I am currently teaching Art, with private art lessons, and working with Nature Makers, for younger children, teaching them all about nature and making art from all sustainable materials.
I am also doing socially distanced felt making workshops. Few parties at the moment of course, but hoping to be able to do that in the Spring time. And I'm selling Ursula's Felt Kits
Feltmaking workshops online! Festive Felt making workshop. Create a wonderful Christmas landscape, beautiful robin or deer picture, felted picture or what about a beautiful poinsettia felted flower?
You will need a felt kit, £15 delivered locally or £18 with postage. Workshops are £10 on top, and on Google Hangout. I will email you with all the materials you will need !
Pictures, paintings, cuttings, photos and sketchbooks are all excellent reference material to bring with you to give you inspiration with your felt work. Any questions, please do email me at info@ursulawestwood.com
To pay for your workshop, pay through Paypal or email me with your preference. paypal.me/ursulawestwood
If you are looking to do a workshop and you have found me online do get in touch because I do workshops on request, especially if you have a group or an occasion that you want to do something special and different for. I regularly post updates of my work on my Facebook, Twitter & Instagram pages. (Click Links on the website icons for all the latest photos & workshops). So wherever it may be I look forward to sharing my love for felt making with you. Do look at my photos and scroll down to see all the work that I do. Ursula
Therapeutic felt making I'm working at University Hospital, Coventry and Warwickshire currently, as an NHS Volunteer, working with the patients doing felt making workshops. This is probably the most rewarding work I've ever done.
On my lunch break I sit in the restaurant eating my jacket potato whilst 'What's in the Attic' is on the TV with subtitles. Consultants read the paper with their briefcases and freshly pressed shirts, doctors and nurses sit in groups catching up with texts and updates on their phones, glad to have a breather, with stethoscopes around their necks. I wonder what all the other people have been doing- the uniforms tell the story. This is a different environment for me, so different to schools and staff rooms I've been in. This feels more urgent and tender and it's getting right to the heart of it all- life is happening right in front of you- it is heavy with emotion in a hospital. Back on the ward I am cheery and calm, talking to the patients and keeping a distance yet showing them how to create, and explain the activity. It is just wonderful doing something for the well being of others who so desperately need some interaction, although the activity rooms are well set up for hobbies and do lots of creative activities. Often though, patients are reluctant to come and join in with my activity, for it is the fear of the unknown, and they need much encouragement which can be very frustrating. I've worked with patients in the older wards, where a lot of the patients have dementia. Some don't. The older patients have stories to tell, giving snippets of days gone by, about childhood pets, vegetable patches, beloved husbands going to war, one even receiving a Victoria Cross from fighting in Burma, and all of them wonder when they are going home. This all comes about through laying out the fleece on the mats, through the conversation. I encourage them to keep going and some want to; others don't see the point. So I am there as a distraction, to keep them busy, and hopefully shift their mind onto being productive and feel re-energised from doing the activity. Whatever the journey through the felt making process the end result with it's surprise factors never fails to delight- and it's that that is the key- it brings out the child in the patient, and it kind of restores their faith in their ability to produce something worth any recognition. In a place where self- worth and confidence is low this goes a long way. It's that feeling of creating something, achieving something that I seek in myself to make me feel satisfied with my own work, and bring about joy in others- and it surely is evident in others in the patients I have worked with in hospital.
I have also done a session in the children's ward, where the children did some beautiful felt work. See the picture below with the cake and ladybird ! You can keep up to date with my Facebook posts and twitter posts- just see the link at the top of the page.
Felt making, as an activity it's wonderfully therapeutic- for the patient, for the teacher, for the nurse, and for the visiting family who have something different to talk about on their hospital visit.
