Rebecca Manson Jones

A covid poem

in that moment of afternoon quiet

a quiet smile

Hi Altitude

Haven’t been here in a while.I’m experimenting with films.In 2022, I flew for the first time since 2019. So much had changed in that time. I hadn’t expected the experience of flying to move me so much. Here’s the video I made about it yesterday. Yes, more than a year on. That’s how we roll…

Some thoughts on world IVF DAY

CONTENT WARNING: pregnancy loss and IVF risk It was #IVFday earlier this week. I’m Sending congrats to the many IVF parents I know. And, Not wishing to be the ghoul at the feast but just want to say to men and women of Facebook, employers and career-minded folk, landlords and anyone who in some way…

On Energy

Maybe we can With skill And wisdom Become Fantastical miniaturists

Park Musing

And in the park I see young men And toddlers (under 5s not an expert don’t @ me) Anyway they’re running free One grey head – a man The older parent I would be If …   All these men on a Tuesday in the playground gathering Just like women do And swapping news But…

Shouts & Whispers – drawing to please myself

I haven’t been here for a while and I’m not sure if this will become a long narrative. I’m a bit high on nail varnish fumes for reasons which will become clear if you read until the end. (I often know the punchline not how I’m going to get there). One evening during the first…

Why I get angry when Caring is described as unskilled

On Thursday night I got to speak to activists from the Women’s Equality Party. Yes, I was talking to the converted but we all need some reassurance some times that we’re not shouting into the wind. And sometimes, we need to be reminded by our own team that what we’re doing matters and how it…

Haiku for Carers

I only ever lost track of him once It was the worst No idea how long it took to find him Maybe a few minutes. When he reappeared He looked at me and laughed I bet that scared you. And picked up his pint. We sat and stared out at the sea. And smirked.

And when the caring is over ….what next?

I hid I went out into the world I laughed I shouted I told a story maybe true Maybe a myth I dressed up I dressed down I picked berries from a bush & and ate them direct without washing them first. I escaped the weather. All of the weather I escaped from my past…

When your beer tastes weird – eat tumeric and get a test!

Today I have done day 3 of yoga with Adrienne without the full downward dog, plank or cobra, no lunges. But I kept moving and breathing for 30 minutes. I have sat down for as long afterwards. This morning I also have put on a load of washing, cleaned the bathroom and started to hoover…

Breakages

Not that your baking was legendary

Haiku for Carers

He pays her a compliment totally lucid for a second she soaks it up like water into parched soil.

And after all

It could happen without you or you could wake yourself up and help shape it.

Covid and Ladders

You ponder a tree trunk and wonder how long until you could dance on a log?

All the resolve and none of the action?

I have always found New Year’s resolutions to be unproductive but cheating by starting early has helped a bit. Last year I got going on to daily yoga on 23rd December which I believe helped in my father’s last days and in combatting what could have been a much worse acquaintance with my new companion…

On family, chance and vaccines

I am two generations from people who all had a trade or were agricultural labourers. (Most of us are).

Stay Alert? Oh you bet I am

It’s your fault if you get ill

and it’s your fault if you pass it on.

It’s your fault if you don’t have PPE and don’t protect your team

Thank EU for having us…

This is not a garland of stars I take off and hand back lightly. You are in my marrow. Like many people I can believe in more than one thing at a time. I will continue believing in and supporting the EU whilst thinking in inches and ounces as I always have.

Just checking in – news from otherwhere

There’s a lot of talk about intersectionality and how to do it. I’m particularly drawn to this article because it’s about centring an experience (which isn’t mine) and like my conclusions in 2016 that we need to redesign the suit (ie default male perspective) it’s time to consider redesigning the table if the table is…

Dressed overall?

Flags are a serious and joyful business where I grew up. With a plethora of seafaring types both professional and amateur pretty much everyone round here speaks flag. Flags are flown in seasons of celebration and commemoration. I well remember my father and I dressing our house frontage overall with naval flags to celebrate the…

Flood is the word

I never knew until Woman’s Hour this morning that they call it a flood. A bleed so heavy you are scared to leave the house. With me they started as peri menopause set in. (Note. Not every woman experiences them) I was in recovery from years of pregnancy losses (natural conceptions) and unsuccessful IVF. I…

Arts are on the list

#Feminists of #London – arts division – you note I have not specifically addressed this to the women – I have been selected by my peers in the The Women’s Equality Party London to be a candidate in the #GLA2020elections. This is just a little year away. For anyone who has ever made a show…

Right of Entry?

It’s not their fault I was burgled. It’s not their fault I’m in shock. But the company they work for could remember that a large part of their clientele are in this space. And they could do well to consider this in future. It doesn’t matter how good the work”man”ship is this time. If I…

Doing More

Often it feels like I’m Clinging onto my arts career by my finger tips even after 20+ years. And yet still I feel an enormous sense of joy when I get to enter an arts building to be part of the community of arts leaders. I never knew this life could be possible for me,…

WE have 2020 vision

Yesterday I was invited to the shortlist for the Women’s Equality Party list of candidates for the Greater London Assembly Election. Here’s what I said at the assessment session… Please join us as part of WEP – there’s no better time than now to make change. You can do that here https://www.womensequality.org.uk/join_to_vote Join by 30th March…

From STEM to STEAM

The Women’s Equality Party second conference took place in from 7th – 9th September 2018. It was only my second political conference too. In 2016, on the day that all the motions were presented, I watched and learned how the process went ahead and left determined that an area that the party hadn’t yet focused…

Life after IVF

I heard you say you’re an IVF survivor and I wondered what you meant….

Stepping up …. again

  In 2016 I attended my first-ever party political conference. The WEP’s first-ever conference. This was not a co-incidence. Party Conferences have always intrigued and repulsed me, and I had never really felt invited or included. WEP’s first-ever conference held shortly after the Brockley by-election, in which I stood as the first-ever WEP local council…

FAQs on my council candidacy

“If I had to pick one pivotal moment for women in the last 100 years, I would pick right now. 2018 has the potential to be a landmark moment for women” Helen Pankhurst –Let’s prove her right. I’m standing to represent the residents of Ladywell on Lewisham Council for the Women’s Equality Party.  I’ve been campaigning…

Politics is for #metoo

Use 1 of your 3 votes for #Women’s Equality in #Ladywell to ensure that politics becomes open, transparent and accessible to all.

Equal pay for equal value

If you were asked to put in rank order what you valued more highly –  your Grannie, your children or your car…. love, instinct, social pressure and conditioned response probably tell us one thing, but financial reckoning something completely different.

EU and me

I firmly believe in the cultural, environmental, economic and social justice, workers and womens’ rights benefits that membership of the EU brings. No matter what happens it is imperative we protect these rights.

Make Your Mark – #JoinWE

Last week for International Women’s Day I was delighted to be invited to be included in this video. It’s a very simple message #makeyourmark

Women’s Equality Party announce candidates for Lewisham

In the centenary year of some UK women getting the vote, voters in Ladywell, Lewisham Central and Brockley wards have the chance to make history by giving one of their three votes on 3 May to the Women’s Equality Party, putting women’s and girls’ needs front and centre of council decisions.  

Not Being Me — Philip Green, Blogging & Writing.

This is the latest post by my friend who has been chronicling his dealings with the DWP . Philip is very frank and some of what he writes about can be distressing. I share with him the conviction that one of the few ways people in his situation have of tackling a system that no…

Women’s Equality Party announce candidates for Lewisham

In the centenary year of some UK women getting the vote, voters in Ladywell, Lewisham Central and Brockley wards have the chance to make history by giving one of their three votes on 3 May to the Women’s Equality Party, putting women’s and girls’ needs front and centre of council decisions.  

On paying it forward, mentoring and January

Another January Monday, another request to help give someone a leg up into arts. I am very lucky. My 18 year old self does not know that such a person as I can exist. Much less that I’ll get to be her. This very afternoon I have booked three theatre tickets to three shows all…

What Next: for the Ladywell Playtower

Since September 2017, Annette Corbett and I have revived the Lewisham chapter of the What Next movement. We meet the first Friday of every month at 8.30 am for an hour. What Next is all about taking actions that will place arts and culture at the centre of the community. So it seemed to us…

Can you get us all moving? Movement Directors only need apply

MOVEMENT DIRECTOR  – we need to talk…. Just Jones & is a theatre company touring nationally with our base in South East London. Our shows are built with, by and for our audiences which makes them powerful, immediate, universal, poetic, a bit bonkers, very ambitious, totally collaborative. We create interactive shows about the questions that won’t leave…

My first day in Parliament

It’s not just about money, there’s a societal bias going on, there’s an attitude problem and we have to ask what the link is between that attitude and the fact that women’s health and support for medical research into women’s health has since forever been the poor relation.

The Politics of Infertility

Alongside these financial costs which are coming from the CCG budget, let me say that I – and several other women present – who’ve been through these tests and procedures, can tell you the physical and psychological costs are also enormous and long-lasting.

Social Justice and Infertility a personal view

The Gold Standard represents a small piece of certainty in an IVF landscape of shifting horizons and icebergs of disappointment. It doesn’t fix it for everyone but the notion of fairness it offers does help in coping with the aftermath.

Universal credit "may" have been a good idea but it's a credit to no-one

Liz Truss doesn’t appear to know that Job Centres don’t act as advice centres on benefits. She appears to have some misty-eyed vision of a UK where you can pop to your local job centre – a bit like popping to the post office or the GP- err,… no wait –  where a friendly and…

The Pinking of October

I never liked the idea of fighting cancer either. We fight so many things and it’s not always the most creative or productive way to deal with problems. When my mother had cancer, we wanted to help her through it. We negotiated with it – it was always going to have the last word. I…

What I do – Job Description

Story-telling Giant-felling Making the familiar Strange Making the stranger A Friend

Being told I’m wrong A lot Giving as good as I get

Listen

We all need more music in our lives

JOIN US – set the agenda for 2018

It’s about thinking what we are campaigning for, the change and equality we want to see in Lewisham. It’s the perfect event to bring new people to, so please think of someone to extend this invitation to and ask them to come along.

Mothers’ campaign forces U-turn over NHS cuts to baby milk

I’m doing some work for the Women’s Health Policy Group which will be updating our policy for ratification at the Women’s Equality Party conference in September. Here’s a great example of a woman and a citizen correcting an inequality Source: Mothers’ campaign forces U-turn over NHS cuts to baby milk

Deep feminism, debating and local Government

After a great Easter break visiting family in Yorkshire –  a break in which I’d turned all social media off and enjoyed the natural equality that my (secular – that’s me) god-daughter claims with her older brothers: for her toys are just toys and a tractor is as good as a pram, despite her middle…

Equal Pay means Equal Pension…?

The Women’s Equality Party is the only party with a joined-up plan for tackling the pension gap. “We are working to create an equal education system that ends the practice of encouraging young girls into jobs that we value and pay less. We have fully-costed policies for free childcare that would create millions more jobs,…

WEP Lewisham July Branch meeting & branch officer elections

The WEP Lewisham team hope all local members and supporters will join us for our Branch meeting on 27th July 2017, starting at 7pm at the Talent Factory.  This Branch meeting will have an exciting agenda, including: Feedback on the General Election experience, Lewisham members were the most active of any non-campaign-based branch Plans for…

Killology, Royal Court

I’m interested in knowing when “toxic masculinity” entered the lexicon. I hear it everywhere now….

Lewisham Hustings update

There are a few hustings taking place in the next few days across the three constituencies in Lewisham. Why not take the chance to ask the candidates one of the questions from our virtual hustings Lewisham West & Penge Sydenham Society hustings, JK Banqueting Hall 15 Perry Vale SE23 2NE, Tuesday 6th June (note date change)…

Maureen Martin -virtual hustings

CPA intend to address the issue of marriage breakdown which is costing the nation about 48billion per year and child care costs are included in this figure. We want the tax threshold to be transferable from husband to wife to make it financially viable for one parent to stay home with the children.

Karen Wheller – virtual hustings

maintain any existing legislation we have derived from the EU with regards to equality, also heavily scrutinise the Repeal Bill to ensure it does not water down the legislation we already have

Heidi Alexander – virtual hustings

I will fight for an EU deal that protects jobs and investment and I will do everything I can to ensure the protections which the EU has helped to enshrine for women in a whole range of areas (including at work) continue to exist.

Emily Frith – virtual hustings answers

Last year the party voted to adopt all women shortlists when selecting candidates who are replacing sitting MPs. This has increased the female representation in both our target and non-target seats; 50% of our target seat candidates are female.

Bobby Dean's virtual hustings answers

I will call out attempts to suppress women and other minorities voices online and in other spaces and believe that everyone has the right to express themselves freely, without fear of abuse.

Labour & Liberal Democrat manifestos miss a trick (or two)

Whilst both Labour and the Liberal Democrats parties have gone further than before in prioritising women’s equality they have failed to understand the scale of the opportunity. “Last week the Women’s Equality Party hand-delivered our manifestos to all of the other major parties with an open offer to steal our bold (and costed) plans for free…

GE2017 – virtual hustings: the questions

We hope our questions – put impartially to all candidates – will encourage the local candidates from all parties and independents to focus their thinking about women’s equality and how important it is that 51% of the population are enabled to participate fully in society.

Enter A Performer onto a level playing space

As we head in earnest into creating We Will Be Happy Here, Just Jones & is excited about opening our process up into a new way of working. Now that we’re doing it, it is of course startlingly obvious but as a small company living in an ableist society, we hold our hands up. We…

Brockley/Lewisham Performers Wanted

[ezcol_1third]  [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end]  Perform in The Day the Patriarchy Died – The Day the Patriarchy Died will be a scratch script-in-hand performance curated and directed by Rebecca Manson Jones, an irreverent reflection on where we are and where we could be  – on, as it now transpires, the day after the election. The performance is…

Creative Museums

After the Ouch of Feedback can come the Ooh! of next stage of thinking …

Support for Performers who are parenting

With thanks to Jennifer Lunn on Facebook I found this. …. too many people and especially women drop out of arts and culture careers at a crucial time. Here’s something postive to help tackle that. From The Actors Charitable Trust. Please share widely: ACT – the Actors’ Children’s Trust – is in the fortunate position…

The Art Party Manifesto

Before any of the major parties has been able to share their manifesto for the forthcoming General Election on 8th June 2017, Bob and Roberta Smith has shared his versions of an Art Party Manifesto with an invitation to make and share your own.

Sophie Walker campaign day 1

Of course, a General Election and of course, WE’re standing. Of course, I’m biased towards a woman I’ve worked alongside for over a year,  but then I also sat and witnessed Philip Davies in Parliament making a travesty of the role of Parliamentarian. I saw how in the body language how his own side were…

Crowdfunding for beginners

I particularly like crowdfunding because it provides a real connection between the backers and the campaign. A well-run and well-researched crowdfunding campaign enhances and informs the project as it grows. A successful crowdfunding exercise achieves much more than filling the piggy bank (as delightful as that always is.)

7 principles of public life

Here at WEP we like the number 7 quite a lot; we have 7 objectives, so here’s a fun and deadly serious game you can try as we have just 7 weeks before the snap General Election… (and just 2 before the Council Elections outside London):

Write to the person you are considering voting for…

She can’t keep quiet and we mustn’t either

On Saturday 8th April I did what I find myself increasingly doing these days, I left the sanctuary of my South East London garden, (the first really sunny Saturday of the year) and got on a tube to central London to sit in an underground room with a bunch of strangers. In the last two…

Have your say about women in Lewisham politics….

The Women’s Equality Party – Lewisham Branch, has been invited by Lewisham Council to give evidence at their next Barriers to Politics Working Group hearing on 18th April 2017.10 -20 minutes should do it and it can be done at home for free without placards or a pussy hat! What’s not to like – strike…

& Just Jones & is back at Brockley Max

After 2 years away, we’re delighted to be back on tour in SE4 creating a bespoke one off performance for the Brockley Max Festival on Thursday 9th June at 8pm. THE DAY THE PATRIARCHY DIED conceived and curated by Rebecca Manson Jones A scratch site-responsive evening of short scenes, monologues, poetry –  possibly music -…

& are you or do you know our next Trustees?

Just Jones & has been thriving and surviving for 5 years and as I sit here listening (in fits and starts) to the livestream from the No Boundaries conference, I’m thinking about a lot of the things that have happened to us and because of us in those last 5 years. None of these adventures…

Want to know more about how it works in Parliament?

Thanks to Pamela Ritchie for this little gem: Parliament or Government? – Episode 1 https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/episode-1-parliament-or-government/id1215737817?i=1000382846791&mt=2 What Happens in Parliament? – Episode 2 https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/episode-1-parliament-or-government/id1215737817?i=1000382846791&mt=2 There are four more Eps to come so maybe subscribe….

Tell us what ails you and WE can fix it …

As with all the other objectives, WE are doing things about health differently and we’re starting with the membership. WE’d like you to tell us what’s important to you.