman and the communication and illustration in a zine by Christine Tyler Hill. The artist and illustrator that shared the zine, here’s a link to here post on instagram.

“THERE’S NO SINGLE ANSWER THAT WILL SOLVE ALL OF OUR FUTURE PROBLEMS. THERE’S NO MAGIC BULLET. INSTEAD THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF ANSWERS – AT LEAST.

YOU CAN BE ONE OF THEM IF YOU CHOOSE TO BE.”

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

There is a politics of reference. I learnt this last year from a Curator in The Void in Derry, thanks Cecelia Graham.

I’ve wondered about the values of ideas, inspiration for years. They are often considered intangible. Across art, design, culture & contemporary life.

A random picture on social media connects deeply in my brain and triggers something.

Like this one from Gardening Well on Bluesky

As an idea maker, for years I’ve tried different ways of creating an income from my innovative approach working across sectors and silos.

For several years I’ve entertained the possibility of putting ideas on the blockchain. What if we could trace ideas, what if we could see where they go.

I’ve always hated that quote “The Secret to Creativity Is Knowing How to Hide Your Sources” – it is the anti-version of my work and creative ethics. I just found a note from August 2021 ranting about it and with this gem.

Art is work for so many of us, interpreting reinterpreting the layers of personal expression within a creative process. The source of which is the unlimited input to all our senses of our lives. The bounty of curiosity, knowledge, accumulation sharing, amplifying and encouraging through our personal lens of making and crafting.

Did I write that? and I also seem to have written this in the same note.

Sharing our sources is in itself an act of creativity and generosity. Trusting the bountiful source of creativity and inspiration will increase as we add our energy to the cycle.

Roisin Markham, 2021

It seems at the time I was exploring craft and art as a commons. Some heavy duty notes sit there waiting to be rewoven. Political theorist Ariella Aïsha Azoulay and lists of artists and exhibitions like We Are Commoners reopen…

“The commons is historically thought of in relation to land and resources that are held for common use. Now it also includes the cultural commons such as open source software and knowledge in the digital world.”

Me trying to understand the commons, its tensions and political context.

Curiously this also relates to how Soren Hermansen, Samsø Energy Academy talks about communities. He says first there is a commons, communities come together to manage the commons.

Goodreads describes the books as follows:

Communities can overcome the forces that split societies apart. After decades dominated by selfishness, cooperation is now back on the agenda. The climate crisis and the green technology challenge calls for curiosity and the joy of finding new ways. The solutions of the future do not come from the headquarters, but from the outskirts where communities govern common resources. Communities governing commons is a new force in history. This book propose the term commonities.

From an Irish context great work is being done across the country on understanding managing our commons within our communities. In particular this piece of work, Fair Clare and research is really worth a deep dive on. My thanks to Róisín Greaney, TASC for sharing her work with me during the week.

I love that the artist Kate O’Shea has shared her work across this book forming a visually exciting interface and illustrating quality which adds colour and another layer of meaning. Her work really speaks to me as a graphic, print, text and image collage on topics of social justice. I’m enjoying following her residency in Fremantle, Perth in partnership with IMMA.

In truth the question I’ve been living with – how do we create a future worth living into? is that intersectional and intersecting web of possibility, lived experiences and lighthouses. Sharing ideas and examplars in part has become the work, opening others to possible different outcomes continues. Creating new social imaginaries is sometimes simply speaking alternatives into reality.

Perhaps that requires a fleshing out in its own right of the pathways to that future ~ that’s my creative map. That’s what I’ve been exploring and drawing for over 5 years. That work is a social imaginary I must bring into view.

How might we work together?