International Women's Day

Happy International Women’s Day!

I’m celebrating with a few shout-outs and some inspiring art I’ve experienced this week.

I’m so lucky to have learned from so many brilliant, incisive, inclusive, and inspiring women in my career and life. Too many to single out but I will mention the Big Three: my mum, my sister, and my wife.

My mum has found a second (or third or fourth?) career as a Celtic harpist & teacher winning awards, performing, and running workshops around around the world.

My indomitable sister who since we were kids, she dreamed of becoming a dentist and moving to California. She now owns a thriving practice in Healdsburg and runs & cycles dozens (sometimes hundreds) of miles through the mountains every week JUST FOR FUN.

My wife who this morning, while I was still thinking about breakfast, started chatting with me about the inspiring group of women she met with last night and the importance of staying curious and making space for growth in everyone’s always-busy lives. I’m so proud of her joining this group and even more so for going back to school to get her master’s degree in a field she’s passionate about which will undoubtably improve the world: International Relations and Foreign Policy even while being an incredible full-time (and I do mean full time) mum to our son. ❤️

On Wednesday I had the privilege of seeing Barbara Kruger’s electrifying gut-punch of a solo exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery. What a blistering, energising, and powerful critique of media and politics and commerce and capitalism and gender and autonomy and inclusivity. I found it to be a welcome rallying cry for all of us towards greater accountability and figuring out how we relate to and care for one another on this planet. It had so much more vibrancy, intelligence, substance, depth, and motivating energy for me than the glitzy and spectacular yet ultimately hollow CPU-melting/data-driven/pixel-pushing/fossil-fuelled/AI-touting Refik Anadol exhibition across the road.

I also had the great privilege of seeing Letters Live at the Royal Albert Hall (again, thanks to my very organised wife). The event supported the Women’s Prize Trust and featured some fantastic letters and readers!

One of my favourites was this one by the brilliant comedian & TV writer Sharon Horgan –  expertly read by Louisa Harland who was brilliant in Ulster American at Riverside Studios another great piece of art looking at the clumsily sometimes disastrously exlcusive and dude-centric worlds of playwriting, and drama (thanks once again, to my wife for getting us tickets)!

Things are changing but I think the message still applies to every industry. It’s a welcome challenge and one that I try to take up whenever possible even as I awkwardly self-promote and try to find more work. 😬 Please do call me out when I mess it up or occasionally get thing right! 🤪

I would love to know about the the women inspiring you today!