Tomorrow is the start of a two day conference of the Council for World Mission Caribbean members forum and I’ll be attending from the UK as artist. I so look forward to it! Amongst all my work, this is my most favourite.. CWM’s focus is about Life Flourishing Communities - what does it take for any community to turn into something in which life isn’t just existing, but flourishing? It’s an excellent question and I look forward to thoughts from colleagues a world away from my own.

Usually for a residency gig, I rock up with a wheeled case including my drawing board, a range of paper or scrolls and a large selection of pens and watercolour pencils. For the United Reformed Church General Assembly in 2012, I turned up with three large canvasses and my whole selection of paints and brushes! This will be different. I’ll be sitting in my studio watching and listening with Zoom. Rather than using my physical art supplies, I’ll be using the amazing program designed for the Microsoft Surface, my absolute device of choice. For illustrations, I use Adobe Illustrator, but for as physical experience as I can get for a digital device, I use Sketchable. With it, I have all my pencils, pens of many descriptions, paint, brushes and the ability to blend across tools as I have always done when I use a pen to make my watercolour pencils into soft paint.

I’ll do what I always do - listen, draw, perhaps add a few words, draw some more. At the end of each day, I’ll share the digital image by sharing my screen, and I’ll explain my reflections on what I hear. It will be interesting and wonderful to hear from a culture which is not my own and to reflect back what I believe I hear in a way which is, hopefully, cross cultural. I’ll keep you up do date with what happens!

I’ve uploaded a tea pot picture from a residency during a rural ministry conference a number of years ago. Conversation showed that often, the biggest thing rural churches can offer is peaceful hospitality. My mind came up with this!