In April 2024, eight wonderful Fools gathered together in a beautiful dance space for a 5 day experimental, experiential, emergent and engaged research lab, co-facilitated by Saskia Solomons and me.

What’s In The Blog?

• The story of how the 5-day Fooling + IFS research lab came to be

• An outline of what happened in the lab

• Little chunks of IFS theory from Saskia's morning talks

• Descriptions of some of the ways we integrated IFS, creativity and the body - you could have a go at some of these if you wish!

• A brief outline of our Fooling + IFS solo stage experiments 

• My key learnings

I left the sanctuary of my quiet Glastonbury attic at the beginning of July and headed back to life on the road, travelling about, teaching, learning and catching up with lovely pals in lovely places for the summer....

I'm back in Glastonbury now, resting up and savouring all the summer memories. I'd like to share a few snippets of summer with you to give you a taste of the wonderful worlds I've been inhabiting and a whiff of the residue they've left on and in me.

This blog is one of a series charting my discoveries in blending Dramatherapy, fooling and Internal Family Systems (IFS)

This blog charts an incredible 2-day therapeutic process which I got to facilitate in London earlier on this year for Emily, a freelance multi-disciplinary artist, theatre practitioner and community music facilitator.

I am delighted to announce that I will be sharing some of my research at two dramatherapy conferences this autumn! Dramatherapy Southwest in Exeter on 14th September and The British Association of Dramatherapists (BADth) online in the week of the 14th October.

We’re a group of IFS trained clowns and fools who have been meeting online for the last couple of years, exploring the space where Internal Family Systems (IFS) meets clowning and fooling through experiential play and discussion.

In this blog I will be outlining our experiments and describing some of what happened for me during our first ever in-person play day. Read on for tales of grief, gratitude, identity, connection and home.

IFS is a therapeutic system which is based on the theory that we are all made up of many parts (ie feelings, sensations, thoughts, memories, dreams, fantasies, etc…). You may already have a sense of this in yourself; in conversation we often say, “Part of me thinks this and part of me thinks that.“ Our parts don’t necessarily all get along, they can have very different wants, needs, values and desires...