This week my decompression, business development and some honest input has sharpened my metaphorical pencil. An invitation to lecture in a prestigious Irish university or rather two invitations, one a sub in one a realised connection from 2024 are bring me intrigue and joy.
Today is the Winter Solstice. A significant threshold in my year. Here in Ireland we have an indigenous practices for this time of the year. Newgrange an ancient passage tomb, 3,200 B.C. central burial chamber is illuminated through a window box at the entrance. The light curves around and down into the ancient carved pathway. It is magical and wonderful. Winter Solstice is the shortest day and longest night, the sun is at its lowest in the sky. For me today and 1st February St. Brigids day, Irelands first day of Spring are more significant than Christmas or New Years.
This is the second last Weekly Studio Notes of 2025. The notes are structured as reflection, insight, a question for you, resources, a view to the week ahead. I do not use AI to write these notes. They are part of my reflective practice and support me to improve my writing, thinking and editing.
Ah the other big news is the Feasta podcast is out featuring the work Jennifer Brandsberg-Englemann I did recently for the Senior Cycle Economic Curriculum Review, you can listen to it on the Feasta website: Podcast4: Regenerative Economics in Secondary Schools (and Elsewhere)
Let’s jump in!
Reflection
Honest friends and work colleagues are wonderful.
I am grateful for people who shared business with me this year referring me for work, hiring me and rehiring me!
I appreciate all those I got to work with and hire this year. I’ve really enjoyed the work.
Monday evening I attended a some sort of mayhem that was an information evening on rock armour enhancement for Cahore North Beach as it’s known. Not well run or managed you need to show people the why and bring them on the journey.
I don’t understand why public consultation is so bad in Wexford and generally in Ireland. We really have to be putting the Government design principles into action locally along with nationally.
It seems that people doing this work don’t know how to do it at a fundamental level. I wish they’d ask those of us with engagement expertise to advise or run these sessions.
I’d attended the Wexford County Council Economic SPC earlier that day so my head was filled with the plethora of projects and the extensive portfolio of work going on around the county. I raised the profile of rural diversification for communities and local pubs, community wealth building as a partnership approach so the responsibility for development is not always a county council. One of the councillors notice I was a human and actually spoke to me after the meeting. My role there is representing the PPN on environment in relation to my work that is also about creating local resilience to tackle the climate emergency.
This week I’ve wanted to make deeper connections with. Do you do that? make space for building relationships? It takes time, some people I’ve very loose ties with and just want to get to know them better. Sometimes it will have a business aspect other times it’s a people thing. I’m a curious person. I’m not nosey, flagrant or indiscreet. So I tend to connect with others that also do not do small talk.
After a client coffee last week I got a request for a proposal. This work may or may not get funding, that’s a funny one isn’t it. To do some work for someone that might not get realised. This is often the business investment we make. It can feel very expensive to invest in this way with no guarantee of paid work. I highlight this as in my experience people in full time jobs don’t think about this or understand it. This year I’ve been articulating and making that more transparent, if I am not getting paid for work then our business is funding it.
I’d already shared my thoughts over a coffee with this particular client. Informed by my strategic view I was not chasing business. I’m invested in their success and in the people around the work. Seriously that’s what I’m like, some people and organisations I just get invested in. Capability building is one of my wonks. Always trying to increase others capacity and work myself out of work. We all realise I may need to change how I do some of that.
That’s the real success for our business when the organisation does not need consultancy anymore because through the work we have upskilled others, brought in processes and practices, modelled and mentored ways of work and embedded patterns of relational behaviour and systems thinking. We typically do that as sidebar work through delivery – projects, programmes, events or planning, It’s possibly not the best business model but that is how we have always worked. It’s what happens when you mix engineering, design, innovation, strategy, technology, PMO and business process improvement.
Over other chats and coffees I’ve been sharing my ecology of practices, drawing daily, sit spots, fluttering and nature connection, studio notes weekly.
Moving into my third year of drawing daily some seem fascinated that I’ve built a habit and daily practice. Others want to know how I started. I have done a lot of reading and trying to understand about habits and change. In the mid 2000 I mentored a female founder who was building a habit forming app using animal behaviour and dog ticker training. I’ve learnt habit stacking from NOOM which also gave huge insights into habit making. I’ve an on going interest in behavioural economics and cultural change. The later specifically in relation to my climate activism, organisational change and digital/cultural/decarbonisation transformation.
So this week over a coffee when someone asked “how did you start” it made me think about if there are useful things I did to begin that can cross transfer to others.
I suppose there are two things I began with that are baselines
- I love drawing
- I hate waste
My rules for beginning were
- this is just for me
- if I miss a day I have to leave the page blank to honour that day
- no media input before you draw
I did not call it drawing initially I called it doodling, because that’s a particular thing I’ve done in the margins of copies as a kid. Squiggly lines, shapes with graphic qualities rather than pictorial. When I painted (2000 – 2014) I rarely made pictorial work, I worked in an abstract colourful rhythm. Painting was my most integrated flow, maybe that was the thing people saw and responded to in that work. When I doodle it’s a low bar for me. It’s playful marginal work. That’s where I started.
Do you have playful marginal work?
So calling it doodling reduced cognitive or performative pressure. Some of you may know in 2015, I had to learn to write again, doodling has not always been easy or had a good aesthetic. Daily drawing has improved my finite hand skills. That’s been a huge added bonus.
This time of the year is poignant for me, as the car collision that ended my work as an artist happened 22 December 2014. It’s a long time ago now but it’s shadow and scars remain. My wrist bone was severed and my dominant hand rearranged along with my livelihood and identity. Learning to use my right hand again and trust it has been a long journey.
Three years of drawing has ritual, physical practice, creative commitment, mindfulness, healing, adventuring, oh plus the pure quiet and joy of drawing. Unadulterated pen to paper, freeline, free mind, no conditions the rules for doodling were pretty much just to do it.
I’ve mentioned I hate waste, so it pains me to leave a page blank. Seriously it’s the biggest deterrent. But I don’t shame myself if I miss a day, it’s a practice but also I hate waste.
The daily ritual of drawing before I put anything else in my brain works for me. This I seldom break except for a sunrise coffee with the eldest son at Cahore or on occasional Sundays. I also tend to do this practice alone and privately, preferring outdoors under the Crann Fia Úll, Crab Apple tree at the edge of the pocket forest in the garden.
The only drawing in private solo spaces has evolved this year, I’ve noticed it’s nice to sit and draw with others, like if my sons are about or in a cafe. But drawing on the train is still weird. I have been surprised by people’s curious people’s reaction to the drawings. That’s been encouragable.
I use the hashtag #soarlíníocht meaning freeline. I will be exploring Irish and more words for this practice in 2026.
My doodling has developed a style of its own that I am now happy to call drawing. I love the graphic quality of what happens on the page or wall. I also enjoy the motifs of leaves and trees which have been present and the emergence of other animals, the appearance of hands in contained spaces representing the ongoing unbearable Palestinian genocide. Recently a person appeared. I don’t consciously think about what I draw it really is a free line.
Rewilding my brain and rhythm to a blank page everyday it’s working. I feel more rooted and connected to my wild imagination and creative self. So it is a ground rooted practice also.
This year I’ve unbounded drawing, a wall in our sunroom has a soarlíníocht mural, larger drawings and studio time have reemerged. My hand moves ink across the page, my eye balances line, arc, shapes and the thickness of nib. The mark making is done in one gesture, it’s decisive and confident. This month I noticed the deep flow state that I used to get from painting was present, that felt so good.
I’ve been drawing Wintering Cards for the season that’s in it. A shark has showed up along with birds and a squirrel. A fox also shows up regularly.
Where is the drawing going, who knows but it’s a thing I enjoy so I’ll keep doing it. Here’s to year 4 of drawing daily.
Insights
I’ve done a short business review 2025, I had 6 months of paid work. No wonder I felt under employed. I also did our accounts. Not great but not bad.
The ideal thing is a 4 day week. 2 days a week with clients on site or in an agreed event location. I’d like a mix of enquiry, research and insight gathering, team work, strategic design, planning, deeper work over longer terms and delivery, some writing and documentation.
I’d also like to learn more about data visualisation I’ve been looking at learning MS Power BI. It would be great to have a piece of work with that stitched in.
I’m also loving learning more about zine making, advanced origami folding and book making. Some of these have older arcs and some new learning.
Speaking of stitching I also want to learn more about material repair, darning like the beautiful Japanese sashiko stitch work. Maybe my drawings and mending stitch work combine? I’m also interested to find ways to offering stitch repair to kids teddies and soft toys locally. Ultimately teaching others how to mend and repair too.
The languages of data, stitch and communication still intrigue me.
More then words communication and the imagination are powerful futures tools. The resonance of making is strong again it combined with connections and making with others I think will be a theme in 2026.
I really enjoy working with different sorts of teams and combinations of partnerships this year. People hiring me to sub-contract, partnering, hiring me directly and indirectly. For big and little jobs. Finally a successful tender. One of the big themes was building teams of other brilliant self employed people, SMEs or micro business to collaborate and work more effectively. It also brings a lot of joy, smarts, agility and raises all boats. More of that.
People assume I’m busy, where do they get that impression? I tend to have lots of things I’m doing with a percentage of them paid, I know I have a larger capacity for work then most.
Obviously if I was writing on Linkedin or substack I might be developing a bigger audiences but it feels more important to write here in my own place in the internet. Linkedin I just find weird and substack has ethical issues. Anything you do requires consistency, this I know to be true. So perhaps I do need to commit to ongoing studio notes.
I don’t think I want to commit to another year of studio notes in this format, but I do like the process. Perhaps I’ll write them and not publish them? or use a different format. Maybe a monthly newsletter with edited insights and opportunities for gatherings, skills sharing and imagination tending. Perhaps that newsletters backend is a Patreon style crew or community.
Courtown Heritage Forest continues to be lost a metre at a time to every storm. Rock armoury has not had the intended consequences. After the last storm the river has routed itself back to connect with the sea impacting rock armour and casting the boulders out possibly making it dangerous. Although the current is strong and I’d be surprised if anybody might get into the water there. I’d say it will be better for the health of the river and that part of the woods.
A question for you
Have these studio notes been a good use of your time, reading them, having them? Or is it just consumable content of no real value?
Resources
Being less preoccupied by work I’ve had plenty of time to notice things so here’s the places I found myself internet curious this week:
Irelands Housing crisis, just transition stories that might inspire us – Catalonia’s housing revolution: where affordability meets sustainability
The Neiman Lab article on influencer media is interesting tackling post-truth mass social media, people 30 years and below as rejecting digital media, AI slop, journalism influencer obsession (I don’t class that as journalism it’s content creation and influencer selling).
We have been seeing communities of interest and practice being pushed into specific and curated spaces for over a decade. So some of the observations feel a bit dated to me because I’ve been looking at open source digital spaces since 2007. Still an interesting article and I hope she is right. Again digital and media literacy are critical social infrastructure we have to work at both in communities, civic society and in our education system.
Neiman Lab written by Tracie Powell, CEO of the Pivot Lab.
The Prediction: In 2026, the collapse of “big social” and mass youth abandonment of mainstream platforms will force journalism and philanthropy to rebuild civic information systems around something social media no longer provides: trust, safety, and community control.
2026 will force journalism to treat digital safety not as a feature — but as a fundamental part of civic health.
What does design do for policy? UK a leaders in this space offer interesting insights for Irelands Public Sector transformation.
And so to futuring 2 posts that caught my eye;
random and super creative but what about this moving carousel hat as a time travel machine?
Or this French Cafe where you can post letters to yourself in the future
There were some other interesting Linkedin posts but not so interesting to share.
A view to the week ahead
Prep for lectures in 2026, send emails to a few people. Close my laptop and email till the 5th of January.
Finish drawing Wintering cards and send them.
Family, friends and festive cheer. Warm house and twinkling lights, sharing gifts and prepping delicious food & treats to sit eat and enjoy together. Longer walks, puzzles, games, building lego, reading, drawing, hanging out. Maybe some singing, dancing and events. Hosting and visiting, feeling awkward and uncomfortable until I find my social mode. Sometimes I don’t.
Work is different and so it shall be.
Have a great week. If you celebrate Christmas this time of the year enjoy it.
Happy Sun Stand Still day and the moment of just before the earth pivots to turn us back to more sun in the northern hemisphere.
Roisin Markham 
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