News

We are recruiting for new TRUSTEES with energy and inspiration to work with the board to strategically support the organisation.

Our vision 

To ensure that every person living with a life altering illness or facing bereavement or loss is given the opportunity to improve their physical and mental wellbeing by leading a full creative life , and, in so doing challenge the stigma of life with serious illness and loss.

Our Mission

We engage participants in transformative creative practices that enable them to alter their own perception of a life lived with illness or trauma.  We develop their confidence and creative skills so that they are able to create performances that change the perceptions of audiences about disability and loss

. Role Description and Person Specification

General responsibilities:

Values

We welcome and encourage applications from a broad range of backgrounds and experiences. We welcome applications from everyone regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, faith, socio-economic background or disability. We encourage applications from those with lived experience of serious illness or loss. We look for staff and trustees who share our values and champion our ethos to make the arts and culture as accessible as possible to all people.

Role/Duties

Rosetta Life’s Board of Trustee’s meet quarterly online. Trustees will also be expected to attend an annual in person meeting and support the organisation at public events where possible. Board members may also have extra responsibilities as part of specific committees.

• To ensure that the organisation complies with its governing document, charity law (if applicable), company law and any other relevant legislation or regulations
• To ensure that the organisation pursues its objects as defined in its governing document
• To ensure the organisation applies its resources exclusively in pursuance of its objects
• To contribute actively to the board role in giving firm strategic direction to the organisation, setting overall policy, defining goals and setting targets and evaluating performance against agreed targets
• To safeguard the good name and values of the organisation
• To ensure the effective and efficient administration of the organisation
• To ensure the financial stability of the organisation
• To protect and manage the property of the organisations and to ensure the proper investment of its funds
• Led by the Chair, to appoint the chief executive officer and monitor his / her performance.
• In addition to the above statutory duties, each board member should use any specific skills, knowledge or experience they have to help the board reach sound decisions. This involves:

o   Scrutinising board papers

o   Leading discussions

o   Focusing on key issues

o   Providing guidance on new initiatives

o   Other issues in which the board member has special expertise

Person specification:

We are particularly looking for legal, PR and Marketing, financial professionals who can support us in strengthening these areas of governance.

In addition we request:

• Commitment to the organisation
• Willingness to devote the necessary time and effort
• Strategic vision
• Good, independent judgement
• Ability to think creatively
• Willingness to speak their mind
• Understanding and acceptance of the legal duties, responsibilities and liabilities of board membership
• Ability to work effectively as a member of a team
• Nolan’s seven principles of public life: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.
• Tact and diplomacy
• Good communication and interpersonal skills
• Some financial experience
• The skills to analyse proposals and examine their consequences
• Willingness to be available to staff for advice and enquiries
  

To discuss the role further please contact Sarah Bazin

Email: sarah_bazin@hotmail.com

Thank you for your ongoing support through 2022. As the year approaches its end, we would like you to join us in celebrating our combined achievements from the past 12 months.

Rosetta Life – 2022 from Rosetta Life on Vimeo.

Odysseys performance arts & ambassador programmes

Our partnership with SHAPER, the arts in health research grant funded by The Wellcome Trust and delivered through Kings College London, continued. Next year we look forward to sharing the outcomes of the Implementation Science research that has examined how arts and health programmes can be upscaled nationally. After two years of online working we were delighted to return to face to face workshops and were able to deliver two live performance programmes. In February we shared a new performance piece inspired by the work of Helen Frankenthaler at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and in the autumn, we took the show, A Newfound Mind, with a cast of 35 London Ambassadors, to a live audience of 200 at the Greenwood Theatre London.

Image: Spirals, Camden Roundhouse – London ambassadors.

The Wishing Well

In early 2022 we presented a co-created devised dance performance, to a packed house at Rich Mix London. The Wishing Well was co-created with patients from Accelerate CIC, who are living with lymphoedema. In August, the same group joined a week’s dance residency at The Place, London, where they added puppetry, costume and set design to their dance performance skills and developed key ideas for their next performance project.

Image: @Foteini Wishing Well Cast – Accelerate CIC patient group

Room2Dream

With a project grant from Arts Council England and support from Footworks,  we produced our first 360 immersive film. We collaborated with 14 international and UK partners, in seven partnerships, to explore writing poetry, sharing songs and 360 filmmaking.

Composer Jocelyn Pook and sound designer Steve Parr created a response to the young people’s stories on the theme of home and their immersive sound piece is a remarkable testimony to the power of the young people’s ideas and words. The film was nominated for the Jury Award at the UK FullDome festival in Plymouth and we hope to tour it widely in 2023.

Image: Bartholomew school viewing the film at in a full dome, Market Hall Plymouth.

A Small Mouse in a Large World

We worked with Bristol University, Southmead Hospital and Bristol After Stroke to develop a dance film to help widen awareness of vision impairment that many face after stroke.

Heart of Care

We delivered dance sessions with Bristol Black carers who have gone on to design a national project with us, with partnerships nationally in Tyneside and London, and internationally in India and Rwanda to raise the profile of unpaid carers. We are looking forward to developing these partnerships in 2023. For more information please see
www.heartofcare.net

Sometimes I Dream I am Dancing

In Reading, Ambassadors Performed their original performance, A Pilgrim’s Tale, at the University of Reading – they even filmed a boat trip along the Thames as part of their process and included film and animation in their final performance.

Throughout the pandemic we held online sessions and created monthly newsletters to keep ambassadors connected to each other. The Reading ambassadors curated an anthology of poems and artwork submitted by the national network of ambassadors, entitled Sometimes I Dream I am Dancing. The anthology was launched on National Poetry Day. It is a remarkable testament to the resilience and creativity of the communities we support. You can download a copy here or order one by emailing info@rosettalife.org

Image: Poetry anthology front cover – image @Hazel Hammond

Social prescribing: Healing Landscapes

We worked with the Museum of Rural Life in Reading to engage local organisations in poetry inspired by imagined, recollected and physically immediate landscapes as part of their Thriving Communities programme. We look forward to expanding these collaborations next year.

Image: Sonia and Martyn, University of Reading.

In Buckinghamshire we worked in the community with people who had experienced a stroke, supported by local musicians. Participants included the wonderfully talented staff choir at Wycombe Hospital and once again we were delighted to support their Christmas concert.

Our artists continued to deliver sessions on stroke wards in NHS hospitals in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and London, supported by the ambassadors who brought their creative skills and lived experience of brain injury to the hospital wards

New team members

Mairead Ruane
Ambassador support coordinator

Donate

You can fundraise for Rosetta Life or donate directly here; all donations support us in growing the work, delivering programmes on wards and in the community and supporting people in attending sessions where mobility or personal circumstances may limit access.

https://www.justgiving.com/rosettalife

Image: Spirals, Camden Roundhouse – London ambassadors

Sponsor

Would your organisation like to sponsor our charitable work in 2023? If you represent or know of an organisation that is looking for a charity partner and the opportunity to support a fantastically ambitious small charity that is making a real difference to people’s lives, please contact us at info@rosettalife.org

Funding our work:

Thank you to the following for supporting us in 2022:

Spirals from Rosetta Life on Vimeo.

SPIRALS shows what our Stroke Ambassadors learnt and achieved during lockdown.  40 participants living with brain injury explore how the idea of the spiral embodies their lived experience of illness. In this film, their own camerawork, lyric writing, singing, dancing and image-making witnesses the two-steps-forward-one-step-back story of recovery from brain-injury.  This remarkable performance shows what can be learnt and achieved online, under lockdown conditions,  and crucially, the welcome return of face-to-face live sessions when lockdown was finally lifted. This film and the accompanying live performance – A New Found Mind – premiered at the Greenwood Theatre in London Oct 19 2022 and will tour in London early 2023.

Room2Dream is an immersive music and 360 film installation made by young people across the world, exploring the theme of Home.

Young people from fourteen centres across the world have worked together on a cycle of shared songs.  Through the eyes of young people, we are taken on a journey from Zimbabwe, Rwanda, South Africa, Gaza, Syria, India and Nepal to England and Scotland as they explore what home means for them.

A year’s collaboration between schools, children’s hospices, hospital schools and refugee centres involved creative writing, song making and 360 filmmaking.

Room 2 Dream 2 min trailer from Rosetta Life on Vimeo.

A youth leadership group with representation from all partners came together to write a single shared chorus.  A remarkable score in response to the young people’s poems and chorus has been created by composer Jocelyn Pook.

“The children have never before been listened to so well. The opportunity to make links and forge bonds with other young people across the world has been life changing for our students. They have learned that their voices matter, their creativity matters and they have been able to collaborate in a shared artwork that transcends country borders”
Jess Selfe, English Literature Teacher, Bartholomew School, Eynsham

Support the project and donate here –
https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/Room2Dream