Spring Blossoms

Break the bias through stories

International Women's Day 

March is the month for Ms Rose Blossom, it's the month of International Women's Day/Women's History Month and when this blog began, nine years ago. I've had remarkable opportunities to empower girls and young women ( boys also included) at primary, secondary schools and library centres as a storyteller and author, encouraging them to aspire higher and believe they can fly from World Book Day/Week to the month end. Sharing my own journey and other stories of fly girls/ pioneer women it was delightful to see how much of a positive impact a good story can make. I was also fortunate to be recruited on to the BBC 100 years of storytelling tour around the UK, with the aim to encourage the next generation into storytelling careers.

How awards can help writers growth

Queen's Honours Awards

Reflecting on June's journey in my work of girls and women empowerment I humbly received the honour of a BEM award from the Queen's Honour birthday list, this prompted me to do a blog post to share the importance of accepting awards and why one should. Whilst working to support women and girls in the community is a vocation and not expectant of awards, there is also a joy of being celebrated and your work recognised. The Prime Minister officially acknowledges the panel's shortlisted candidates, after the government hands them over to the Queen who has the final approval. Why would one dismiss the awards under Order of the British Empire? Well, one reason Black Asian and Ethnic Minorities, BAME people do not accept these awards is because of the title being associated with empire? 

Why Race is a major component of failing school inclusion

 Women and Writers of Colour

Black Books - Non-Fiction

Last week my blog post was on inclusion failure as schools celebrated School Diversity Week, and this week gives further evidence on this matter. Not only are activists seeking to address the lack of black history in the school curriculum, but there are also findings that only 7% of women writers being studied at GCSE level English Literature, and a shocking 0.7% of writers of colour being included in the English Curriculum Key Stage 2- 4. The race equality think tank Runnymede Trust and Penguin Random House collaborated to investigate the lack of representation from ethnic minority authors and writers of colour. 

Lessons COVID taught us about technology for wellbeing

 Pros and Cons of Digital Learning during lockdown

Today tech lovers snapped the latest MacBook up for those able to purchase it and add it with their other Apple products. Reflecting on the increase of internet use over the last year I thought about the national digital divide, the have's and have nots. We assume every Western household has a PC or laptop of some sort, and some are more fortunate to have this for their personal use. Unfortunately, many children and students who schooled at home during lockdown could not access their school online lessons for either not having access to their own laptop amongst their siblings in different age/class groups and or no technology at home at all. Some of my creative writing students could not continue their sessions because of this issue. With public libraries also closed there weren't any problem-solving suggestions for young people to continue their creative writing projects.

The cohort of young people I work with fit under the psychographic of introverts, autistic and special needs, and some demographics show they are from economically disadvantaged communities. The benefits of working in small groups with my target audience have been to tackle social isolation and encourage community integration and build confidence with one-to-one creative writing sessions, therefore the lack of physical community workshops has been taxing on their well-being for those with no laptop at home. 

There were advantages of online lessons for those who had access to a laptop and internet service. Workshops and individual sessions were essential to increase participants' self-confidence and boost their creative writing and speaking skills, having not interacted for almost one year. Human contact and community is a fundamental psychological need according to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs theory. With the diverse learning styles of individuals, it will become normal for options to either use digital learning spaces or physical community spaces for learning.

Prior to lockdown, I have mentored young people in creative writing who are homeschooling or required additional-curricular activities. As we continue to watch the unsettling work from home and homeschool situation, the online learning uptake increases for those who want to advance themselves or belong to a digital community to improve their wellbeing through communication and self-expression. 

There are abundant lessons taken from the pandemic, and the stories shared are ongoing. Creativity has peaked, people have found more time to write creatively and make time to journal. It has been a lesson for me to adapt to working online as a creative writing teacher and upskill with online teaching training. I look forward to furthering partnerships as a mentor with inspiring future creative writers.

How to improve your Creative Confidence- National Writing Day

A short story during the lockdown and some tips

On this scorching morning, a collective of emerging writers arose to the sun's rays. Their minds in sync, overcoming the fear of coming out as a writer on national writing day,  the hottest day of the year of 2020. They logged in to ZOOM one by one, the natural order of the day nowadays on lockdown. Stories shared, and the passion of creativity connected the participants. In suspense, we as a group of promising writers now wait to see the outcomes from today, as they churn away creating their works.

Pros and Cons of Writing a Memoir

Best time to write

Fly Girls Wellness - Writing Coaching

During this lockdown period, many people find they can use their time for things they've always never found the time to do, such as more reading and writing. The Mirror compiled a list of the best travel adventure memoirs to read during the quarantine period and A Fly Girl Travel Tales book was fortunate named number 6 on this list, yay!

Reading other authors' memoirs can surely inspire the writer in you to tell your story and start writing. Whether it's a travel tale or another significant area to reflect on, it's a grand time to put pen to paper. Here are 6 Pros and one Con of writing a memoir:

How we celebrate IWD 2020

Each for Equal with Fly Girls

We are in our favourite period celebrating International Women's Day, Week, Month and looking forward to the year 2020 for the Fly Girls Wellness project.

On Sunday 8th, International Women's Day Fly Girls be active walk & run group met for Sunday celebrations after our regular run, to share stories and have a healthy drink, it was cheering to all who took part in the Vitality Big Half Marathon, and a special cheers to three of our first time half marathoners.

Our first-timers are still smiling since the 1st March, they say running uplifts you and we know that buzz you get afterward. However, our team are feeling on a high for their achievements, Jackie a very easy going gentle paced runner had recently started training for the event and had a smashing time of 2hrs and 34 mins, running most of the race and walking the last 3 miles.

National Storytelling Week

Celebrating Multicultural Stories

Amanda Epe at Rich Mix

The first of February marks National Storytelling Week, a great tool for building confidence and self-esteem. We are more familiar with storytelling as a vocal art, and then as the written art. Telling is to speak to the public, the receivers of the story being listeners, similarly, readers say of tales and literature "the story is telling us..." so we can agree that storytelling is telling stories through public speaking or writing.

The mission of storytellers are to spin a sequence of events from beginning to end with an underlying message, mission, and solution. We all love to tell narratives of our own, as "everyone has a story in them," alternatively sharing other people's stories and folktales are highly popular for storytellers. We cannot define storytelling in this correct way or that way, each culture has its own version of telling. Great vocal storytelling, however, uses other art forms to make the delivery more interesting and entertaining, such as gesture and movement, and writers "show and don't tell" with their words.

National Reading Day 2020

Book Chat and Book Recommendations

Happier by Tal Ben Shahar

At the start of the new year we set goals to do a number of things to improve ourselves in personal or professional development. One of the goals I've set over the years is to read more, did I set time aside? That's another question. A smart goal is to read a book a month especially if you are in a book club that have monthly meetings. So being in our book group it is mandatory to read at least one book a month. Within the Creative Writing Workshop and Book Group at SEIDs Hub, Wembley we discuss books that we've read and enjoyed and want to share it/them with others.

Climbing from 2019 to 2020

Time to recollect and envisage our growth

Fly Girls Wellness Pride of Brent/
Fly Girls UK Sundays at Wembley Stadium

We have climbed! Be it steep hills or mountains, in taking our baby steps and keeping moving we have gone from strength to strength in the Fly Girls Community and with our collaborative partner projects in 2019. We started the year on a walking mission up and down the hills of Harrow, starting from Wembley Park and taking a detour back to Wembley Park. Led by our walk leader Priti Khatri it was a cold Sunday morning on our first-morning meeting back for the year. The objective was to get some strength training in and enjoy the local surroundings especially for the members entering the Vitality Big Half Marathon.

End Violence Against Women Conference

16 Days of Activism

Amanda Epe speaker
Stop The Violence Conference NCC

Keeping the conversation going days after the 16 days of activism ending on Human Rights Day December 10th is vitally important in society to end the violence against women. Commencing on End the Violence toward women and girls day 25th November the conversations focus on women's safety against sexual and domestic violence globally. On a local level in a Newman School in West London, a panel of women spoke on issues to school girls at the annual Stop the Violence conference.

Pride of Brent Awards 2019

The Fly Girls Pride

Fly Girls Wellness being awarded
by Brent Council Leaders and Mayor of Brent
Leader Cllr Muhammed Butt, Mayor Cllr Ernest Ezeajughi
and far-right Chief Executive Carolyn Downs

A fortnight ago our community group celebrated being awarded the Pride of Brent at The Drum in a glitzy and glamorous event. The Fly Girls Wellness originally started as a running group in 2016 for beginner runners before catering for the needs of all its members and listening to the voices of the community by adding the walking element.

Balancing For Better in Brent

Being Fly and a Pride in Brent

                                                                              Poet Iman Hamid

March is always a great month of celebrations for Ms Rose Blossom's fly girls projects. It is the anniversary of this blog which commenced on International Women's Day 2013. During this period collaborating with other women's projects, with individuals and organisations celebrating women is part of our major focus. One such is the partnership with Brent Council who invited participation form Fly Girls Wellness to share and inspire other women and the community at large.

Fly Girls at The Vitality Big Half London Marathon

Fly Girls Weather the Storm

BBC Clip on The Big Half Vitality Run

Two weeks ago on Sunday 10th March a few of our team were anxious as for most it was their first ever half marathon. Fly Girls Running Community are a beginners running group that meets on Sunday mornings for a run around Wembley Stadium, ten signed up to do the 13.5mile run as a group and others separately for alternative distance runs scheduled for the day. The motivation for our team to do this was the knowledge that your peers were with you on the route, regardless of the distance you were from each other during the race. Having entered the 5km and 10km races locally and London wide the next progressive step was to try this race out, but by no means was anyone under pressure to enter.

'Becoming' A book by Michelle Obama

Becoming an author

Accomplished could have easily been an alternative title for Michelle Obama's debut book 'Becoming'. We are taken back to her childhood and growing up in the first chapter and mostly throughout part one. So detailed was this section that it could have the reader wondering whether or not this would be an autobiography rather than a memoir of becoming the First Lady and the First Black First Lady. Michelle nee Robinson was a fastidious student and she recalls her determination to be her best in education from her first days at school in spelling quizzes. Her parents had sacrificed enormously for their children's education, Michelle and her older brother Craig, their background was the building blocks for both of them to excel academically, Michelle going on to Ivy League institutions.

Lace Up for 2019

What was and is to come

It's been a while since the last post on this blog, and what a great year 2018 has been for Fly Girls Wellness services with our running and writing communities. Our work empowering women has had a significant successful impact on members and inspiring others in the wider community. Two participants of the writing workshops have published their debut books at the end of the year.

Fly Girl Marcia

Marcia at BMR
Brooklyn, New York

One of the founding members and our front-runner for Fly Girls (FG) Running Community Marcia is a passionate runner whose essence motivates the team. Mileage Marcia loves running with her community on Sunday morning at Wembley Stadium. On event days at the Stadium FG runners run independently and Marcia does just that and encourages the others through the group chat.

Pushing for Progress

International Women's Month Review

Amanda & Leena Khatri at The Grand Hall
Brent Civic Centre

We celebrated the fifth anniversary of Ms Rose Blossom project on International Women's Day with a large community of women at the Brent Council Pressing For Progress Event. It was an honour to be part of the speakers/presenters included on the 8th of March. A diverse mix of women, young and old and in between shared stories of activism in pushing for progress for the empowerment of women, including Samira-Caterina Monteleone from Brent's UK Youth Parliament, Maggie Toy on the Suffragettes in Brent. Also on the line up for entertainments were an Asian Bollywood troupe, from the over 60s Brent Punjabi Association Dance Group.

Writing and Wellbeing

Writing as a Social Therapy

Are you a writerholic, who like many others and myself use the process to clear your mind, make sense of situations and the past? Many writers are addicts to pen and paper and for this reason it is their therapy. It brings clarity to their thoughts as writers dig into their subconscious. As writers express themselves and become real with their words there is a remarkable transformation of feelings.

Anthony Joshua's Victory

Boxing Bootcamp

Anthony Joshua's tug of war Victory
Victory Park

Despite being a freezing cold morning last Thursday, hundreds of parkers turned up for a fun filled boxing fitness session, an Our Parks and Lucozade partnership with world champion undefeated heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua, AJ as special guest chief trainer.

Turn up tone up team of OurParks coaches kept the sports enthusiasts motivated and warmed up for 30mins before AJ took the centre stage in Victory Park fields in East Village, Stratford. The cheerful boxer got everyone doing squats to sprinting on the spot, and we did shadow boxing techniques in this masterclass.

The hype continued in part two with the tug of war game, of course AJ on the landslide victory side. It was an amazing and magical morning training with the Sportsman, leaving everyone feeling pumped to have trained with AJ and engage with him, needless to say the buzz of outdoor exercise.