SORRY
You’ve missed out on this year’s retreat
Venue
Held at Glassonby Hall, Eden Valley in Cumbria
This lavishly restored five-star 15th Century Cumbrian Longhouse of Baronial splendour offers a peaceful retreat set amid rolling Cumbrian fells and farmland.
When you arrive, you step into the vaulted main hall, with vast stone hearth, arrowslit windows and iron chandeliers. Don’t be surprised if you sense the medieval revelry of yesteryear. We eat in the flagstone dining hall for more formal meals and gather in the Aga-warmed large kitchen for breakfast and lunch.
This peaceful retreat is a cocoon from the world with its beamed living room and deep windows with views over the Cumbrian hills. Deep sofas and a grand woodstove offer just the place to sit back and relax. Let yourself be enchanted by the Hall’s contemporary opulence layered over medieval majesty.
Celebrant Investment
Residential: £555
Residential includes: three nights luxury accommodation (own double room), all sessions and materials with our carefully chosen tutors, and a nourishing vegetarian menu created by our private chef.
Non-residential £444
Non-residential space includes: all sessions and materials with our carefully chosen tutors, and a nourishing vegetarian menu created by our private chef.
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Booking Form
To receive a booking form, email: veronikarobinson@hotmail.com
Creativity is manifestation: we are bringing something, that didn’t exist before, into being. During this retreat, you’ll learn to listen out for your creative voice and connect with your inner artist. We offer a gently structured and nurturing environment for you to ‘play’. Every aspect of this retreat is designed to support your life as a celebrant.
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Tutors
- a gilder
- an internationally renowned potter
- a calligrapher
- creativity coach
- novelist and celebrant with 30 years experience
- a comedy writer to help you infuse humour and playfulness into your celebrancy
Retreat Hostess
Veronika Sophia Robinson
Retreat Workshop
Veronika will open the retreat with a workshop on biographical storytelling.
Veronika is a celebrant (across all rites of passage) with 30 years of experience and has learned how to lean into her intuition and bring creativity to her ceremonies. She’s co-tutor, along with her husband Paul, at their boutique celebrant training school: Heart-led Ceremonies Celebrant Training.
Guest Tutors
Martin and Siobhan Miles Moore
Siobhan and Martin are the husband and wife behind the multi award-winning Miles-Moore Ceramics. Their work can be found in public and private collections all over the world, as well as in world class restaurants and bars.
By the time Martin graduated from UCLAN in 1989, he had developed a fascination with sacred and ritual vessels. His final degree show featured Coptic and Ginger Jar forms amongst others. It is only in more recent years he has felt able to embrace sacred communion and Tea Ceremony vessels.
Siobhan ‘s work is an exploration of perspective and the importance of understanding our own place in the world. Her elemental work incorporates gilding with precious and semi-precious metals to add greater light and contrast.
Handbuilding a Quaich
Martin will begin the workshop with a demonstration, throwing a few key Chawan forms and explaining their importance within The Japanese Tea Ceremony.
You are then invited to contemplate a range of natural materials.
You will be shown how these can be used to mark make and enhance a clay form.
Then you will be given some time to experiment and play with some clay, learning how it feels and forms, how it bends and breaks.
Key Task – you are then invited to apply your new knowledge and experience into hand building a simple, unique quaich form. You will be provided with all the materials and techniques needed to achieve this.
Martin and Siobhan will then take your work away, slowly dry it, then fire it to 1000 degrees, glaze it like the sample shown, then fire it to 1300 degrees.
Your finished work can then be returned to you by post (£10 extra) or collected from Veronika or Siobhan at a later date.
Creating a Gilded Grounding Stone
Siobhan will begin the workshop with a brief overview of the history and background of this ancient and endangered art form.
You are then invited to select two stones that speak to you from our responsibly sourced collection.
After a briefing and opportunities to understand the various materials on offer you will gild your first stone. This stone will be to practice techniques and approaches.
When it comes to your second stone you are invited to gild this stone as an active meditation. Imbuing all the power and the energy of the meditation into your work on the stone.
Once both stones are complete we will then seal and protect them, leaving them to dry in the daylight before adding them into your ceremonial tool kits.
Copper, Silver and Gold Alloys are included in your fees, Gold leaf and platinum leaf are available for an additional £10 charge.
Guest Tutor
Claire Gould, Calligrapher
Immerse yourself in a creative calligraphy workshop with Claire. The art of calligraphy shapes words into beautiful pieces of art. The practice is mindful and creative: as you get to know your calligraphy pen you’ll enjoy the swooshing of your pen, the novelty of a dippy ink pot and the simple repetition of shaping letters.
Calligraphy used to be a prerequisite for being a bank manager. The days of calligraphy being dull are long gone! Now it’s a way to combine heartfelt words with joy and colour, to experiment and play with inks and papers, and to enjoy slow writing. Focus on the words of a lovely quote as your nib bends in and out of letters. Create flowers and leaves with magical, shimmering inks and delicate, careful brush strokes.
A relaxed and therapeutic 2.5 hour workshop learning a modern script through tracing letter shapes and mindful repetition. You’ll take home a project of your own, a motivational calligraphy quote to inspire and bring joy.
Guest Tutor
Kate Brundrett, Artist & Creativity Coach
Kate will lead an experiential afternoon workshop on Finding Your Essence.
Kate is a Business and Life Coach, Creative Project Manager, Artist, Visual Facilitator and Founder.
With 30 years background in creative industry, wellbeing and business roles, her skills and interests are diverse and deep. She’s brought together these areas to create a framework called the ‘Zone of Brilliance™’ – which is like a personalised operating system that is found, created and ignited through reflection and exploration, emerging as a kind of personal manifesto.
As a visual artist, Kate’s research and curiosity is rooted in observing human habits and the various ‘worlds’ we occupy – investigating how we navigate and structure our mental and physical landscapes in order to place our ‘selves’ within them.
Her artwork is multi-layered, often with humour as a way in to deeper reflections on socio-economic patterns. She works across mediums, illustrating in super-quick spontaneous gestures, making larger installation works and creating ‘Small Wonderments’ of simple provocations. Kate’s work is characterised by her investigative approach, looking at ways we connect and disconnect with one another and with the world around us.
Kate was Graphic Artist / Graphics Editor at The Independent on Sunday in London before returning to her home in Cumbria 20 years ago. She continues illustration, design and graphics commissions with organisations such as Natural England, National Trust, Eden Rivers Trust and the Wildlife Trusts.
When she relocated back to Cumbria, Kate created an award-winning regional professional development hub for 1000+ creatives (The Cumbria Network), advised business start-ups through the Rural Women’s Network, curated four different gallery spaces, worked with [a-n] The Artist’s Information Company as Jobs&Opps editor, and founded The Studio Morland Community Interest Company to support communities with arts & wellness.
She now divides her time between art projects and as a leadership and executive coach – supporting a broad range of clients from global corporations through to small businesses. Her private clients are largely B Corp and purpose driven businesses, CEOs and founders – people passionate about making a positive impact in the world through developing brilliance and creativity in their people and themselves.
Kate works from her garden office and runs coaching and leadership experiences online and out on the fells and fields in the Eden Valley.
Guest Tutor
Paul Robinson, comedy writer
Infuse Your Writing With Humour –
How To Think It! How To Present It!
Paul’s sense of humour was spotted by a teacher when he was five (Paul, not the teacher!) and he’s seen the funny side of life ever since.
Amongst other things, he’s won a radio award for “World’s Best Afternoon Show”; he was a writer and feature artist on the television variety show “Saturday Live” in New Zealand; and he’s the author of the successful book “You Must Be Joking!”. Paul’s comedy career includes writing parodies, being a popular compère, mimic and ventriloquist. (Don’t ask him how he does that, because he’ll probably say “Sit on my knee and I’ll show you”!)
Interested in future retreats?
Disappointed that you missed out on our Creativity Retreat for Celebrants?
If you’d like to be on the wait list for upcoming retreats, register your interest today.
Places are available on a first-come first-served basis.