Bamboozle @ Home – Year 1 in review

As we embark on the second year of our Bamboozle @ Home project, we asked artist Miriam Keye to write a blog about her experience on Year 1 of the project with Josie and her family and carers.

Read below to find out what was discovered.

Is it ever truly possible to travel a mile in someone else’s shoes?

The Bamboozle @ Home project creates the space for pairs of artists to be in the family home of a young person who may be described as having profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) for five sessions of three hours each. I have found it to be an incredible experience – rare and very precious.

Four families were involved in the Spring 2024 round. The young person and their family were invited to choose their preferred two artforms- music, theatre, storytelling, puppetry, visual arts, crafting, dance. My specialism is dance and movement. I was paired with a musician called Lara and we were invited to be “At Home with Josie”.

The invitation for us Bamboozle @ Home artists was to simply be at home with the young person and their family. To come without expectation, desire or any need to produce anything. To simply get to know the young person, to invite them to show us what they prefer, what they enjoy, and to allow our time together to grow in ways we may not have ever expected. One of the artists described it as “…going in to meet a fellow collaborator, rather than doing things with or for the young person, we are all creating equally together”.

Josie is a young adult. She attends college, has achieved a Duke of Edinburgh award, and volunteers at a charity working with animals. She has been coming to Bamboozle shows and residencies since she was a young child. She can be very clear to give a yes/no response to clear questions and she will absolutely indicate whether she is enjoying something or not – she has the most incredible smile that lights up the room and all the surrounding areas. She is so likeable with a fantastic sense of humour – when she left school her teachers and teaching assistants followed her to become her personal carers. We got to experience her cheeky side when she was choosing who she wanted to dance with to the song Lara was playing. We went all around the room saying each person’s name separately, Josie said ‘No’ to each person until… we landed on the one carer she works with who had specifically revealed to her how embarrassing she finds it to dance in front of strangers!! So, who does she choose? Of course! It was hilarious and such a wonderful introduction to her and the rest of Team Josie.

Our first visit to her home happened to be May Day and knowing that she had specifically chosen dance and music we figured out a way to create a maypole in her front room!! Josie chose who would have which colour ribbon, she chose the tempo and style of music, and we all proceeded to dance around the maypole… or should I say we tried to… we ended up completely tangled in each other’s ribbons and tied to the pole itself. It was absolute comical, total mayhem. Upon watching her carer’s movements with Josie it was clear that the feeling of being spun around the room in her wheelchair was something Josie was enjoying. That and daft, physical humour brought lots of smiles. With Spring being connected to the element of wood we went around the house to find wooden items to create sounds with… needless to say this turned into a veritable feast of slapstick games- popping out from behind curtains, climbing the unclimbable and leaping off places that really should not be leapt off!

No two of our sessions with Josie were the same depending on her mood, her energy and what she had already been doing on that day. Lara played wonderful covers of some of Josie’s favourite songs, we had under bedsheet discos with full on flashing disco lights, vocalisation jams, dances with large and small rainbow scarves and explored a very wide range of instruments. We noticed that Josie gave a big smile every time Lara’s voice hit certain notes when she was singing. We chatted with Josie and she let us know that she could feel the resonance in her belly. This led us to exploring instruments that resonate – an old horn, a rainstick, voices, guitar and the cello. We laid the cello alongside Josie so that she could feel it vibrating on her body. Josie held the bow and played different strings. The look on her face was priceless and will always remain as a precious memory in my heart.

Our last session with Josie was focused on hearing Josie’s choices about which videos and photographs she wanted to share at the final evaluation sharing day. All the families and artists involved in the project had been invited to attend the sharing day so we wanted to make sure that Josie was in charge of how her experience would be represented. Josie had just returned from her Duke of Edinburgh award celebration and she was shattered. She indicated ‘No’ to practically every video we showed her. We almost went down the road of making the decisions for her. Instead we asked her if she would rather return to consider these decisions when she felt more rested, on a different day… and to this question she gave a very clear ‘YES’. So we left Josie and her Team to make the decisions without us. We didn’t think to ask if us being there was perhaps restricting her choices, maybe there were moments that she didn’t want to reject in front of us in case it hurt our feelings. I don’t know. Together they chose videos and photographs depicting a number of moments that were key for her. Josie specifically requested that we organised it for her to play the cello live. This was a huge treat for all of us at the sharing day. It also gave one of the young people from a different family the opportunity to try playing the cello as well. So beautiful.

One of the two beliefs behind Bamboozle’s Approach is “Children, whatever their abilities or disabilities, know more than we might think, and can do more than anyone yet realises.” Seeing someone in their own home environment, the place that has literally been created as their safest, most enabled space, is incredible. Connie and Tim worked with James’s family with music and puppetry. They had previously only ever met James when he was in his wheelchair. Tim fed back to us that in “… James’s padded bedroom he’s completely removed from his chair and his movement is entirely his own. And his mobility is so high. He’s not slowly moving around the space. It’s halfway between some sort of fast-paced ballet and a mosh pit. It’s intense, fast, running and throwing himself down, then getting back up and keeping on going. How differently I saw him in his own environment, in a space that’s highly enabling for him.” The music ended up being less vital to their visits than the puppetry – in particular Hooter Bird – and moving together in James’s safe space.

Abbie is another young person who was involved in the project. Her family fed back that:

“Abbie has always loved music , it is her favourite activity at home and school and it is always our go to if she is unwell or unhappy. Abbie has her favourite songs which lift her and these are played regularly in our house, but if something new is introduced she often appears indifferent to it. The time she has spent with Dawn and Tim (the artists), however, has made me realise how open Abbie is to so much more….. Their patience and understanding of Abbie’s need to process, and  the time that takes, created an opportunity for Abbie to express herself that so few environments or activities allow,  and the results were beautiful – it felt it was a true collaboration of which Abbie had an equal role in. She was an active participant, not a passive recipient and there were no expectations which  meant she was given the rare opportunity to do things her way in her time, with wonderful results.  Seeing the pride in Abbie’s face  when she was listening to her creations was just magical ❤️.”

Being able to spend this amount of uninterrupted time, with no expectations, no pressure to produce, in the family’s own home, a space enabled specifically for them is just wonderful.

Researchers say that only 7% of our communication is actually conveyed through the use of words. 38% is conveyed through the tone of our voice and 55% through our body language. Much research has also been done on the bioelectric magnetic fields emanating from our cells, our tissues, our organs … essentially our energetic communication.

Bamboozle @ Home with Josie has been a circular journey for me. My impetus to work as a dance and movement artist has always been a love of communication without words. A love of finding ways to connect with others who maybe don’t communicate as society likes us to believe we ‘should’. In exploring with Josie, Lara and I spent a lot of time asking her yes/ no questions. We found ourselves wanting to pause, to check if she was truly aligned with what we were proposing. We wanted to leave room for her to speak up, to maybe suggest something entirely different – something unfamiliar to all of us, something untested. To communicate with words! And there were moments when we sensed her weariness, possibly even some impatience. As though she simply wanted us to stop overthinking and just trust: play the music, move our bodies, and lose ourselves in the joy of the moment. To follow her lead through the languages that mainstream society doesn’t always recognise; to pick up on her vibrations, her energy field, her magnetic resonance, her smiles… or frowns, her gentle hums and sighs… or growls. To essentially return to our vital selves. And what a beautiful journey this has been. To explore communication and connection in its raw undefined state.

And so, instead of trying to walk any distance in Josie’s shoes, we uncovered a much deeper journey – one of synergy and resonance, a looping path of wonder and shared discovery. Vibrations widening and rippling outward, like a clown boot stamping in a never-ending puddle. The sense that we are merely fellow travellers alongside so many who seek to break down the walls of preconception, to smudge the edges of the narrow acceptable views and live in a society where communication can thrive in the places between, around and under the words … as well, of course, as within the words themselves.

The opportunity to get involved in our Bamboozle @ Home project is shared with families signed up to our family database. If this project sounds like something you and your family would like to join, you can sign up to our database here.

This project is funded by the The National Lottery’s Community Fund.