Rivers of Life Exhibition:
Our 2 year project 'Rivers of Life' funded by Give it Sum has now ended. We celebrated the culmination of this exciting and rewarding project with a final celebration and exhibition on Monday and Tuesday 9th and 10th October in Leek coinciding with World Mental Health Day.

The private view on the evening of the 9th October went extremely well. An invited audience of about 80 or ninety people attended. The exhibition was opened by George Wiskin who until recently was the chairman of the local PCT. There was an extremely interesting talk by Aidan Shingler ‘Art and Schizophrenia’ together with music from Joe Tatton and Christine Baillot.

The exhibition was open to the public on Tuesday 10th October and was also well attended, giving us the opportunity to highlight our work to a wider audience.

In this section during the coming months we hope to show a gallery of artwork and writing from the ‘Rivers of Life’ project to give some idea of the high standard and variety of the work produced.

Manifold Magic CD:
The first ‘Rivers of Life’ workshop took place in April 2005. The workshop was led by Torben Frank We explored the Manifold Valley near Wetton Mill and recorded river sounds and took digital photographs. This was followed by an intensive music technology session at the Warslow on-line suite. The sound files produced were then mixed at Torben’s recording studio and piano music added by Marianne Forelius. The final result was a CD called ‘Manifold Magic’ - 5 minutes of relaxing sounds of water, voice and music.

The CD (pictured below) is available to buy from Borderland Voices £3.00 inc. post and packing.

Please e-mail us at info@borderlandvoices.org.uk if you would like a copy.












Writing from Magical Manifold:

Playful water, playful people
River releasing the child in each one
Ruby’s watercolours capturing
Browns, greys, olive greens and duns
that glide on and on.

Andy Collins


I am so tiny
microscopic
minimal
invisible

The human eye
will never
see me
But
I can grow
so fast
so big,
expanding until
I cover the earth
looking down
on the channels
of liquid they call rivers
big holes filled with lake
huge expanses of heaving sea
building up into mountains
that devour the land
while I remain

invisible.

Deborah Carrick