Bread & Roses
From the archives! Kat Healy and Karina Smillie, a live session around one (beautiful) mic at Slate Room Studios in Pencaitland, 2020.
It’s always a pleasure to share a song with women, and singing with the very talented Karina Smillie was an absolute joy.
I remember releasing the song in April 2020, not long after we entered the first (terrifying) lockdown. It was a strange time, and I recall leaning into creative work as a way of anchoring myself through the turbulence.
When in doubt, I try to harness creative practice as a path to well-being.
The sentiment of ‘Bread and Roses’ remains as true today as it was when we recorded it; nurture inner strength, show compassion and fight for equality.
“Our lives shall not be sweated
From birth until life closes
Hearts starve as well as bodies
Bread and roses, bread and roses”
#IWD2023 #EmbraceEquity
This year, International Women’s Day is asking us to consider not only equality but equity. To challenge gender stereotypes, call out discrimination and bias, and seek out inclusion.
In order to drive change, we need to take action and create collective momentum.
Together, we can make a difference.
In driving equity, we’re acknowledging that everyone has different circumstances.
We need to ensure the appropriate resources and opportunities are in place to reach an equal outcome.
“Equity is linked to the idea that success is based on personal efforts and not social status. Inequity affects many people, but most commonly historically it has marginalized communities such as women, people of color, disabled people, the economically disadvantaged, and those from the LGBTQ+ community.
The goal of equity is to change systemic and structural barriers that get in the way of people's ability to thrive.” (www.internationalwomensday.com)
Women in Conversation #IWD2023
A fantastic conversation between two inspiring women. Journalist and author Sam Baker (The Shift with Sam Baker Podcast) and critically-acclaimed singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright discuss music, motherhood and finding love in your 40s.
A Painting #IWD2023
‘The broken Column’ (Frida Khalo, 1944)
Kahlo’s work often portrays the trauma she experienced in her lifetime, and this brutal masterpiece reflects the extent of her injuries following her tragic accident in 1925.
Kahlo’s body is torn open and vulnerable. Bound by a steel corset, it shelters a fractured column in place of her spine. Nails puncture her body and face, holding ‘pieces’ of her together—eerily suggestive of Jesus nailed to the cross.
Though tears fall from her eyes, she stares head-on, daring the viewer to offer sympathy.
Khalo, defiant in her suffering, appears strong and strangely free, transcending any sense of pain.
A Poem #IWD2023
The Artist BY JENNY GEORGE A snake lies in the open, dormant in its sleeve of heat. A gilded orphan on the sun-warmed dirt, eye-slits ajar, waiting for the infinite to arrive. You want to strike it with a stick. You want an answer to the prayer that says, Make use of me. One day the old life simply sheds its dress and flows through the stones. Then the future wavers up in you and stands in your throat like a flame. (©Poetry, March 2023)
“Thinking of all our sisters” #IWD2023
This is
thinking of all our sisters
in Syria, Sudan, Iran, Pakistan,
Palestine, Afghanistan, ALL!
ALL the women of the world,
risking their lives to reclaim
their freedom, their basic
human rights their voice,
which is also our own.