Creating conditions for people to grow, reflect, feel seen and heard not only as a human being but also an artist is Elinor’s mission for Magical Women.
For the Founder of Magical Women, when ND women artists are seen or heard or felt within their art practice, this only enhances the practices of everyone involved in Magical Women such as artists and consumers, customers and audiences. Collaboration can flourish and trust happens. Magical Women invites especially women artists to come together to trust, believe and make art together in held spaces. You can view the work they have done so far since March 2020, in our Artist Showcases, online exhibitions and workshops. We’ll be moving towards Podcasts and Vlogs and videos very soon.
This model has been enriched and drenched in the ND experience, the ND thinking style, Nancy Kline’s the Thinking Environment mixed in with Jung’s Collective Unconscious, alongside many great philosophers (see Theory) They offer us possibilities to think for ourselves as ourselves, have complete autonomy over ourselves whilst also growing and attending to our artistic practice and development together. By viewing our art differently, not as good or bad, but as what can be seen, heard, felt then this model of working to our senses means ND artists can develop and enrich their practice. We work to a ND model and a Magical Women model of the senses.
Using empowering spaces that remove the risk found in neurotypical situations such as urgency or rush or feelings or experiences of being rushed. Magical Women work to disseminate ND language, ND vocabulary and ways of working where they need never to feel they must change themselves, overcome their behaviours and instead, are liberated to behave and speak the ND way of existing. They are free to be themselves.
By challenging the status quo, all Magical Women participants, contributors, allies and in solidarity artists are free from the untrue assumptions, unconscious bias and discriminatory and harmful dialogue and structures used against ND populations.
Magical Women creates relaxed, accessible and empowering spaces for ND artists (mainly female) that remove risk typically found in neurotypical and mainstream spaces.
That said, it is not therapy and nor should be viewed as “safe space.” Magical Women is a relaxed and empowering space that offers you autonomy, space and time to make art the way you want to. Our aim is to platform and share art/writing by ND artists/writers to wider and more diverse audiences.
Elinor Rowlands MA FRSA, Founder of Magical Women
Elinor Rowlands MA FRSA, is a multidisciplinary Disabled and Neurodivergent artist and poet. Her mission is to create art spaces where artists can flourish and they can sustain a practice in the arts. This is her own goal as an artist but various barriers can get in the way, so when a collection of neurodivergent women artists commune and gather together to make art, share their art with others and are offered opportunities to speak about their art and share with wider and more diverse audiences then magic can happen.
Elinor’s Services
If you want a mentor who “gets it” for a change, then Elinor is available as an arts/writing mentor and Specialist mentor for ND artists and ND students. She is on the DBS Update service, HCPC registered, has QTS status (PGCE in both SEN and mainstream), and her Safeguarding Training certificates are up to date (April, 2020). She has over 15 years’ experience as a Specialist Mentor, Study Skills and Academic Tutor in Universities in China, London and Wales. Elinor is fluent in French and English.
Anna Giannotti MA, Art Therapist
Available for online sessions. She is fluent in Italian, French and English. Contact us for full details.
"I am a qualified art psychotherapist (BAAT and HCPC registered) with a private practice based in Shoreditch, London. In my work I take a humanistic perspective that integrates various psychodynamic theories with a person-centred approach. Adapting sessions to a person’s unique needs and abilities, I work together with individuals to find ways for improving self-esteem and self-actualisation."
AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST
• Anxiety and depression caused by work related stress.
• Trauma, loss, bereavement, difficult life transitions.
• Depression, anger and loss experienced while adapting to life-long physical and emotional changes following a stroke or acquired brain injury, or living with a chronic disability or neurological condition.
• Carers looking after a close family member wishing to take precious individual time to explore changing family dynamics and relationships, stress, mental and physical fatigue.
AT HOME ART THERAPY
I also offer a home visit service to housebound brain injury or stroke survivors and individuals with neurological conditions living in London. By bringing along a selection of art materials, I reach out to individuals with reduced mobility and various cognitive issues at their place of residence for a pre-determined course of 30 to 50 minutes sessions.
ART THERAPY EXPERIENCE
I have a wide variety of experience including acute adult inpatient NHS psychiatric unit facilitating ward based art therapy group and individual sessions, and in the charity sector working with adults affected by depression, anxiety, addiction and homelessness. My interest in working with brain injury survivors and people affected by chronic neurological disorders has motivated me to set up and run, alongside my private practice, an art therapy service for a leading London charity supporting people living with those conditions, and I currently provide individual sessions for its clients. I also have initiated and currently facilitate a therapeutic art making project at patients' bedside in a central London NHS stroke and neurological unit.
Why is Anna, Magical Women’s Art Therapist?
Elinor and Anna both trained together to be art psychotherapists and they understood that they did not stand with the mainstream way of thinking about Disability. Anna is a very kind, warm and open Art Therapist and Elinor highly recommends Anna to anyone who needs a non verbal way of attending to therapy or expressing their feelings.
Contact Magical Women if you’d like to book an appointment with Anna.
Louise Amelia Phelps MA, Sacred Land Walker™
Be guided on a magnificent journey of abundance with celebration & ceremony, and walk back to your wildness and wild wild heart. Come celebrate the turning of season at Lammas. Come gather in the meadows, the grasses and sun golden and high.
Louise also trained and qualified with Elinor as an art psychotherapist and like Elinor is not practicing at the moment. At Magical Women, she offers Mentoring, arts Mentoring and also invites Magical Women participants to nurture and grow their roots again, discovering the trees often under moonlit and starry bright skies.
To find out more about Louise’s work or to work with Louise, contact Magical Women.
The Magical Women Team
The Magical Women team are all project manager and creative director freelancers who also run their own arts practices and projects alongside Magical Women. If you like the sound of our Magical Team and might need more administrative support than the support offered above then we can help you in this way too. Meet the Team.