On the Irregular with Java Bere

For the final episode of season 4 I talk with undertaker and owner of the independent funeral service Natural Endings, Rosie Grant.After listening to several episodes of this season, Rosie reached out to me to suggest talking with me about her creative, personal, and as she described it ‘radical’, approach to honouring the lives of those we love.I have admired Rosie and her fel

In this episode I talk with writer, poet and playwright, Cordelia O’Neill.We discuss Cordelia’s play ‘Anything is Possible if You Think About it Hard Enough’ about a young couple whose baby is born still. We discuss creativity as a tool for developing empathy and how experiencing loss can bring you closer to joy, love and hope.And we talk about the twist of fate where Corde

In this episode I talk with Yorkshire artist, Jess Kidd.We discuss Jess’ childhood as an acutely shy child who often lived in her own imaginary world, the comfort she found in creativity as a form of expressing herself, the challenges she experienced at art school and then being diagnosed with health issues that impacted her life dramatically.We also talk about cognitive behaviou

In this episode I talk to photographer Jo Ritchie and writer Laura Mcdonagh.We talk about their work on Projecting Grief, a collection of stories and portraits from individuals who have found comfort, distraction or hope in a creative pursuit after losing someone they love.We also talk about how they came together creatively, their own experiences of grief and how it has changed th

In this episode I talk with writer and disabled content creator, Helen Lear.Helen and I met at drama school in Manchester, sixteen years ago. Since then, a lot has happened.In her twenties, Helen dropped her life in the Uk to travel through Australia and New Zealand, envisioning a life of further international travel ahead of her.During this time she began to experience serious hea

In this episode I talk with autoethnographic artist Hannah Turlington.We talk about growing up as a people pleaser,training as a teacher despite wanting to study textiles,eventually becoming a textile designer and realising it was no longer what she wanted,grieving the person that she thought she would one day be,Coming to terms with not being able to bear children and her experien

In this episode I am talking to calligrapher, bookbinder and writer Gaelle Jolly.Gaelle and I have followed each other on Instagram for many years, and it was a joy to finally meet over zoom.In this chat we talk about our shared love of writing letters, Gaelle’s passion for getting lost in imaginary worlds, we talk about losing her husband and how instagram helped her process her

In this episode I am talking to gardener and allotmenteer, Heidi-Lee Gregory.In 2020, having experienced a sequence of losses and readjustments in her life, Heidi turned her back on twenty years in the corporate world and decided to start from scratch and completely change direction with her path.We talk about Heidi’s move from her native South Africa to the UK, losing her father

In this episode I talk with Susanna Amato, who describes herself as: actress, theatre maker, writer, clown and humanitarian.Susanna also has a podcast where she invites guests to bring a paper based memory to talk through and shred, based on her theatre piece Landfill of Memories.We discuss Susanna’s identity, how this forms a huge part of her creative process, she tells me about

In this episode I am talking with author, art historian and lecturer Joanna Wolfarth.Joanna was the first person I interviewed for this season. I was feeling nervous and out of practice, but Joanna’s gentle warmth and grace shone through my headphones and I immediately knew that this was exactly where I wanted to be. Sat, listening to her story.In our chat, we discussed Jo’s sh