This blog appears on the excellent Living With Mental Health website here

Published with permission of the author

Hey Everyone, hope this finds you all well. Well this blog is to share with you, not only my mental health, but also my physical health. I have had a condition called M.E. since the age of 15. A brief description of this condition is that causes extreme fatigue in all your muscles, and makes you want to sleep a lot! It can affect your joints quite a lot too.

So i am a member of the Burgh Castle Almanac group, and we all went on the Angles Way walk, which is 4.5 miles long. well for most this is a mission, but for someone with M.E., it can be very daunting and exhausting experience. But i am very happy to say, I did it !!! ok i’ve been resting every since, but the achievement of doing it was well worth it.

When i found out we were doing the walk, i dreaded it. The thought of walking that far made me feel anxious, and i wanted to pull out quite a few times, due to the fear of failing to complete it. But with encouragement, and a stern talking to myself, I did it, and best of all, as i have said earlier, I completed it. I think our biggest obstacle in life is ourselves. We talk ourselves out of so many good things, that we miss, what is, and can be a very uplifting experience, whatever level of fitness or mental capability we are. I think pushing ourselves to what we think is our limit, will surprise us all, when we realize, that that limit, is actually limitless!!!

So i have mentioned in a couple of blogs, what i get up to in the Burgh Castle Almanac group, well the update of what we have been up to is thus. We have had a small exhibition at the Great Yarmouth Time and Tide museum, which is well worth a visit if you have never been, where we displayed our artwork and items that we have found on our walks around Burgh Castle. Items such as pottery and an old coin. The coin was an old Roman coin with an inscription on which had been translated to say, ‘The return of Happy times’ The art work was made by using a pin hole camera, which gave great results and was very interesting to do. Other artwork included, a drawing and photos which we had taken and adapted through a app on the computer.

Once the exhibition was taken down, we were told that while it was up, the museum had had 2395 people through the door, looking at all the exhibits, including ours. This has made me feel very proud of our group, and all that we have achieved throughout the year.

I am having ups and downs with my mental and physical well being, but achieving something like all this, above, makes it easier to like myself just that little bit more. I can actually say now, i did that, and im dam well proud of what i’ve achieved.

I encourage you all to try something that you thought was un-achievable before, because i can guarantee, you will succeed and feel great about it. It doesn’t matter how many times you try to do something, its the not giving up and finally succeeding that counts.

I wish you all happy mental and physical health, and keep up the good work!!!

7^th March 2019

Exhibition about archaeology and mental health project opens today at Time and Tide Museum, Great Yarmouth

The Return of Happy Times is a new exhibition in the Community Gallery at Time and Tide Museum.  Curated by the Burgh Castle Almanac group with artist Ian Brownlie, the exhibition runs until 1^st April 2019.

A Celebration Event for press and guests will be held at Time and Tide Museum from 10.30 – 12 on Tuesday 19^th March. This will be an opportunity to meet group members and see the exhibition.

The title of the exhibition is taken from the inscription on a beautiful Roman coin found at Burgh Castle Roman Fort by group member Adrian Charlton during one of our monthly walks. The coin is shown in the exhibition.

The Return of Happy Times is funded by a grant from the Arts Project Fund at Norfolk County Council.

Burgh Castle Almanac is an archaeology, creativity and wellbeing programme based at Burgh Castle Roman Fort and Time and Tide Museum. Once a month a group of local people who live with mental health problems walk around the Roman Fort making a photographic record of the changing seasons. Sometimes the group is accompanied by archaeologists, artists, musicians and naturalists to explore the landscape in different ways. A fortnight later the group gathers at Time and Tide Museum to make art reflecting on their experiences. The project began in May 2018 and continues until May 2020.

The exhibition features archaeology, art, photography and a short film created with BBC Voices.

Burgh Castle Almanac is run by the Restoration Trust. It is part of Water, Mills and Marshes, a £4.5 million programme supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund that focuses on the people, communities and heritage of the Broads National Park.

Norfolk Archaeological Trust owns Burgh Castle Roman Fort and leads the project. The Trust works with local communities to save Norfolk’s irreplaceable historic sites and to share them with everyone. 

Access Community Trust in Lowestoft works with participants on the project. AccessCT promotes social inclusion, preventing people from becoming excluded, relieving the needs of those who are excluded and assisting them to integrate into society.

The Restoration Trust’s culture therapy projects at Burgh Castle, Norfolk Record Office, Norwich Arts Centre and Stonehenge help people with serious mental health problems enjoy heritage, art and culture in a safe, effective way.

Time and Tide in Great Yarmouth is set in one of the UK’s best preserved Victorian herring curing works and tells the story of Great Yarmouth from its ice age origins to the present day. It is part of Norfolk Museums Service.

For more information about The Return of Happy Times and Burgh Castle Almanac contact Laura Drysdale: laura@restorationtrust.org.uk | 07740844883

Our exhibition at Time and Tide Museum opens today and continues to 1st April 2019.

The Return of Happy Times celebrates Burgh Castle Almanac’s art, creative writing and archaeology. The title is taken from the inscription on a Roman coin that Adrian Charlton found in a molehill on the site in November, now accessioned by Norfolk Archaeological Trust.

We will be holding an Open Morning for the project’s friends and family at Time and Tide Museum on Tuesday 19th March, 10.30 – 12 am. Please do join us!

All photos by Tod Sullivan. Thanks to Tim Holt Wilson, geologist and story teller, and Ian Brownlie, artist and dulcimer player

The Waveney Valley Sculpture Trail run by Waveney and Blythe Arts will be open from the end of July to the beginning of September. We are thrilled that Burgh Castle Almanac will be creating an inviting interactive dome that will embody something of the history and changing flow of the landscape. The structure will feature images and flora from Burgh Castle, and will be partly built on site using found wood, trees and branches.

Front Row considers the artistic significance of walls and borders.

John Lanchester, whose latest novel The Wall is about a massive fictional defensive structure, discusses the way walls feature in literature and art with poet and art critic Sue Hubbard, from cave paintings to artworks like Andy Goldsworthy’s 750 feet long drystone wall.

Artist Luke Jerram takes us on a tour around his home city of Bristol discovering unusual wall art such as the Magic Wall, where children leave toys between the stones, and early works by Banksy.

Mexican artist Tanya Aguiniga, who travelled each day to school in the US, has set up an art project on the US/ Mexico border. She is joined by Suzanne Lyle, Head of Visual Arts for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, to discuss the influence of borders on art.

Presenter: John Wilson
Producer: Timothy Prosser

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002c35

A fascinating pinhole camera session with photographer Jeremy Webb. Results will be revealed at the next session, when we will be developing the images.

We were joined by the team from the amazing Thames Discovery Programme,

who brought along finds from the inter-tidal zone, the Thames foreshore.

Perhaps they brought archaeological good fortune, because there was a small find, of which more later.

All these photos are by Dr William Rathouse, one of the Thames Team.

And here is Eliott Wragg’s book (with Nathalie Cohen), of which we now have a signed copy. Thanks Eliott!

Another creative writing session with Belona Greenwood, writing and sharing stories of Romans, mysteries and imaginings. Belona is compiling the pieces into a map of the site, and of our experience.

After the session some of us went to Raveningham to meet Sarah Cannell, curator of the Waveney Valley Sculpture Trail. We are thinking of submitting a proposal for a group installation and Sarah showed us the perfect site…..