Shop Small Special | Alice in Scandiland

When indie doors close at the most important time of the year (many shops make the bulk of their earnings in the run-up to the Holidays), our makers, shop owners, small-batch producers, and our communities struggle. In the weeks before Christmas, we’re focusing on independent stores that are anchor points in their neighborhoods, who support small themselves, and who make our worlds just that little bit better by existing.

In a moment when we can easily slip into the mass-produced at the expense of the environment, our makers, and ourselves — what do 80p black dresses really do for us and all those amazon deliveries we’re now relying on — we feel that shops that curate the handmade, that add to our high streets, and that give us places to go matter more than ever. If you can (we understand the competing pressures financially that many of us have this year), give independent stores in your community the gift of your support. 

What is it: Scandinavian design comes to Cornwall courtesy of award-winning style blogger Alice Collyer.  

Why you’ll love it: As with many independent stores, Alice in Scandiland started as a labor of love two years ago, when Alice decided to transform the inspiration for her blog and the vintage finds that she sold in her backyard She-Shed, into a bricks and mortar shop. Literally built out by Alice and her dad, Alice in Scandiland is very much an extension of her own home and life philosophy. 

Why we think it matters: Hygge. Lagom. Fitka. Scandanavian concepts in living that have caught our attention, and which have themselves spun mini industries. But take away the quickly produced books and listicles that cash in on cool new words, pare all the trend styling back and they represent enduring healthy approaches to life. Alice got there before most of us, embracing the cult around all things Scandinavian (yes, we know they are better at everything than us now) when she started to makeover her own home by taking the things away she didn’t need and immediately felt the benefits of living with less.  

Favoring a natural color palette and materials, integrating form with function, and bringing in light and nature where possible, Scandinavian design is all about creating a sense of stillness that is soothing in its calm. Its warm minimalism helps our environment too – items are made to last and owning less is foundational.  If we’re fortunate to be able to work from home (and still not resent it), how we create our home environments will make even more of a difference to how we function. Alice may have been having adventures in Scandiland for a while, but they are adventures we can now share in worlds of our own making.

In conversation with 91 Magazine Alice says: “I love to champion independent makers, they are keeping amazing skills and crafts alive, putting their heart and soul into their creations. I firmly believe that it is these carefully considered pieces that add the meaningful finishing touches to a home and that’s not something you can buy for £3 in Primark. I am a strong advocate of buying less, but buying better. 

It really doesn’t have to mean spending much more either, if you average it out over a year. It’s important that we all become more conscious consumers and support our local creatives. Add this with vintage, thrifted finds and it’s a total winner.”

In our gift guide: we recommend Sofia Lind’s white flower print, Laura Lane’s Cornish Textured Mug and for those thank you cards, Gemma Koomen’s note set.

How to bring this into your life: Want to recreate the pared-down look at home – think woven baskets, cozy textures, and handmade ceramics. Alice’s blog gives tons of tips. During usual times, Alice also acts as a small business mentor and hosts workshops including one on building as successful an Instagram platform as her own. 

 To find out more: Website / Instagram

Content Care Package: Edition 3

As we’re now in the Holiday season, we have to admit to finding this Content Care Package an odd one to write. Uncertainty is swirling around us again as we continue to live with the pandemic, forcing us apart from those we love and filling our days with anxiety and fatigue. Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve definitely been displacing with some Netflix watching as you’ll see below, but we’ve also been finding some gems to keep us feeling good and even just that little bit grateful in spite of it all. We’ve pulled together the places, the prompts, and the cultural events that are helping us and which we hope will help you too.

Mental Wellbeing:

• We’re obsessed with The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix, Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library, Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse, and podcasts Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls, Decoder Ring (particularly this episode on the Cabbage Patch Kids) and Reply All (see Happiness Calculator and the Case of the Missing Hit).

• For a guide that’s all about getting to ok, we’d recommend these wellbeing focused magazines: Rising Issue – 01 // Mental Health Matters; What Do People Do? – Issue 2; Anxiety Empire – Issue 1, Positive Wellbeing — A Zine for Mums, Seed, and perennial favorite Flow. Even better, buy them from an independent magazine store.

• Is it safe to see your therapist in-person anymore?

• “Over the past decade, resilience has become a buzzword – touted as a protective talisman against the effects of trauma, which individuals, communities, and whole economies are told to cultivate.”

• Open Door is a new initiative by Making Space in Stockport, which opens up free mental health support to those living in the Stockport area.

• We’re huge fans of Meghan Markle for finding her own way through one of the trickiest family’s in the world (have you see The Crown), not least for her heartbreaking recent piece on her miscarriage in The NYT

Connection & Community:

• How a small town in England is teaching us the value of community.

• An introvert Happy Hour that we can get behind. Find a chapter of The Silent Book Club

Nature:

• All the wisdom for living a nature-centered lifestyle at home is captured in ”Fforest: Being, Doing, and Making in Nature.” Create a tiny bit of the magic at home with star walks, wild swims, and den building. Planning something for 2021? Head to the book’s source material, Fforest.

• New Zealand gets a new butterfly sanctuary courtesy of The Hobbit.

• Forest Bathe Wales is finding a way to deepen our connection with nature.

Mind/Body Connection:

• We’re on board with the millions of people who discovered yoga with Adriene Mishler during lockdown. No judgment about bad downward dogs or falling over trees, or even working out in our PJ’s.

• As the seasons change, we’re looking to Red January to keep us motivated.

• Follow Loom as it launches its campaign to #protectblackbirth and develops resources for women’s health from periods to menopause.

Modern Life:

• In Culture Therapy, we’ve been thinking about How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division and how to navigate The Social Dilemma.

• Pair with digital detox resources from It’s Time to Log Off

Culture and Creativity:

• Inspired by Outlet PDX, consider which words you’d want to disseminate into the world. Which messages of support would you want to create for those within your community? Learn the skill of printing and give form to these words. You don’t need to be an artist, just a thoughtful person in the world hoping to counter messages of hate, division, and isolation that we’re now bombarded with. Or if that makes you tired, learn to draw your coffee mug.

• One of our favorite Studio Ghibli movies Kiki’s Delivery Service gets the museum treatment in Tokyo.

• ‘Art, architecture and music have proven health benefits from alleviating pain, improving wellbeing and shortening recovery periods."‘ New online platform AORA by up-and-coming architecture studio EBBA, aims to instill a sense of calm and wellbeing through art, architecture, and food.

• Is sitting in a ball pit allowed anymore? Why The Color Factory is making the argument that it is.

Doing Good:

• How I Built This Host Guy Raz interviews Varshini Prakash co-founder of the Sunshine Movement on how to build an idea into a movement for change in the climate space.

• You can still virtually attend KindFest even though it’s past. Standard tickets will give you access to the recordings into the next month.

• We’re inspired by Counterpart Chef Almitra “Mimi” Williams who brings fresh food from her vegan restaurant to the homeless camps in Echo Park. From where you are, and if you are able to, volunteer or donate to Feeding America this Holiday Season.

Spirituality & Meaning:

• We know that saying meditate is like saying eat your kale, but San Francisco’s Within has ways of making it seem doable with its classes now going online.

Awe & Wonder:

• Discover Scarfolk: “a town you’re not permitted to visit, with sights you’re not allowed to see.”

• Take a masterclass with Another Place artist Antony Gormley: choose between Zabludowicz Collection talk, BBC’s quarantine drawing class or National Saturday Club’s body sculpting exercise.

• New podcast Ask Biq Questions has Bill Gates and Rashida Jones asking the things that are on our minds like wil be the COVID vaccines be safe or what’s the answer to widening social inequalty?

Purpose:

• We’ve been pouring over Riposte magazine which is full of smart interviews with women who are figuring things out in ways we can relate to.

Do send us your recommendations for our next Content Care Package so that we can feature them in our next edition. Together we can build a better world to hold us.

Btw we wanted to let you know that we’ve changed all the links to the books we mention to Bookshop, which supports both our own work and that of independent bookstores, which is particularly crucial as many of them are struggling to survive.

Until next time, x Amanda & Claire

The Compassionate Frome Project a.k.a. Health Connections Mendip

“Across the country, and across the world, people of good heart and goodwill are quietly working on imaginative projects to improve the quality of their own lives, the lives of those around them, and the world in which they live. Many such initiatives happen in relatively obscure places through the actions of ordinary people outside the usual centres of power who are motivated by that active concern for others which is the hallmark of compassion. Beyond the immediate benefits accruing from their work, those small committed groups may, consciously or unconsciously, be preparing the ground for radical change in the way society as a whole conducts its affairs. They are, in a real sense, encouraging us all to be more fully human.”

— Dr. Julian Abel & Lindsay Clarke

What is it: A different way of responding to the modern life ailments that present themselves at the doctor’s office, this experiment in connection as a remedy in the rural town of Frome has lessons for us all and has now been captured in the book The Compassionate Project: A Case for Hope & Humankindness from the Town that Beat Loneliness by Dr. Julian Abel and Lindsay Clarke.

What you need to know: People show up at their GP for reasons that go beyond the realm of medicine —social isolation amongst the elderly, loss of motivation due to developing an illness, fear stemming from changes in environment or lifestyle, a loss of self-esteem following a career or relationship shift — but they are often looking for an antidote that lies more in the realm of compassion.

Led by Dr. Helen Kingston, a GP in Frome’s Medical Practice, and Jenny Hartnoll, a local community development worker, the Compassionate Frome Project makes connections between people who need something to help their situation and the existing community resources that might respond to that need. Where gaps in initiatives exist, Health Connections Mendip develops new ones with the local community. The project has also established supportive infrastructure (such as arranging lifts and even accompanying clients shy of going alone) where there were issues of access.

Between 2013 and 2017, the Compassionate Frome Project led to a reduction in the rate of ER emergencies across the town by 15% at a moment when the county of Somerset in which Frome is located registered an increase of 30%.

Why you’ll love it: Those ten minutes you get with your doctor start to look very different within this model. Rather than prescribing a cure for loneliness, sadness, anxiety, or loss in the form of pills, another avenue is opened up that leads into the community, into interest groups, into motivations and connections of a different sort.

Why we think it's different: What we put into our lives — just as with food — has impacts on how we are able to live those lives. We now know that the quality of our social connections affects our health. Chronic loneliness increases by 20% the risk of early death. Good social relationships have been found to have more positive impacts on hypertension than medication, reduce inflammation, and minimize the risk of death more effectively than “losing weight, improving diet, and stopping smoking or drinking.” As authors Abel & Cole note in their book:  “Though we identify ourselves as individuals, we actually live in the plural. We are interdependent beings cared for by the people around us who form those networks of relationship that provide us with support, companionship, and the basic necessities of life.”

The Compassionate Project has become a model for how we can improve our own situations by reaching out to the community around us and how we can attempt to resolve some of the modern conditions that are on the rise such as our sense of isolation, a growing lack of purpose, and a pervasive unease at our uncertain world, together. This idea is gaining ground: A Compassionate City Charter is being developed by the Welsh government and has been adopted by the towns of Plymouth and Inverclyde in the UK. 

Something to do inspired by this project: Care for relationships in your life. Often we skim over the people in our lives, and invest our time elsewhere, like our careers or Netflix. Spend 15 minutes each day talking to someone you care about (from one of our favorite thinkers Dr. Vivek Murthy); write a letter, text, or WhatsApp message to someone you may have neglected; say hello to someone on your walk; put the phone away in the queue when you collect take-out or coffee, be aware of those around you. Even causal interactions impact how we feel and can lighten our days. 

The Color Factory

What is it: Founded by Jordan Ferney of Oh Happy Day with fellow creatives and artists as a temporary participatory exhibition in San Francisco, The Color Factory now takes the form of two locations in NYC and Houston that capture each cities unique color stories.

Why you’ll love it: Yes, experiential museums have gotten some flack for their Insta-heavy ways, but we like how The Color Factory works with local artists, illustrators, designers, and makers to envisage its color-loving environments: like our favorite Christine Wong Yap, whose Complementary Compliments room invites visitors to sit across from one another, Emmanuelle Moureaux’s colorful paper ribbon ceilings and Carnovsky’s perspective-shifting NYC corridor. Also, note the jet black ice cream available to try.

What you need to know: Is sitting in a ball pit allowed anymore? Is it ok for rainbow confetti to sprinkle down on you? Can you really draw with giant markers on the wall or boogie on a giant light-up dance floor? Apparently yes you can. After months of being closed (and maybe even again), The Color Factory has brought in some serious cleaning techniques – just note how they clean those plastic balls. One reminder: wear a mask for those selfies.

How to bring this into your life wherever you are: You can extend your visit to The Colour Factory by following a neighborhood map to seek out more colors, and we’d suggest creating something similar where you are. Which colors can you see in your immediate environment? How often do they occur? Can you create the color palette of your home, your street, whatever your world geographically consists of? Photograph the different shades, sketch them, paint them out, even arrange them in a print. We’re inspired by the work of Leah Rosenberg, one of the founding Color Factory artists and eternal explorer of color. 

Why we think it still matters: Anyone else longing for joy? For play, for escapism, for (can we whisper it here) fun? At a moment when many of us are fatigued or despondent or a little bit lost, that spirit of play that before felt frivolous in its Insta-centric approach now feels like a much-needed respite from the world. And maybe it's needed now in a not just a running-away-from-it-all-through-mirrored-ceiling-rooms way, but in a physiological sense: when we find the joy in our lives, we benefit from a release of happy hormones dopamine and serotonin. Though the impact of specific colors is changeable depending on culture (white = calm here, = mourning over there, for instance) and their specific mental health effects unproven, finding small gestures of joy in our days can contribute to an overall sense of happiness.

It may have felt like the color has drained out of our lives recently and we’re all existing in that sluggish brown that is created when kids mix all the colors together, but somewhere like The Colour Factory can remind us of the rainbow they were hoping to create when they did that.

In their own words: ‘Color Factory embraces child-like imagination, while expanding boundaries of perception and understanding.’

To find out more: Website / Instagram

Magazine Brighton

What is it: A renowned independent magazine store founded by long-term (since the age of 6) print-lover Martin Skelton. 

Why you’ll love it: It’s a store with just thoughtfully selected indie magazine titles. Hundreds of them. Stacked on the floors, arranged on tables, front-facing on wall-shelves. Since it opened in 2014, the choice of titles has grown three-fold, which reflects both the stores growing audience and the growing indie publishing sector.  

What you need to know: After years of traveling internationally and finding this very kind of store abroad, Skelton bet it all by bringing the concept to his adopted home town of Brighton. Keep in mind the context: people were more used to WH Smith for their magazines and London as the kind of place to position such an idea.

What they offer if you can’t get to Brighton (which is all of us at the moment): The online site now aims to replicate the density of the store, with lessons learned from the first and now second lockdowns on how to make things easily browsable (maybe too easily as we deposited way too many magazines in our cart while writing this). Magazine Brighton also posts the latest arrivals to their Instagram if you need inspiration and some new discoveries. Like Oh Mag and Openhouse.

Why we think it matters: Magazines were almost (almost) made for this moment. The push against the digital, the celebration of creativity in print, and the small-batch focus, all speak to our collective longing for less digital interfacing, less homogenized products, and less corporate gain. But for us, the reason we think magazines matter as much as they do, particularly now, is that they bring other voices into our homes and different stories into our lives. They are all about engagement. 

When our worlds shrink to just four walls and that same world insists that we pay attention to its diversity, magazines hold space for lives lived differently, experiences outside of our comfort zones, and ideas previously unconsidered. This is particularly crucial when you realize that there is no algorithm in this bookstore, or within the pages themselves, shifting what you get to see. There is no dominant narrative. There is no ‘them’ and ‘us’ in curating these titles. Collectively this amalgamation of stories, images, and design, lends something of the normal again in how we’re able to converse and interact and be with one another.

Somewhere like Magazine Brighton is putting you back in control again of the content you get to consume and giving you an entry to connect with the world no matter what state it's in.

In their own words: “Al, my son-in-law, described our shop as ‘Like vinyl, but print’ and it’s a great phrase. Without trying to sound like one of those old intelligence tests, indy magazines are to conventional magazines as vinyl is to digital, artisan bread is to Wonderloaf, microbreweries are to the big brewers, farm-made cheese is to factory-made cheese, and so on. There’s nothing wrong with any of those things in their place but I think there’s enough people out there who want a balance as well.’ – Skelton talking to Mag Culture

Something to read: For a guide that’s all about getting to ok, we’d recommend these wellbeing focused magazines: Rising Issue – 01 // Mental Health Matters; What Do People Do? – Issue 2; Anxiety Empire – Issue 1, Positive Wellbeing — A Zine for Mums, Seed, and perennial favorite Flow.

To find out more: Website / Instagram / Twitter

FForest

What is it: Oh that’s a tough one. We hesitate to put it in any of the buckets — glamping, nature retreat, lifestyle brand, eco camp, staycation — so we’ll go with this. Fforest is what happens when someone dreams something and makes it happen for all of us. Sorry, that’s not so helpful. Let’s jump to here:

What you need to know: Conceived by two London creatives, Sian Tucker and James Lynch, graduates of the Royal College and St Martins who had found a way to live the good life in Shoreditch and New Zealand, before taking some of that to Fforest. On 500 acres in Wales, they have created a magical place to pursue the simple life with their family of four boys and many, many others. Fforest takes form across specially designed places to stay — geodesic domes, hill and garden shacs, crog lofts, a stone farmhouse, and Kata Cabins. Each is furnished in that way that hand made can feel luxurious: with craft furniture, Welsh woolen blankets, and small touches like wildflowers in enamel jugs on arrival. What is in essence a thoughtfully designed situation makes the best of life, of our natural world, and the things right there in front of us (no, not washing up, your mobile phone, or screaming in-box). Rather they have built a spirit of slow, of play, of untethering,

While there: Book a pizza night in town at their tented restaurant in Cardigan or supper in the woods at Hydref (where you order ahead to reduce food waste, also note the repurposed 24 classroom doors), seek out ‘the bwythn’, a tiny pub that serves their own IPA, or if a sauna is more your style, head to the wooden cedar barrel. Getting out into the natural surroundings is encouraged, in fact, part of the religion here: walk the coastal path, find the National Trust beach Penbryn, or take a canoe along Teifi gorge. And if it all sounds very grown-up, that’s not true. Kids are very much welcome to run free — there’s even a family summer camp of sorts in the form of Gather 2021.

How to bring this into your life: All the wisdom for living the Fforest lifestyle at home is captured in Sian’s book: ”Fforest: Being, Doing, and Making in Nature.” Create a tiny bit of the magic, with star walks, wild swims, and den building.

Why it caught our attention now: In a year that has taught us the pleasure in the simple, in each other, and in nature (amongst many, many other hard-won lessons), Fforest has been ahead of us, speaking this language for a while. All the components of a good life – defined here as one lived slowly, locally and with meaning are woven into the ethos of this place: food is served to be collectively enjoyed, ingredients are sourced from the farm gardens, architecture from repurposed materials encourage a feeling of sanctuary. Think low environmental footprint, high human value. It’s all designed to linger: over sunsets and views, firepits and new friendships, in wildflower meadows and outdoor terraces. Life is lived in the details; how we spend time with each other and how we exist in place is not the stuff of life’s periphery but its core. 

Favorite thing said about this place: “How to describe Fforest? Labelling it a campsite would be like calling El Bulli a café. Instead, picture a hip hybrid of Welsh farm and Japanese forest retreat, where you can get up close and personal with nature.”

In their own words: “The dream would be about celebrating how good ‘simple’ could look, feel and taste. The dream was to combine the life-enhancing feeling of living outdoors with the simplest of things all wrapped up in the luxury of a magical setting, underpinned by all the design and creative skills that Sian & I had learned over the years.” – James (@fforestchief)

One piece of advice we take from Fforest: As the cold sets in here, we’re taking Fforest’s advice to ‘Do Winter Well: Embrace winter with candles, fires, beautifully crafted food, long cozy lie-ins & woodland walks.” Add a thick blanket and cute PJs and we’re preparing to face this winter, maybe more alone than we like, but ready to get together when the weather turns again.

To find out more: Website / Instagram / Facebook / Twitter

Outlet PDX

What is it: Artist Kate Bingaman-Burt opened Outlet PDX in April 2017 as an experiment in making, community, and retail. It’s a combination studio space (Bingaman-Burt works from the semi-open mezzanine level) and public education, retail, library, and event space (accessible on the lower level).

Why you’ll love it: During normal times (we can discuss what that means another time), Bingaman-Burt extends her love of print across the space hosting small-scale workshops and pop-up projects. In-house Risographs Baraba, Janet, Lill’Tina, and Corita are available to experiment with posters and zine formats. During the closed times, you can still remotely print posters, flyers, and zines and attend workshops virtually, on zine-making, the basics of riso printing, and working with watercolors amongst others.

Why we think it’s kind of special: Though a pop of color, a spirit of play, and walls heaving with handdrawn creative expression, Outlet has also made a serious commitment as a white-owned business to support Black, trans, queer, Latinx, Indigenous, and disabled communities with action. Over 2020, Bingaman-Burt has pushed Outlet PDX to respond to the wider public conversation, around Black Lives Matter, gender expression, our current reckoning with our colonial past, and political divisiveness, including that stoked by the recent election. Words, and the dissemination of the messages they carry, matter here; Outlet PDX has created protest posters, de-escalation zines, and its 2021 calendar is aimed at creating more just and equitable futures.

This space has supported the work of local community organizations such as People’s Crisis Line PDX, and Agencies of Change, raised $10k for local BIPOC artists and community organizations through the exhibition 5x5, and donates what they can to local BIPOC organizers and mutual aid projects in the printing and distribution of flyers and zines. That’s no small feat at a time when independent and community spaces such as Outlet PDX are themselves struggling to survive.

In their own words: “We believe print is power and an important medium for elevating marginalized voices and disseminating information, which is vital to any kind of resistance. We want to do our part to work to create equity in printmaking and will be offering workshop scholarships for marginalized and disenfranchised folx wanting to take our workshops, as well as discounted print services and assistance.

Something to do from wherever you are: Consider which words you’d want to disseminate into the world. Which messages of support would you want to create for those within your community? Learn the skill of printing and give form to these words. You don’t need to be an artist, just a thoughtful person in the world hoping to counter messages of hate, division, and isolation that we’re now bombarded with. Or if that makes you tired, learn to draw your coffee mug.

To find out more: Website / Instagram / Facebook / Twitter

Another Place

What is it: An extraordinary public artwork by British sculpture Sir Antony Gormley permanently installed on Crosby Beach in the North of England. One hundred cast-iron figures stand facing the horizon across a 2-mile radius of the beach. These naked figures were cast from the artist’s own body, though are rendered in different states of serenity. Since 2005, over 650,000 people have born witness to these “Iron Men”, while Turner Contemporary in Margate now has its own companion work Another Time XXI.

Why you’ll love it: In a moment when we’re being forced to live in the details of our lives, to notice changing colors on daily walks or even the differentiations in the wallpaper of our homes, Another Place is similarly about the passage of time. The subtle and major shifts that happen with these figures within a very demarcated area, feels like those that happen within our own individual – and now collective – experiences.

Sometimes the tide obscures the figures, sometimes it reveals them. Sometimes the shifting sands submerge them, before allowing them to emerge again. Barnacles grow along their limbs, rust disrupts the surfaces. The tides, the weather, the industrial backdrop, alter what this sculpture can be at different times of the day, in different seasons, in different years. Though it looks static, these weighty presences (weighing just under a ton each), when subject to nature are not permanently the same.

What you need to know: Oddly peripatetic themselves, the sculptures were previously exhibited on coastlines in Germany, Norway, and Belgium — and never found their way to their next destination, New York. In their own movements, and now final place, Gormley brings up the complex emotions associated with emigration, the anxiety around movement, the hope that such movement might bring, and the resoluteness when we find our place. 

Why we think it matters: This is art not confined to the white-walled gallery. At the mercy of nature, open to anyone, Gormley recognizes the possibility of his work to capture the imagination of everyone from art pilgrims to dog walkers, beach lovers to sandcastle-building kids. Awe and wonder are held in these forms, the spaces between them and the spaces between those on the beach with them. Of Another Place Gormley has said:

 “I want to see whether it’s possible for art to be everyone’s, in the same way that the sky is and it still seems to me, that that is the most exciting challenge in art. Can you make the conditions that surround us all the time, into an arena for a kind of awareness that wouldn’t exist before, and I guess Another Place is a good example of this, where we have a beach, we have tide, we have changing conditions of weather and night and day and into that you insert these works, but adequately spaced, to allow for people to walk between them and in fact it’s the space between that is critical always in the work.”

Or in their own words — well writer Jeanette Winterson’s: “Standing modestly at their posts, the Gormley bodies are guides. They have something of ancient Earth about them — these metal men, as though they have erupted out of the iron core of the world, uncertain of human form, not smoothed by millennia of natural selection, but only now cooled from molten. They could be an older life-form pushed up, tectonically, by a shift in the Earth’s plates, or returned from a past too old to imagine, through some yawn in time.” 

How to bring this into your life: Take a masterclass with the artist: choose between Zabludowicz Collection talk, BBC’s quarantine drawing class or National Saturday Club’s body sculpting exercise.

To find out more: Website

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Discover more places for life

Utah Olympic Park

What is it? A state-of-the-art Olympic training facility, and home to the US Ski and Snowboard Teams, located in Park City, Utah. “The nearly 400 acre venue houses one of only four sliding tracks in North America, six Nordic ski jumps, a 2002 Winter Games museum, and a multitude of adventure activities.”

Why you’ll love it: Set in the picturesque mountainside of Park City Utah, Olympic Park offers year-round access to winter sports activities. In addition to their museum, extreme sports simulators and (absolutely terrifying) bobsled experience, Olympic park also allows you to sit in on the US Olympic Ski and Snowboard Team practices. For someone who is not an olympic sports enthusiast (which, how dare you) this may not seem exciting, but, we assure you, you WILL be impressed when you see the aerial skiers fly off a massive ramp, propelling them 20 meters into their air (!!!) where they land expertly in a (very deep) pool below. To see these athletes articulating every movement (in a setting where we would likely just be flailing to our deaths) is truly something to behold!

Aerial Skiers at Utah’s Olympic Park

What you need to know: While restrictions are ever-changing, because Olympic park boasts wide open outdoor viewing spaces across it’s 400 acres, it’s easy to remain distanced while watching aerial practice or checking out the freestyle ski and snowboard teams. (As a bonus, you’re nestled right up in one of the country’s most beautiful canyons) For the time being, the Alf Engen Ski Museum is open from 9am-6pm, daily. On weekends, for the low low price of $195 dollars, you are invited to risk your life (and possibly your dignity) as you scream your way down an actual bobsled track piloted by an actual bobsled professional. (Can you even fathom how much that guy loves his job?) For the slightly less death-inclined, the park also offers tubing, zip-lines, a ropes course and other season-and-covid-dependent activities.

Why we think it matters: At a time when it can be difficult to feel patriotic (re: our would-be dictator refusing to concede an election he clearly lost) Olympic Park brings us closer to a feeling of pride in our country than we’ve had in a long time. Seeing athletes whirl through the air at top speed while the flag flies high over the olympic rings is the like the reset we never knew we needed. Between the setting and the breathtaking view, it’s difficult to leave without a newfound sense of awe and wonder - a feeling we could all use, at the moment.

In their own words: Inspired by the success and momentum of the 2002 Salt Lake Olympic Winter Games, the (Utah Olympic Legacy) Foundation has turned its focus toward embracing, engaging and involving Utah’s youth in winter sport. From community-based recreational camps and progression-oriented development programs to its official designation as an official U.S. Olympic Training Site at the Utah Olympic Oval and Utah Olympic Park – the Foundation represents the future of winter sports in North America.

To learn more, you can head to their Website or Instagram

Content Care Package: Edition 2

With much of Europe back in Lockdown and the US both celebrating and resisting the outcome of the recent election, we’ve pulled together our second Content Care Package. We’ve searched for the podcasts that make us run a little further just to keep listening, the online and offline initiatives that give us ways to feel better, the neuroscience that’s making us think differently about ourselves, the sources of support that have our backs through uncertain times, the books that capture all the things we’d want to say, and the big and small ways to feel more curious and less anxious. Let’s get lost together.

Connection & Community:

• One of our favorite reads of recent times Together makes the argument that being with one another matters, though it was launched ironically at the beginning of a pandemic that found us locked in our homes and crossing streets to avoid one another. Now we’re excited that its author, Dr. Vivek Murthy has been appointed to President-Elect Joe Biden’s Coronovirus Task Force.

• Already looking for something for post-lockdown life? Birch is the staycation you may be looking for (along with every creative in London)

• Pop-up Magazine is hosting virtual suppers with recipes and chat. We sat down for the one with Cord Jefferson of The Good Place and the writer Jia Tolentino hosted by chef Priya Krishna.

• Live in Bath and ready to enter The Dream Space. It’s an experimental project for sharing people’s stories around racism, the climate and ecological crises, and the social inequalities revealed through Covid-19.

• Solitude: we all end up there eventually. Some willingly, some not.

• “In these times of social distancing, business closures, and the constant questioning of why we live in this city at all, this is my weekly reminder that San Francisco is still somewhere special.” A Pop-Up Market in our beloved city taking us back to SF’s recent olden times.

Nature:

• If you need a starting point to get back into nature, or if you are looking to deepen your knowledge of the greenery around you, we recommend Bloom Magazine.

• Bringing greenery into our home is an act of conscious self-care. Having houseplants around us has been connected to a better sense of calm and well-being, reduced anxiety, and a happier mood. Our go-to houseplant shop is Frome’s Pilea.

• Living Streets is finding ways to get us walking.

• A Veteran’s Healing Farm opens in North Carolina.

Mind/Body Connection:

• “I often say, the psyche as well as the body can, you know, stretch and come back into shape…But sometimes it doesn’t.”

• The world’s first Vagina Museum is more than a display of gynecological anatomy. It’s dedicated to a serious discussion of women’s health, feminism, and sexuality

• “We can use this medicine to start closing the health disparity gaps that exist because melanated humans in the United States live unnaturally stressed lives.”

Modern Life:

• Esther Perel on The Sway Podcast brings her wisdom from relationships to the post-election world, the interpersonal costs of the pandemic, and finding freedom in confinement.

• Are we allowed to plan ahead yet? If so, booking a slot at The Good Life Experience is high on our list of things to do for making 2021 nothing like 2020. In the meantime, you can participate in the new project Lockdown Radio and an All Day Communion, a partnership with writer Mark Shayler.

• Watched The Social Dilemma? We did, with our kids, utterly terrifying. Sign up for the Center for Humane Technology to use technology more humanely.

Purpose:

• This is all too familiar: “Many scholars, such as the psychologist Barbara Killinger, have shown that people willingly sacrifice their own well-being through overwork to keep getting hits of success.”

• Work doesn’t have to mean competition. Creativity can play nice. Both your practice and your life may better from it.

Spirituality & Meaning:

• The host of our new podcast find Unholier Than Thou, Philip Picardi is like a good friend holding your hand and bringing you along. He’s curious and open to all as he explores how faith can “fit into our lives today when the secular doesn’t feel like enough and the spiritual doesn’t always feel like a home”.

• Looking to slow down and find new stories in these uncertain times, Emergence Magazine is a long-read for this moment that follows threads that link ecology, culture, and spirituality (the same interests of its publisher The Kalliopeia Foundation).

Mental wellbeing:

• When a mid-life crisis doesn’t shape up to be the thing you believe it will be.

• Having gone through this, we applaud this again and again and again. Make Birth Better

• Preparing for the Holidays. Book Virtual Christmas Carols that support mental health charity Charlie Waller

• Listening to the podcast Ten Things That Scare Me always reminds us that we’re not alone and that we all have fears, some of which we share. There are the tiny, seeming inconsequential concerns that stymie people, and the monumental, overarching themes of our lives that cause someone to catch their breath.

• Recent advice from Headspace: Start your day with something positive (not the news). It will transform the rest of your day.

Awe & Wonder:

• Our brains have two-distinct centers for beauty. Amazing.

• Need more of Glennon Doyle. Or maybe Caitlin Moran. Or Deborah Frances-White. The How-to-Academy can bring them (or rather their insights) into your home.

• When doomscrolling becomes too much, and the world becomes an even heavier burden than usual to carry, escape into stories, into time spent curled up with a good read, into the simple pleasures of holding something in your hands that doesn’t send push notifications.

Creativity & Culture

• Seek out London’s Institute of the Imagination to let your imagination run free (even during a stay-at-home order)

• Lionheart is a little gem of a magazine, something to sink into with a cuppa in hand (and a roar in that heart of yours). It’s been designed specifically to make you feel good, though it's more handmade than self-help.

• Looking for creativity at home: workshops and kits from Stitch School (also loving their Supper Cloth for when the world starts back up again).

• Ready to play in the analog world? Head to Berlin’s Clayground or purchase one of their clay kits to do at home, with all the tools and materials you need to get your hands muddy.

Doing Good:

• Whether it’s for shopping small, shopping ethically, shopping cruelty-free, or simply for supporting some amazing people who work every day fighting the good fight, choosing Herbivore is a choice that makes us feel good.

• Reading the magazine Positive News is reassuring: that the world isn’t entirely falling apart, that people aren’t demons in disguise running amok, that humanity isn’t doomed to endlessly flail (all thoughts that may have crossed our minds in the past curiosity of a year).

• And leaving you with Obama and his enduring belief that America can become a place that aligns with the best of us.

We also wanted to let you know that our thoughtful guide to life is now back. Since March, we’ve hesitated on writing about places in the world as they close and open then close and open again, but we’ve come to believe strongly that in times of need we all need somewhere to go — even if it’s saved for later, or engaged with online, even as it can be bookmarked in the imaginary or supported from afar. The hope of bookstores, departments of make-believe, festivals, bakeries, cafes, museums, independent stores, maker studios, pop-up markets, school of emotions, sculpture parks, all existing still keeps us going. As our collective mental health is spiraling, the world out there, the collective world of our making, still has something to offer: ideas, nature, people, comfort, meaning, purpose, and wonder. We hope you enjoy our recent guide entries. We’re working on posting one a day and building out our guide, so we can truly make the mental health map that we believe we need.

One note: This platform is built by us but made by and for you. Let us know which sources of joy, wisdom, and connection you are looking to wherever you are by writing with us. Head here to know how to do this.

And also Schitt’s Creek is making the world a better place, still.

The Good Life Experience

What is it: Billed as a festival like no other, The Good Life Experience takes place over a long autumn weekend on a castle estate in North Wales and has all the things that you’d hope to have in your regular life — great music, creative expression, inspirational books, time in the great outdoors, incredible food — to give you a taster of The Good Life. Founded by Cerys Matthews, Steve Abbot, and Charlie and Caroline Gladstone in 2014 to be ‘more than just’, from its starting point of “powerful, memorable and — most importantly — FUN experiences.”, it has since expanded to include Summer Camps, a dog-diving competition, and a range of activities for our grown-up inner children like fairground rides, ax throwing, and blacksmithing!

Why you’ll love it: Sometimes we think of The Good Life like our guide made in festival format: it has all the components that we try to weave together in the way that we approach the world: connection, nature, wellness, untethering, purpose, meaning, awe, creativity and doing good. All that is needed for our wellbeing.

Or see it like a favorite lifestyle magazine that makes all the things recommended and talked about happen in the real world rather than just on the page, so there’s the latest authors talking about their writings, top chefs cooking their recipes with us, sustainably produced fashion and small independent makers to shop, and travel spreads on glamping that you get to inhabit for a few nights. It's all there for real-world engagement. 

Or consider it like how kids feel when they get to a theme park and want to do all the things and they have that squeaky voice and excitement inside, but here it’s us grown-ups (though many of us with our kids) wanting to do all the things too. On our list are floristry and weaving, dancing to new bands then star gazing, faery card reading, and campfire cooking sessions.

In short, The Good Life Experience is a playground of the thoughtfully curated and frankly just fun for the curious and the seekers among us.

What you need to know: Are we allowed to plan ahead yet? If so, booking a slot at The Good Life Experience is high on our list of things to do for making 2021 nothing like 2020. (Tickets are already available for next year’s festival taking place from 29 April to 2 May and the waitlist for them has already started — which we’re now also on, sigh).

How to bring this into your life: The Good Life Experience is not just a festival anymore, it’s becoming a way of life to access year-round. And when lockdown happened (and is happening again) the team behind it got active: see a community shop in a pub, new podcasts and daily posters, Some Good Ideas, and a whole array of Good Life Experiences to do at home. At the time of writing, you can participate in the new project Lockdown Radio and an All Day Communion, a partnership with writer Mark Shayler. Out of festival hours, there are also weekend camps at sister project Glen Dye in Scotland and open through all the times their farm shop on Hawarden Estates.

Why we think it’s different: There was a moment not that long ago when making anything other than toast for breakfast was seen as the norm and self-care extended to a long bath. Maybe we learned knitting from our nans, or we tried Jamie Oliver when we needed to cook, or we got into the National Trust to go outdoors. But then something shifted, hugely. With the constant demands of our working and online lives, a planet on a horribly destructive path, and daily life that’s getting harder on our minds and souls, many of us are now seeking out the different and the good and the life-affirming. We’re looking for ways to connect with something slower, more meaningful, and dare we say it more human.

Such pastimes as wild swimming, crafting, and poetry, have become newly popular and widely sought out. Just think about those sourdough starters and new crocheted wall pieces that you started in Lockdown. We turn to other things when the world turns inside out, and often these are simple pleasures, the people around us, and the natural world.

Where once The Good Life Experience was a singular way of being, now more of us are open to experiences that help us find new ways of navigating our lives and having better, more joyful, and sustainable days as we do so. If The Good Life Experience becomes just an interruption in the year from all the things that make modern life what it is than that’s great, but taking new discoveries beyond the weekend has the capacity to help year-round. 

In their own words: “At its core, this movement can best be defined, perhaps, as The Search for The Good Life; a life that’s fulfilled and considered, yes, but is also fun and values the things that matter... family, friends, a real connection with The Great Outdoors, proper food and drink, discovery, music that comes from the soul, great books, craft. All the things that don’t cost a great deal but that make life richer, more rewarding, and better fun.”

To find out more: Website / Instagram / Twitter / Facebook

Additionally try: The Big Retreat

Herbivore Clothing Co.

What it is: Cruelty-free clothing store (but really so much more) located in Portland's Vegan Mini Mall (yes, this is real).

What sets them apart: Herbivore Clothing Co has always been more than just a shop. Founded in 2002 by Michelle Schwegmann and her partner, Josh, Herbivore got its start as a modest operation with a simple purpose: "We wanted good looking clothes, ethically made, that would show the world we believed animals deserved respect, love, and to be free from harm. We wanted to spread the word about living cruelty-free." With designs featuring phrases like "Eat Like You Give A Damn", "I'm Vegan and I Love You" and "Humane Meat Is Yuppie Bullshit" their messages act as catalysts for reflection and, in our experience, are great conversation starters, as well!

Why we think it matters: From hosting events, speaking at veg-fests, donating time to sanctuaries, and co-founding an animal rights conference, Herbivore has made a name as a company with a conscience. In addition to the work they've done to further the animal rights movement, they've also donated time and funds to human rights and social justice movements, believing that dismantling oppression, at every level, is the only way forward. "Our approach has always been to show veganism as a positive choice that gives you back so much more than you give up. Compassion Is Invincible!"

Why you’ll love it: We know from research (and being people in the world) that aligning our lives with our values is one of the quickest ways to feel good. The choices we make have an impact, not just on the world, but on ourselves. Whether it’s for shopping small, shopping ethically, shopping cruelty-free, or simply for supporting some amazing people who work every day fighting the good fight, choosing Herbivore, and all of their amazing offerings, is a choice that makes us feel good. That, and, they have some incredible designs. Whether you’re shopping for graphic tees, books, shoes, wallets, purses, buttons, or snacks, Herbivore has got you covered.

In their own words: (in reference to their Vegans Are Radical tee, but we feel like the sentiment carries) “Vegans. Are. Radical. Living with the intention to cause the least harm is radical. Though Veganism has become more popular, real change for animals is a challenge that requires work from the ground up, systemic change. Yes, let’s all eat plants, not animals. And let’s talk about radicalizing our food system to be more compassionate, to animals & people & the planet.”

How to bring this into your life wherever you are: In addition to their incredible online store (re: high-quality vegan versions of everything you’ve ever wanted), you can also follow @Herbivoreclothingco on Instagram (where you’ll see their kindness, activism, and lockdown cooking skills shine through in every post). When the world is not in lockdown, you can also meet Michelle and Josh at veg fest across the US!

To find out more: Website / Instagram

Solitude

As seekers of places in the world that contain us, there is nowhere that captures our imagination as much as that of Solitude. As commonplace as Costa (or Target for American readers), and as divisive as Goop, that state of being alone is one that we all may experience, but only some of us willingly seek out.

As Lockdown 2.0 is with us in much of Europe, we’re having to confront once again how Solitude can show up in our lives and how it stakes territory around us. This time though, from where I’m sitting alone at my kitchen table, it doesn’t feel like we’re all starting our frantic self-improvement projects again, but rather, as the color drains out of our newly returned worlds, we’re just trying to make stays against depression, loneliness, and loss. 

When Solitude works, when it asserts itself as the Scandinavian design of our self-care worlds, it offers clarity, an opportunity to hear our inner voices, it gives us a chance to reconnect with ourselves. Silent meditations, forest bathing, wild swims, epic walks, even sitting reading in a favorite chair and lying a little longer in bed in the morning, whatever form Solitude can take, can capture that sense of being alone, but in a resoundingly positive way. Solitude holds the world back so that we may come in again. It’s a wall we can build around ourselves or the boundary that can set us apart for a while — even if you use it to connect with something bigger than yourself and to untether your mind to get to that universal ‘om’.

For some of us, Solitude is a place of comfort we deliberately seek out in our days. As with many introverts, for me, it’s the place I find to recharge. It was in a group lesson with a meditation teacher on how to get out of our minds, that I realized that wasn’t where I wanted to go. Getting into my mind, being able to play inside, that’s a place of comfort and retreat, a way to lose myself. In the first lockdown, my struggle was that I carried everywhere with me this potential for solace and comfort, but I couldn’t access it because I was never alone. With two children to homeschool, a business to run, and a husband no longer commuting, my life became crowded, my days full, and Solitude a place that I dreamt of.

I recognize that it’s a beast though, Solitude, if we allow it to grow, to take over, to become the only place we ever get to. Solitude can sit on us, it can hold us down, it can make us struggle for ways out that we can never find. When imposed and not chosen, Solitude does something very different to us. It calls in loneliness, it shines a light on our failings, it cultivates our anxiety, it can even bring on madness. Alone in our homes (even as the husband puts the kettle on beside us), separated from those we love by a pandemic and maybe also politics now (the post-election US is very much the context here), with our purpose confined to laptops and zoom calls, we can feel like we’re in a place no longer of our choosing. And with ever-shifting regulations and news bulletins, we’re told it’s one that we can’t easily leave. 

Solitude as the storefront of our emotional lives starts to present differently, too. It can be a covetable indie café or an anonymous dollar store. Our Solitude over here can start to look much worse than your Solitude over there. Your neighbor, friends, or Insta-acquaintances can seem to be giving Solitude a Lockdown makeover. They’ve gone heavily into Hygge — their candles are burning, and sheepskins are carelessly draped on artisan benches beside outside firepits. Or they’ve become the creatives we envy and aspire to be, developing new but highly successful practices in screen-printing or photographic still lives. Or they are filling their days with awe and wonder, taunting us with complicated dance routines and planetariums built in the backyard.

We’re looking over Insta shoulders and neighbors’ walls wondering why Solitude looks so good for them, but so suffocating for us. How are they living in the better version? How are they shaping it rather than it them? But we know by now that styling a life, is not the same as living a life, or indeed telling the truth about a life (even though we forget that we know that all the time). Our coping strategies take all forms — and, indeed, have to, for we are all different, and so Solitude too is a shape-shifter.

However, you feel about Solitude — whether it’s a place you run towards or from — know this: Solitude has closing hours, too. It’s a temporary destination with a month-by-month (maybe even minute to minute) lease. There are ways out if that is what we are looking for (see Connection) and if it’s not, there are ways to nestle deeper into it (and extend its run). I know people who avoid Solitude with the passion of someone on a restrictive diet: they busy themselves, reach out to people widely and carelessly, fill days with things to do, spend time always with all the people, avoid its dark spaces.

I know others who crave it like new love, get itchy to spend time with it, fall into its comforts, and neglect the open arms of their human companions. Either approach works until it falls out of balance and then doesn’t. There is no judgment that Solitude should show up a certain way, but rather a recognition that we are in relationship to Solitude because we are in relationship to ourselves. After all, isn’t that the reality of Solitude, it’s the one place we can never avoid, because we are always there.

When our world shifts again, which we know now that it must, you can choose to stay in Solitude a bit longer. You may have found, like some the first time around, that they rather liked it. Or you may leave it behind, car tires screeching as you drive to new sunsets.  Because by then hopefully, the destination of Solitude will be a choice and not an imposition. No one should be forced to go anywhere, especially here. Solitude can be life’s respite but also our greatest torture. It contains multitudes. There are very few places like it.

Pilea Plant Shop

What is it: A gorgeous shop devoted to houseplants situated at the top of Frome’s hill of independents.

Why you’ll love it: With names like Monstera deliciosa cheese plants, Calathea lancifolia rattlesnakes, and Sedum burritos you might be confused about what you are choosing, and how to care for it. But at Pilea, it's all about bringing you together with a plant that you love and that you feel able to care for.

What you need to know: With everyday and exotic selections, the people who work here are happy to consult with you about which plant will thrive in your home. They’ll even send you on your way with a short guide to making your plant happy (ie keeping it alive).

How to bring this into your life: When the store closes, the carefully chosen plants head online. Workshops aren’t running at the moment, but when they are we recommend you check them out for some creative plant inspiration.

Why we think it matters: Bringing greenery into our home is an act of conscious self-care. Having houseplants around us has been connected to a better sense of calm and well-being, reduced anxiety, and a happier mood. They have even been connected to better concentration and improved memory, as well as physiological benefits like higher pain tolerance, lower blood pressure, and reduced headaches, fatigue, and cortisol levels. Add to this that some houseplants have been shown to improve air quality – NASA even has a list of which ones to buy for your homes. That Ficus plant that you may be coveting for your lounge looks good but it also supports human health.

In their own words: “Pilea plant shop provides beautiful and more unusual houseplants. It's really important that our customers feel confident taking a plant home to nurture. These days there are so many varieties of houseplants available. We love getting excited with people about the varieties that can be sourced, helping them understand how to look after them in their homes, replicating the tropical climates that the plants often originate from.”

To find out more: Website / Instagram

Friends Work Here

What is it: Coworking for Brooklyn creatives brought to you by Swiss Miss aka Tina Roth Eisenberg of some of our favorite endeavors: Creative Mornings, Tattly, Creative Guild, and the TeauxDeux app.

Why you’ll love it: This is not your usual coworking space. It very much embraces our lives in the round, the heart and the head, or applied to our working lives, relationships as much as purpose.

Situated on the third floor of a former factory building, it’s a 3,000 sq foot open plan space that ticks off all the design boxes: exposed brick, wooden floors, light strewing windows, as well as playful pillows, colorful magazine racks, indoor swing, and outdoor deck. There’s even occasionally live music on the fire escape. But it’s not just for hanging out, the other aspect of the space is dedicated to the needs of the professional freelancer with dedicated workstations, a conference room, phone booths, and the ubiquitous whiteboard.

Actually, scratch that, though this space is divided into the loungy and the worky, the ethos is very much that magic happens everywhere – over potluck lunches, in the kitchen making coffee, accidental conversations between meetings. Those interactions build relationships, but also create a web of inspiration and motivation in which to work.

What you need to know: Since 2015 when Friends Work Here morphed from Studio Mates, this has become a co-working community targeted at creatives — designers, illustrators, filmmakers, developers, authors, writers, photographers, and the professionally multi-hyphenated. The fact that it's situated in the same building as The Invisible Dog Art Center and the HQ of Creative Mornings, means there’s a close ecosystem of talented people to be inspired by.

Why we think it's special: Coworking that puts its people at its core. That shouldn’t be unusual but often the business model and need to scale take over, and members become another cog in the purpose-finding wheel. Friends Work Here does not take a one size fits all approach but rather prides itself on bringing together people who fit in with its values — amongst these collaboration, curiosity, kindness. The friends in its name is no accident; Members are carefully chosen to give themselves and the rest of the community the best chance of flourishing. Calling itself ‘a seriously heart-forward community’, competition and ego are not going to work well here, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be talented and invested in what you and the others around you are working on. Just that the work doesn’t get in front of being a person, even if the work is the reason you are there. 

In their own words: “We welcome new members who are curious, take their side projects seriously, and who believe that collaborating is good for the soul. We love individuals who love what they do and continuously strive to grow and get better. We appreciate people who love the internet as much as we do. We want doers and kind souls.’

Something to take away from this space: Work doesn’t have to mean competition. Creativity can play nice. Both your practice and your life may better from it.

To find out more: Website / Instagram / Twitter

Topping and Company

What is it: One of those independent bookstores to wander, with floor to ceiling books (complete with signature bookshelf ladders), heaving tables of the latest reads, and approachable staff. 

Why you’ll love it: More than books (but there are so, so many), Topping supports writers (and their readers), with supper talks, one-day literary festivals, book signings, and reading groups.

What you need to know: There are now four of them: In 2002, Robert and Louise Topping opened the first bookstore in Ely, Cambridgeshire, in 2007 the Bath branch followed, in 2014 St Andrews and in 2019 the 4000 sq foot Edinburgh store (run by their now grown-up kids).

What they offer during whatever situation we find ourselves in: Can’t get to the shop for any reason (pandemics, life, general fatigue) you can call or go online to order books or get recommendations. You could even holler from the doorstep! Join their Signed Fiction Club or Signed Non-Fiction Club with a book a month selected by their booksellers sent your way. Some of the author events head online when regulations shift. 

Why we think it matters: After some years out (children, work, smartphones), we found ourselves returning to books over the lockdown months. This after studying English Literature and always having a book in our pocket into our early grown-up years. But when doomscrolling became too much, and the world became an even heavier burden than usual to carry, we escaped into stories, into time spent curled up with a good read, into the simple pleasures of holding something in our hands that didn’t send push notifications. Books are a way back to a version of life that had been edged out by phones, click-bait, and ‘being busy’; they are an antidote to that to-do list that keeps you scrambling.

And one crucial thing to add, yes Amazon is all convenience, but it’s not all community or connection. Indie bookstores are truly some of our neighborhood’s special places — where else can you lose yourself in worlds, be led by curiosity alone, wander while forgetting what time it is? The fact that as legendary a bookshop as Paris’ Shakespeare and Company, and one as popular as New York’s The Strand have had to embark on public campaigns to save themselves, means that an even larger hole has opened up to swallow up these beloved places and we need to stop that, one book purchase at a time (you are the superhero that can save them in this analogy). Think about what you want to remain when life returns. For us, bookstores need to stay with us. There are souls are our cities (yes, we really believe that). 

In their own words: Quite simply: “Explore The Universe From Your Sitting Room.”

 To find out more: Website / Instagram / Twitter / Facebook

Clayground Ceramic Studio

What is it: A co-working space for ceramicists of all levels.

Why you’ll love it: Take the coworking concept — flexible access, a supportive community, thoughtful design, and the provisions necessary to thrive — then apply it to the practice of ceramics, and you arrive at Clayground. 

What you need to know: Whether as a hobbyist just getting started or a professional looking for the space to create, Clayground has put in the investment — in space, tools, and community — to support ceramicists. A cozy space, memberships are on application and provide 24/7 access not only to the studio space but also to all aspects of production including wheels, tools, and glazes. During “normal times,” check out the workshop schedule and studio sales.

How to bring this into your life: Ready to play in the analog world? Purchase one of their clay kits to do at home, with all the tools and materials you need to get your hands muddy.

Why we think it's different: If you need it and can’t find it, build it. Clayground was founded by architect Jonas Klock and user researcher and service designer Caitlin Delphine, after she moved from Stockholm to Berlin and couldn’t find the kind of community space she needed in which to make her ceramics. She found that others shared that need too, with Clayground soon having an active membership (which you can also shop on the site).

As we’re increasingly looking for ways to bring creativity into our lives, to make with our hands, to produce something material, places like Clayground stake out vital space for exactly that. It’s been designed to make creativity happen within a community of support and takes the intimidation factor out of claiming to be a creative person.

We also love how ceramics as a practice can feel like a return to form, a much-needed antidote perhaps to the functionality that dominates our modern lives. Making visible something through clay is something that we can grasp onto as life starts to feel more and more about the intangible.

In their own words: “Clayground is a ceramics co-working studio for ceramics memberships and ceramics workshops. Our thoughtfully designed space in a quiet corner of Friedrichshain, Berlin brings together a collaborative community, with clay creatives of all levels helping each other.  We believe in having time and space to focus on your craft, without navigating around drop-in hours.” 

 To find out more: Website / Instagram

Rawberry

What is it: A vegetarian juice bar and café just off Winchester High Street

Why you’ll love it: Massive pink letters on the window announce its ‘Feel Good’ factor and once you step inside the bright café space (if allowed at the time of visiting) you’ll instantly get how different this place is.

What you need to know: What you eat affects how you feel – that’s the idea behind a menu of juices with names like ‘Belly Buddy’ and ‘Super Skin’ and Smoothies that include ‘Green is the New Black’. Caffeinated options go the Beetroot and Turmeric Latte route and there’s even a Superfood Hot Chocolate. 

While there: Check out The Study Hub downstairs, 6 tables reserved for serious work, and getting out of the house when that option is available to us again.

What they offer beyond the cafe: Weekly juice deliveries – bringing bottled sunshine to you over grey days – and for those times when all the supermarket delivery slots are booked, opt for one of the essentials provisions and raw boxes. Also, see retail treats – like Soakin’s line of bath salts for when this world of ours is getting too much.

Why we think it matters: If you are of the post milk generation, believe that independents are crucial to healthy communities – this is a family run business - and sustainable sourcing goes hand in hand with your daily coffee – they serve River Coffee Roasters which makes sure the people who produce the beans benefit too – then places like Rawberry have a role on our High Streets. Our everyday choices like where we pick up our daily cup have impacts beyond just making us feel good (or awake), helping our communities, food producers, and even the animals taken out of the food system. 

In their own words: ‘At Rawberry, we know it can be difficult to find alternatives on Winchester’s High Street; Whether it's vegetarian, vegan, gluten or dairy-free. Options are sparse. This is why for the last three years, from our beginnings as a humble market stall, we have been working on the alternative.’

To find out more: Website / Instagram / Twitter

Everything is Schitt

Picture this: Your country is under lockdown in the midst of a global pandemic. It’s an election year and the people whose voices need to be heard most are being actively suppressed. The leader of the free world has never actually lived in the real world (or paid federal taxes in this world) nor does he have any grasp for what it means to be an active member of this world, yet he’s somehow become the voice of the “average American man”. *shudder*

Now imagine that storms are ravaging half the country while the other half literally burns to the ground. Imagine being stuck at home, realizing that you aren’t qualified to assist with 3rd-grade math. Imagine that you are one of the 2.65 million women forced out of the workforce as you return to 1950s America while your partner continues to “support you”. (#blessed) Or worse, you are out of work completely, on your own as you search for a job or any level of assistance, and there is no funding available to help you through. Imagine that you, like our country, are a flaming mess of tears and fire and rage, a vibe that is echoed throughout your life and home…but you still have to find a suitable corner to display to literally every person you’d want to hide your home from. Imagine thinking you were on mute.

*deep breath*

Now imagine giving up and watching TV all day.

Ok, ok, ok, we know - escapism is not the answer (and hardly ever what we’d recommend) but sometimes the world feels so shitty and a show comes along with the potential to make us feel so good that we’re pretty sure it would be recommended by our therapists (or at the very least, our astrologists). In this case, that show is: Schitt’s Creek.

If you still remain unconvinced as to why Schitt’s Creek is the best show on television and why you should watch every episode in rapid succession as soon as possible, please enjoy this rundown of relevant quotes and responses to our current woes.

This was all of us (circa mid April):

Then again in slightly later mid-April:

Our children every day of distance learning:

Getting back on Tinder in the midst of a pandemic when you know you really shouldn’t, like:

Trump to his supporters:

Biden explaining to Trump how he is going to win the presidency:

Our friends when we suggest they wear their masks when we hang out:

Casually trying to interact with our friends/co-workers on a crowded zoom session:

When the internet suggests we be more productive with our newfound “free” time:

Our friends after we’ve depression-ghosted them for months then finally text them back:

Us, spending money we do not have on skincare products we don’t need:

The world right now:

Us, feigning hope for the future:

Miyoko's Creamery

Doing Good From Home with Miyoko’s Creamery

What is it: Founded by celebrity chef Miyoko Shinner, Miyoko’s is a California-based vegan cheese company whose mission is to shift the dairy industry from animal to plant-based. They call this the Evolution of Dairy and it is all very exciting!

Why you’ll love it: More than being one of the most delicious dairy replacement items we’ve ever had (and, truly, we’ve tried it all) we love Miyokos because it stands for something. While their mission is partially to help you make an out-of-this-world mac n cheese that will blow the minds of your very non-vegan friends, it is, equally, to shift our world completely, by inspiring more people to go vegan. (They even run a farm animal sanctuary!)

What you need to know: If the world stopped consuming meat and dairy, global farmland use would be reduced by over 75 percent. That’s the equivalent of the United States, China, the European Union, and Australia combined reverting their farmland back to a natural environment. Buying an electric car, lowering your thermostat, and taking quick showers all pale in comparison to simply eating less meat and dairy. The way we produce, consume, and waste food is unsustainable. Every person has the power to effect change just by their daily food choices. (Source: The Guardian)

What they offer: Literally: Vegan cheeses, butter and spreads made by skilled cheesemakers, using traditional cheesemaking cultures and processes resulting in a line of products so good that we actually can’t even understand how it is possible. (It also makes all the dishes we bring to Thanksgiving instant hits with our otherwise skeptical families). Figuratively: hope for a sustainable world that does not depend on the exploitation of animals.

Why we think it’s different: If you were vegan over a decade ago, you might remember the floppy American-cheese-esque slices that once sat on the outskirts of the produce section, near the tofu. They were, putting it lightly, a travesty. (Though we thank them for a stepping stone in the dairy-free evolution.) Miyokos is different because its products are aged and processed in a way that mimics the dairy industry processes. In short: we’re able to make mac and cheese and lasagna and brown butter sauce without feeling like we’ve sacrificed anything in regard to flavor or texture. More than that, we feel GOOD about ourselves when we make this switch. This. . .is a game-changer.

In their own words: “Our mission is: Phenomenally Vegan. What do we mean by that? It’s the new gold standard for the future of food that emphasizes artistry, integrity, ethics and conviviality. It's the credo that drives everything we do from the creation of our products to inspiring others to try this phenomenal lifestyle. Phenomenally Vegan is how we change the world. Together.”

Why we love them: In addition to their wonderful products, lovely founder, and ambitious mission, we love Miyokos because of their dedication, honesty, and adherence to their values. In 2015, Miyoko founded Rancho Compassion, a farmed-animal sanctuary based in west Marin County. Here, over 70 (otherwise slaughter-bound) animals have the chance to live out their days in peace and comfort. Visitors are encouraged to come and interact with the animals, receive education into humane living and maybe even cuddle a cow. (All offerings are virtual for now, but the sanctuary is still very much in operation!) We love Miyokos because they’ve found a way to take their passion for all living beings and put it into products that are actually capable of freeing those same beings. They make “doing good” feel very easy for the rest of us.

To find out more: Website / Instagram

If you’ve experienced Miyoko’s Creamery and have something to add here, or if there’s another plant-based destination that you love, let us know by emailing us at hello@ifloststarthere.com.