Unbelievably Valuable
Feeling Valued
“It isn’t just the elite that produce the best.”
There’s always something we keep meaning to do, whether it’s a passion, a hobby, or just something we’ve never tried. The materials might already be in the house. The intention is real. And still it doesn’t happen, because doing a thing on your own takes time and energy that most weeks don’t leave us with.
One of our participants has a sewing machine at home, and a pile of unfinished projects to go with it. She knows what creative outlets she enjoys, but she hasn’t got the motivation. What’s missing isn’t the equipment or the skill, but “when you come to a group,” she says, “it gives you motivation, confidence, space.”
She belongs to more than one of our Home from HOME groups. The Thursday one has become, in her words, “a real kind of medicine” in a life that already holds down a stressful job and what she describes as a tendency towards anxiety and low moods.
What she values about the opportunity to be in that room isn’t only what gets made in it. “It’s just having that chance to go somewhere, and you can either offload about your problems or just sit there quietly. To be creative in a space amongst women that I really respect and have a laugh with.” Permission to say nothing at all matters as much as anything produced on the table.
The group is intergenerational - some members are in their eighties, and much younger people join in during the school holidays. “A real mix of demographics, but we all seem to be able to kind of gel.” They don’t always agree, and that’s fine! Where they meet is on what it’s like to be a woman: menopause, parenting, and the exhaustion of feeling like “you always put yourself last.” In that room, nobody comes last.
It has also opened trips to the theatre to her. Tickets for which, she says, might in the past have been “quite a thing to be able to afford”, she is now able to access with her Home from HOME group, and her daughter comes too. “It’s been so rich and really rewarding.”
And it gave her Manchester back. She’d had a rocky time in this city at one stage, enough to turn her off being here. The group, she says, “has really made me value Manchester again in terms of what it’s got to offer.” She says it’s made her “fall back in love” with the place.
Then, of course, came the production she was involved in. She was clear with herself about why she said yes - “it’s all about mental health for me” - and just as clear about what she isn’t - “I don’t see myself as a performer really.” She’ll tell a story when the story is the point, not when she is.
It was hard. She was out of her comfort zone, and found it testing, and she cried a lot through the writing of the script. She learned about trust, and compromise, and asking for help, and that it’s alright to say this isn’t my skill base. Most of all it reinforced some of her own tendencies and taught her they were acceptable - that being that way doesn’t make you a bad person. “It was very life affirming.”
On the performing itself she is wonderfully blunt. “In terms of performing. I didn’t like it.” She had to fight the anxiety and the urge to run away.
“But afterwards, it felt incredible.”
And here is what that turned out to be worth, in a part of her life that has nothing to do with the arts. She went for her first job interview in about twenty years.
“You think, how can I possibly do this. But then you do it. It shows you that your mind can be managed. It’s something I can draw on in future.”
A woman who found out she could stand in front of an audience found out, not long after, that she could sit in front of a panel.
She is clear about what the art part is for. “I think that’s really important, that it’s art and being creative, because again it’s giving people value, that they have got something to offer.” And about what it takes: “Giving people materials and opportunities and space means that they can flourish when it comes to being creative.”
Materials, opportunity, space. None of those things arrive on their own.
Reflecting on the show the group made, she says “I suppose it did influence my politics as well about the potential of human beings, if you give them the right circumstances they can thrive, but so many people aren’t given that. The piece of Theatre reinforced that they are and should be valued more.”
If you’d like to help more people feel valued, you can find out more about Home from HOME’s goals for its final year here.