AoMO2022 was a wonderful transdisciplinary exploration of art as activism. A copy of the conference programme, book of abstracts and a gallery of highlights can be found here:

The curated exhibition ‘Do They Owe Us a Living?’ at The Royal Standard is on until the 24th September.

One of the poems from the Poetry Slam evening!

A gallery of images from AoMO2022 can be found <a href=”http://<iframe src=”https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FArtofManagementandOrganization%2Fposts%2Fpfbid02SWaew86qAcUGM1jipAi9Q2km1LAQEYLhcCjCbL4rtyE1gHiWXiMssm23ESg4uQpTl&show_text=true&width=500&#8243; width=”500″ height=”683″ style=”border:none;overflow:hidden” scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen=”true” allow=”autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture; web-share”>here, thanks to Robert McMurray and Garance Marachel for the photographs.

We would love to capture your feedback from the conference and the stories of how AoMO impacts your professional practice. You can share your reflections using this Padlet canvas.

With just 2 days to go before AoMO2020 in Liverpool here is the final programme and book of abstracts. We look forward to welcoming you to Liverpool on Thursday 18th August.

There is still time to register here: https://www.eventbee.com/v/aomo2022liverpoolregistration#/tickets

Updated Conference Programme: 

Book of Abstracts:

Details regarding accommodation and registration can be found here:

If you are in Liverpool tomorrow evening please feel free to join us at The Royal Standard for a private viewing of the curated exhibition ‘Do They Owe Us a Living?’

How can we keep our energy and our commitment to activism going at a time such as
this? Frankie has been helping people to ‘find’ their voices for 47 years, as well as being a
singer in the peace, women’s and social justice movements since the 1960s. Her experience tells us that we can maintain our energy and commitment to activism by raising our voices together.

We need a belief in our right to make ourselves heard, and we need to find a full-bodied
voice that matches our desire to be heard. This workshop is designed to help everyone
(regardless of past experience) to find a free, powerful and expressive voice. Frankie, a
singer and voice teacher, will be joined by her partner Darien Pritchard, a massage and
flexibility teacher, to explore how using the body and breath contribute to finding a vibrant
voice, combining ease with power.

We aim to create an enjoyable, supportive ,nonjudgemental atmosphere – with the
emphasis on exploration, discovery and play – not “getting it right”. No prior experience is
required, just wear loose comfortable clothes for gentle exercises, and bring a water bottle
and an open heart and mind.

Workshop: 10am to 1pm, 18th August 2022
Tickets: £50
For further information and to book directly please contact Darien Pritchard
darien.pritchard@gmail.com

Paul King is an explorer of places inside and out. He is co-founder of The Beyond Partnership a leading-edge people development consultancy. He has been working as a coach and consultant for more than 35 years. He particularly known for his work with the body-mind and integral approaches, connecting personal development to larger system change. He currently delivers embodiment-based workshops and coaching across Europe. www.thebeyondpartnership.co.uk

This three hour masterclass will explore how the ancient soft-martial arts can help us explore our inner experiences of self and centre.

The deeper activated narrative of humanity at the moment is increasingly one of uncertainty, volatility, disconnection, separation, fracture and opposition. This current narrative both reflects, and is reflected in, our own embodied patterns of stress, armouring, ‘over-efforting’, tension, and feelings of inadequacy and scarcity. Tight in body and mind we can lose meaningful connection to our inner sensitivity, to each other and to the world around us. Habituated over time this can become to feel normal and therefore not actively present in our consciousness.

In such a way, the foundational human aesthetic of sensing and moving, inherent in our design, is compromised by modern life. We are ‘bent out of shape’, struggling in the midst of our nervous system’s pull between its drive to keep us safe, which often leads to a sense of separation, and its drive for connection.

Greater creativity and freedom are enabled when we shift from being contracted, separated and oppositional to being open, energetically extended and inclusive. With all our hope and fears, our visions and goals, how do we show up and meet the world. What is our art of being within our doing?

This is explored within the ancient traditions of martial arts, and particularly through the experience of centre. This is especially true of the ‘soft’ martial arts such a tai chi (ji) and aikido, founded on relational interdependence not opposition. Tai chi is perhaps more correctly named as tai ji.  ‘Tai’ represents the person, open and present. ‘Chi’ is universal life force. ‘Ji’ is the relationship of integrated complimentary opposites, in Taoist terms, yin-yang. Through moving awareness, and the practice of centring, we learn and explore these forces that shape us and our relationships with others and the world.

Centre is not a fixed state but a process. Centring we learn to resourcefully engage in the ebb and flow of life. We centre, not so much inside ourselves but within the context we are in. From centre we raise our ability to effectively respond with presence, confidence, and compassion even under difficult, challenging or stressful situations.

The quest for work-life balance might be better explored in the deeper enquiry into yin-yang balance. Yang – ‘masculine’, strive-drive, grasping, accumulation, imposing. Yin – ‘feminine’, receptivity, listening, letting go, opening, empathy.

We tend to over-effort, overly focus on content and procedure and forget the means where-by, we focus on surface and form and lose feel and the relational dimensions of life. The creative complimentary pairing of yin-yang comes together harmonically in the concept of wu-wei which, roughly translated, means ‘doing by not doing’. This is not an advocation for passivity but for intending and allowing, for appropriately trusting and sometimes controlling. Like the best athletes we seek how to relax inside activity.

Embodied awareness asks us to be honest with ourselves, how we are now, how we are relating and how we are creatively engaging with the fundamental patterns of life.

To participate in this masterclass please contact Paul directly at paul@thebeyondpartnership.co.uk.

We are very excited to be welcoming O’Hooley & Tidow to AoMO2022’s gala dinner event on the 20th August 2022.

Celebrating their 10^th year of performing together, much loved Yorkshire folk duo Belinda O’Hooley and Heidi Tidow have been propelled into newfound fame for penning the theme tune for Sally Wainwright’s hit BBC1/HBO drama ‘Gentleman Jack’, earning them global admiration, appearances on TV, Radio 4 Woman’s Hour and concerts that sell out months in advance.

Belinda and Heidi’s boundless songwriting has been described by The Guardian as ‘exceptional’ and The Independent as ‘defiant, robust, northern, poetical, political folk music for the times we live in.’ From an emotionally charged song about an elephant orphanage in Nairobi, to a joyous celebration of the Leeds cycling champion Beryl Burton, they explore, consider and connect subjects and stories in a distinctive, inventive and memorable way.

Having the originality and skill to invite comparison with the most celebrated harmony duos, from early Simon and Garfunkel to the iconic Kate and Anna McGarrigle, 6 Music’s Tom Robinson says ‘They sing together in the way families do. Normally, you only get that closeness in the voices with family bands like The Coppers or The Watersons.’

‘I have just listened to your track, ‘Beryl’, with tears in my eyes! It’s beautiful and brilliant.’ Maxine Peake

A MOJO MAGAZINE TOP 10 FOLK ALBUM

Nominated four times for BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards ‘Best Duo’.

‘England’s answer to the McGarrigles.’  * * * * * The Guardian  

‘Brave, beautiful and full of love.’ Martin Simpson

‘Insightful, determinedly left-field angles on the human experience.’ 

* * * * MOJO Folk Album of the Month

‘Have Belinda and Heidi done it again? Certainly.’

* * * * * R2  

‘Dense, complex, beautifully performed.’ 

 * * * * Songlines

An evening of song, poetry, story, laughter and some tears. The 23 minute documentary film, written and directed by Stephen Linstead won UK Best Film at the Research in Film Awards 2018 awards at BAFTA, and 82 other international awards/selections including the Hollywood International Independent Documentary Awards. It has now been acquired by the BFI for its Film Forever archive, and has been shown on broadcast TV more than 30 times. It tells the story England’s long-forgotten worst mining disaster when 361 miners and rescuers were killed in explosions at the Oaks Colliery, Barnsley in 1866 and the emotional struggle against the odds by local people to raise a memorial 150 years later. Black Snow is the choking black dust which rained down from the heavens after the blasts. Jed Grimes (twice BBC Radio 2 Folk Award Nominee) composed and arranged the music, with Mercury Music Prize winning producer Rob File (Badly Drawn Boy). The music in its own right won an award for excellence at the Southern Shorts Awards, Atlanta, Georgia Film Festival, and in the Roadshow this is expanded into a full concert set with Steve adding vocals, and both Jed and Steve contributing original material and new arrangements of traditional pieces.. Visually compelling with atmospheric cinematography, using virtual reality footage to recreate the disaster, the film builds to a moving, inspirational and spiritual climax. The 90-minute multimedia roadshow sets this poignantly in context through songs, poems, stories and original visuals. The film has featured on Together TV, BBC Look North and in The Times, and had a double page centre spread in the Daily Mirror. The Roadshow has played several independent cinemas and arts festivals including Ripon International Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe.

“A moving documentary. A dramatic reconstruction from real-life accounts …. [a] brilliant evocation of a lost way of life – and the lives lost in it” – Paul Routledge Daily Mirror

“An award-winning documentary, gaining plaudits from across the globe for a story that focuses on a small section of Yorkshire” – Living North

“The sort of show for which the Fringe exists. Informative, provocative… and entertaining. A must-see show indeed”– Edinburgh Festival Fringe

“A terrific multi-media joined-up local history community project about really significant events … a canny piece of work” Jerry Simon, Stirrings Magazine

Broadstairs International Folk Week was very pleased to feature the Black Snow Roadshow in 2019.  The film is extremely moving and involving, with seamless links between historical facts and the lasting impact of the disaster on the community. It is of high quality and deserves to be shown on national TV. Wrapped around the film is the specially written score which has heartfelt lyrics and beautiful tunes; Jed Grimes and Steve Linstead do the whole story justice and honour the memory of those involved. We had to turn people away from the venue  –  we should have shown it twice!    Jo Tuffs Festival Director