The Beginning

The idea of Psyche and Soul came to me in May 2020. I woke up in the morning with Psyche and Soul written on my heart, at that point in time I did not know what Psyche and Soul was going to be, I just knew it was important. I acted on this immediately and bought the domain name www.psycheandsoul.org. At that time, I was volunteering at a supportive housing unit called Finchams Farm Turnaround Stays working with men in recovery from addiction by working the land with them following permaculture principles.

I moved on from this position a few months later and went to work as a full-time support worker at a residential special needs school for young people with autism. During this time I had advanced the idea of Psyche and Soul and was looking at the possibility of founding it as a fundraising platform. As a poet, I had plenty of material I could use to inspire others to possibly illustrate my poems by hosting competitions. This led me to contacting the Woodland Trust to seek out the opportunity to collaborate on a campaign called, A Letter to the Earth, to raise money to fund tree planting initiatives. This was well welcomed by their fundraising manager.

In October 2020 there was a Covid-19 outbreak at the school and I tested positive meaning I had to self isolate. This gave me ten days at home. During those ten days, I invested so much time in building the website and getting us ready to launch the campaign I had discussed with The Woodland Trust.

Sometime went by while I was deciding what to do and how best to launch the campaign. I explored various options available and went round in circles a few times trying to make a decision. As Christmas was approaching I was becoming aware that my time at the school was coming to an end as I felt called to invest more time and energy into Psyche and Soul. I sought out a WWOOF opportunity and found myself moving to Stanford Hall CSA on the outskirts of my home town of Rugby on the 10th of January. After a month of walking the ancient woodlands, my desire to plant more and more trees grew and I could feel the roots of Psyche and Soul growing underneath me. I had realised that I was going to be missing out on a huge opportunity to engage more people if I only launched an illustration campaign. I had realised the limitlessness of creativity.

I confidently dropped The Woodland Trust and set up our Creative Trinity campaign which hosts three competitions - Earths Cry (short story), The Weight of the World (poetry) and A Letter to the Earth (illustration) - on our own website. I wanted to make this as inclusive as possible so I launched a Donorbox scheme to allow people to offer a donation if they can, to enter, otherwise you can enter for free. At this point, I set-up a GoFundMe campaign and managed to raise £570 which we have been slowly using for marketing purposes.

By March I was beginning an internship at Stanford Hall CSA in Organic Market Garden Growing. I allowed the campaign to sit active while I intermittently engaged with social media to try and gain some momentum. Still, at this point we have not officially launched as the options of CIO, CIC etc is just overwhelming and confusing. I have recently come to a decision to launch as a CIC though which I will be sharing as soon as this goes through.

Today, so much has happened and we have established some great connections and are exploring some new and exciting collaborative campaigns with some wonderful organisations doing the good works needed to bring about a fairer and more just world. I am also about to embark on an exciting pilgrimage, you can read about it here. For now, we are so grateful for all of the support and are happy to be receiving entries to our competitions.