Coming soon

Meet Jo Black, this month’s speaker and venue sponsor!

Jo opened Reunion in May 2022, a deli, community cafe and coworking business based in Belper across two sites. 

Jo spent her early career helping small charities grow their income through fundraising strategy, events management and marketing and communications, using her Business Management degree to create strategic opportunities for charities to build their support network. Jo has always been a passionate foodie, spending time working in kitchens across Latin America as well as working in and out of hospitality alongside her third sector career.

Post Covid, Jo realised that her passion for food and coffee combined with a strong desire to facilitate growth for local businesses was the perfect combination for her to take the leap and start Reunion.

August’s Theme is Critical.

To be critical means to be like a sieve, dividing and separating. Our critical abilities allows us to discern the insubstantial from the made-to-last, the credible from the untrustworthy, the sincere from the ego-driven. We do so by gathering more information, seeking nuance, and locating something in its specific context.

Critical feedback is essential for our growth. Poet Adrienne Rich advises, “Responsibility to yourself means seeking out criticism, recognizing that the most affirming thing anyone can do for your is demand that you push yourself further.”

But being needlessly critical — especially of ourselves — can stifle the creative impulse. Few are as harsh as our own internal critic. How can we hone our perception, spotting what needs to evolve, without becoming ruthless? How can we remain astute while not losing sight of all that is inherently good and whole? It’s critical.
Our Calgary chapter chose this month’s exploration of Critical, Maedeh Mosaverzadeh illustrated the theme, and Mailchimp is presenting the theme.

We’re set to go on our second road-trip event!

Join us this Friday 15th July at The Sanctuary thanks to this month’s generous venue sponsors Derby Cathedral.

The door’s open at 10.00am and we’ll have mugs and milk if you bring your filler of choice.

We’ve got the wonderful Paramjit Oberoi, end-of-life planner, guiding us through her thoughts on this month’s theme of Spirituality.

Everyone is Creative. Everyone is Welcome.

July’s speaker is Paramjit Oberoi.

“An enthusiastic, experienced, creative, emotionally intelligent self-motivated, professional who has a proven record of achievement in the public, voluntary and private sector for nearly 50 years.

Extensive experiences of managing teams, project working, facilitating groups, developing and sustaining partnerships, training, consultancy, mentoring and coaching.

An effective multilevel communicator with well-developed interpersonal skills and a commitment to excellence.

This is the CV I used in the past.

Now, I am humbled to have the opportunity of sharing a new version to fulfill my final chapter of life.

I believe relationships and connections are the silken thread of love, which are at the core of human existence.

I love people, I love connecting and love to witness the divinity in people. The experience of Oneness, of the universal power, is what drives and supports me on a daily basis.

Listening and sharing conversations has become my way of life. I treasure stories which shape lives and enhance wisdom.

My sense of curiosity and discovery of the newness of each day is what soothes my soul.

My desire is for people to Live in Peace and automatically we will RIP.
Having been given the gift and privilege of caring for family members for over 45 years has placed me in a position of witnessing many deaths.

This enabled me to gain some understanding of the value of life and most importantly, that death is an integral part of life.

I cared for my husband who died 20 years ago this October 2022 and at present my daughter has a life-limiting illness. It’s from these experiences of acknowledging our common humanity and mortal existence that I now practice as an End-of-Life Planning Practitioner.

My mission is to dispel fears around death and dying. The emphasis of my calling is to promote well-being and peace of mind through empowering others to live and leave an incomparable legacy.

I’m a difference-maker, in fact, I believe we all are.

The world needs you and the difference only you can make.
Don’t die with the difference still inside you.

‘It’s not what you leave to your children that matters, it’s what you leave in them’

Leaving a legacy is leaving a piece of our true essence.”

July’s Theme is Spirituality.

Spirituality is the search for our deepest values and meanings, something that touches us all. It is our yearning to peel back the curtain on the world we can see. The word comes from the Latin spiritualis, meaning “of breath, wind, and air.” It comes so naturally it might as well be breathing. 

Spirituality can be found in meditation, in science, in holy spaces, in music, in community. We locate the sacred in the stars that guide us home, our capacity to love both kin and stranger, the divine that gathers in the kitchen dustpans and the forest groves lit by fireflies.

Through spiritual practice — be it by prayer mat or paint brush, microscope or movement — we seek answers to the eternal questions: How should a person be? How might we find meaning in the mundane, and purpose through great pain? How can we repair the world?
Our Jeddah chapter chose this month’s exploration of Spirituality, and Bayan Yasien illustrated the theme. 

Tickets are now available for our first CreativeMornings/Derby road trip event!

This brilliant event is a collaboration with CivicLAB, is hosted in the roof garden @multifaithcentre and we have @jsqstarkey speaking - what’s not to love ❤️

The forecast is for 🔆 so grab your 🕶 and your coffee and see you on the roof.

REMEMBER: if you need parking please email derby@CreativeMornings with your name and reg 🚗

This month’s plant passionate speaker is Jamie Quince-Starkey, Founder of Down To Earth Derby.

“We have always been about more than just showing people how to grow food; we’re here to get people outdoors, reconnect them back with nature, with their community and themselves.

We are here to inspire and empower Derby to grow and nurture its relationship with the outdoors and create a city to be proud of.”

June’s Theme is Wilderness.

We travel to the edges of our known world — to wander, to lose ourselves, to commune with the wilderness. Dappled light dripping in through the forest canopy, insects buzzing as feet squelch through wetlands, inhaling the hot dry air and endless skies of desert, we long for this. Some of us seek enchantment and estrangement here. Some of us call it home.

We do not exist apart or separate from the wild. In her meditation on trees, poet Grace Paley writes, “we are like any greengrowing machinery / riding the daylight route / into darkness.” The wilderness lives within all of us, the rhythms of our bodies tethering us to the natural world.

What is the wilderness that calls you home? Where do you go to wander? How do you honor what is wild and unruly inside of you?
Our Chattanooga chapter chose this month’s exploration of Wilderness and Hollie Chastain illustrated the theme. 

This month, helping us think about life in the now is Dan Webber.

Dan Webber is an award-winning LGBTQ+ poet and producer based in Derby. He has appeared at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Reading Fringe Festival and as part of the 25th Birthday Celebrations for Leicester Comedy Festival. His first collection ‘Genre Fluid’ was published by Big White Shed in June 2019, a show of the same name was named Best Solo Show at Morecambe Digital Fringe in August 2020. 

Commissions include ‘The Derby Witness’ a poetry and street art project for Derby Feste, ‘Whispers From The Woods’, a poetry and nature trail produced with Arts Melbourne for The National Forest, ‘15st 9lbs at time of writing’ for SHOUT Festival, Birmingham, ‘Genre Fluid: Quarantine Edition’ for Coventry Pride, and ‘322 Ways of Escape’ as part of the 30th anniversary celebrations for The Brewhouse Arts Centre, Burton-upon-Trent.

In September 2021, Dan supported Cheryl Hole as part of The University of Derby Freshers week and in February 2022 ‘Genre Fluid’ and ‘The Derby Witness’ were accepted into The National Poetry Library. 

May’s Theme is Now.

These days, the “nows” hurry past us, shoved aside by the “next” — the urgent to-do’s, the latest breaking news. Constantly anticipating and staging for our future decimates our experience of the present. Our “now” vanishes, like water flowing through our fingertips. 

We cannot keep time from spilling out of our hands and into the soft earth below. It is not our task to master the present, but to savor it. To pause. Go still. Feel the air on the back of our necks, sit in both discomfort and pleasure, and marvel in the radiance of the present moment. So that we may, in the poet William Blake’s words, “Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour.” For all we ever have is now. 
Our Buffalo chapter chose this month’s exploration of Now, Mizin Shin illustrated the theme, and our global partner Mailchimp is presenting the theme.