Creative Companionship
An opportunity to lean in, to find support for your practice at this time…
I am currently offering a process of one to one, or small group mentoring and creative companionship for artists at all stages of their working lives. This includes dialogue through relational movement practice in different landscapes, plus embodied approaches to working and moving with the material realism of a place/ecosystem.
We will be able to develop a bespoke process, responsive to the current preoccupations in your working practices. Activity might take the form of walks, movement, scores, bodywork, conversation, thinking and reading together. Moving into writing and drawing, deep listening and silence, the arts of noticing and new materialist thinking underpin the process.
We can work in situ, or adapt this process for an online context; working through responsive conversation and prompts for engagement within your chosen situation and locale.
It is also possible to be in residence in our village for up to 3 days, situated in the cottage residency centre at 2 Penrhiw in Abercych in the lower Teifi valley, rural Pembrokeshire, Cymru/ Wales. https://www.2penrhiw.co.uk/
Please contact me for hourly/daily rates and any questions…there is flexibility related to your resources.
TESTIMONIALS:
Today we walked and talked. We found ways of relating to the land and being with it. Not just being with the land but being with a lot of other agents too. We were with the mud, sand and our feet. We were with balance, sinking and rising. With birds and other creatures more able that us. We were with horizon line and moving tides. With fish, snakes, and alligators. With swelling and emptying. We were with tipping and falling backwards. We were with uneven ground, holes, reeds, cracks and sediment. We were with each other, sharing and learning. We were with the past and childhood. We were with the ventricles of the brain and the estuarine existence. With swelling, skiing, bobbing, flicking and running. We were with sinking.
Tess Wood. Performance Artist (2026)
Simon has an innate knowledge of the movement and choreography of the body. As a mentor he creates this gentle, nurturing space where you can truly find your potential; things you perhaps didn’t realise were within you. Every time I work with Simon, it is a gift and a privilege.
Anna Falcini. Visual Artist. (2026)
I feel so grateful for Simon’s creative companionship, a process that’s been both nourishing and inspiring. Over the past six months, as we’ve moved in, and with, the animate landscape, he has guided my practice into rich new territory, cultivating a space where body and imagination can thrive.
Susan Richardson. Poet. (2026)
Simon was patient, thoughtful and adaptive to our evolving sessions and what felt like a grounding companion to my practice. Having someone meet me wherever I was at, who understood and witnessed my process, truly encouraged a moving practice; rather than feeling stagnant and alone with it. His support this year has been invaluable.
Maeve Clara. Interdisciplinary Artist. (2026)
simon@simonwhitehead.net
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Locator is a suite of residential workshops that happen annually, each in a different season. Beginning in autumn 1993 on the Llyn peninsula in north Wales locator has since largely played out in Tycanol, a sessile oak woodland and SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) in north Pembrokeshire. An independent workshop created by Simon Whitehead, locator is an ongoing forum to share ecological ideas through movement practice. Facilitated through a process of moving, dancing, walking and drifting, witnessing, howling, drawing, writing, fasting & eating, making and resting. These workshops offer a means through which we might experience and learn from the complex materiality of a location within the intensities of collective experimentation and living.
These workshops are ongoing and happen once or twice a year. The next in person/ located workshop will happen in May 2022.
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April 2-5, 2026 For SUBSTRATE we return to the ancient wooded and rocky landscape of Tycanol in north Pembrokeshire, west Wales. Join us for creative community; made through walking scores, moving and dreaming with Ordovician dolerite, with multiple species of rock and tree lichen, sessile oaks, whilst touching into deep time, ‘niching’ with outcrops & navigating a nighttime landscape. A substrate describes a physical surface or medium—such as rock, or plant—upon which organisms attach, grow, Read More
28-31 August 2025 During Locator 33 we will return to Coetir Tycanol Woods, one of the most diverse lichen ecosystems in Wales and the UK. How might we learn of bodily/ interspecies collaboration and creative community from these mysterious and ancient beings? In attempting to notice and learn from these organisms and the places in which they thrive, to move as lichen is to combine our differences, to be together in ways that we couldn’t if Read More
‘Lichen has much to teach us about our relationship to the environment and our place within a living world…this little organism with its incredible life force invites a new vision (on a new scale), a new ecology.’ Vincent Zonka (2023) During Locator 32 we will spend time in one of the most diverse lichen ecosystems in Wales and the UK. How might we learn of bodily/ interspecies collaboration and creative community from these mysterious and Read More
The second in an annual series of online/in situ workshops taking place on Zoom, Thursdays for 2 weeks; February 29th and March 7th, 10am-Midday. £12 per session, or £20 for both 29 February Homing’s; 7 March Ecologies of Touch Each session will last for approximately 2 hours. Beginning with a collective preparation we will participate in a movement score together. The scores will predominately take the form of a drift (nondeterminate, the focus of a drift is to allow yourself to be guided by the elements, Read More
. everything that we touch, touches us… In this workshop we will ground ourselves in the touch of this place- walking, moving, drifting, eating, fasting, swimming, drawing and thinking; through partner and group movement scores, small scale expeditions (day and night) we are led by the patterns of weather, land, sea, atmosphere and the other beings we encounter. A time of gentle resistance to productivity and a time to land within the inspired Read More
Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 2021 Vol. 12, No. 2, 285–295, Click on link: 19443927.2021
Following postponement in June 2020, we will now proceed with the next in- person workshop: Locator 30 – Preparations for Landing… RESIDENTIAL MOVEMENT WORKSHOP Brynberian, north Pembrokeshire. 12-15 May 2022 (limited places available) ’There’s nothing more innovative, nothing more present, subtle, technical and artificial…nothing more creative, nothing more contemporary than to negotiate landing on some ground.’ (Bruno Latour- Down to Earth. 2018) It is 28 years since Locator began, so this year we return to the Read More
3 online physical workshops, each happening on the 3rd Friday of each month from February to April 2022 16 February, Homing 16 March, Touch of Things 20 April, Drifting together 2pm-4.30 pm. (£12 per session, or £30 for all 3). Each session will last for up to 2.5 hours and will involve the sharing of a movement score and a process of collective preparation. Each of the scores will take the form of a drift Read More
