many arts studio

15/09/2025

September’s ✨Makers Circle✨ was a blast!

We had a massive scale cross-stitcher, an astonishing amateur graffiti artist, a refined rubber stamp carver, a grand miniature house builder, a captivated crochet beginner, AND a cheeky young clown maestro!

We opened the circle with solitary stillness and devotion, and we closed it together, under the leadership of our young clown maestro, with knowing nods, warm smiles, delightful twirls and cute cuddles with the polar bear 💖

Next Circle on 26 Oct 1-4pm.
Free. All welcome. In-person/online.
Bookings essential, at
https://events.humanitix.com/makers
Hope to see you then!
✨🌸✨

11/09/2025

Yesterday I attended the launch of the Integrative Healthcare Special Interest Group at Melb Uni.

It was a great gathering of lovely people from diverse backgrounds for the same passion for Integrative Healthcare.

There were GPs, meditators, yoga teachers, spiritual carers, arts-based therapists, health and policy researchers, shiatsu practitioners, naturopaths, arts-based psychotherapists, psychologists, permaculturists, and many more!

No one knew the solution to the many barriers such as communication, research funding and design limits, public and cross-disciplinary attitudes, cost and access, and policy change. (If we’re not too lazy to just call it colonialism and capitalism 🙃)

HOWEVER, we filled the room with real Passion, as well as, Openness, Honesty, Kindness, Warmth and Support towards one another.

So glad to be part of this.
Let’s keep this growing!!

01/09/2025

Yes!!

✨Connection doesn’t require conformity.

Belonging doesn’t come from eye contact or tone of voice. It comes from being understood — without having to translate yourself to fit.

Let’s stop asking:
“Can they improve their social skills?”

Let’s start asking:
“How do our systems respond to difference — with curiosity or correction?”✨

We reward “social skills” like they’re the key to belonging.
👀 Eye contact.
💬 Small talk.
🤝 Group work.
But here’s the truth:
“Social skills” are not neutral.
They’re shaped by neuronormativity — a blueprint designed around dominant norms.
It tells us that fluent = friendly.
That verbal = valid.
That quiet = disconnected.
And when systems believe that —
they start designing people out of belonging.
🚫 Neurodivergent communication is called a “deficit.”
🚫 Non-verbal connection is dismissed as absence.
🚫 Scripting or pacing is labelled as “wrong.”
But connection doesn’t require conformity.
✨ Belonging doesn’t come from eye contact or tone of voice.
It comes from being understood — without having to translate yourself to fit.
Let’s stop asking:
“Can they improve their social skills?”
Let’s start asking:
“How do our systems respond to difference — with curiosity or correction?”

28/08/2025

Meet Yes, the YES Poo.

Yes sits like a monk, holds a giant flower, watches with big orbs, and smirks in confidence.

Yes says,
“I may be a tiny poo, but I believe in you. Go do your sh🌟t !”

25/08/2025

Much appreciation and gratitude to the makers who joined me yesterday at our August makers circle.

Some of us were deprived of creativity as children but are fortunate enough to be circling back to its cradle and to reconnect with our creative core.

We resonated with Mark Little’s words
“I started doing art when I was 4 and what I realised was that this space here is sacred and it is still sacred. It gives me an opportunity to just be. This is what I own. Everything else happening out there, I don’t own, but here I do.”

Please join us next on Sep 14, 1-4.
Free. All welcome. In-person & online.
https://events.humanitix.com/makers
(Link in bio)

22/08/2025

🔥 UPDATE: FULLY BOOKED!🔥
💖 Waitlist open 💖

Spring is in the air 🌱
We hope to see you there ✨
No experience needed to be fair 🌿
Cyanotype will show your creative flair 💫

Final playdate for 2025 with

4 spots only!

Sign up now and your future self will thank you 🩵

https://events.humanitix.com/beginners-cyanotype-playdate-oct-2025 (Link in bio)

16/08/2025

🌊letters from weiyu #5🔥

Crochet has become a consistent and reliable presence in my life. It has also continued to bring me many surprises, inspirations, and connections. I hope you enjoy this short story of Mila, inspired by my latest crochet practice. You may be afraid of trying, or crochet just isn’t your cup of tea - that’s so okay. What I sincerely wish for you is this kind of presence in life - consistent, reliable, lively, inspiring, and connective - be that human or not.

Read more at https://open.substack.com/pub/weiyuandthefire/p/mila (link in bio “letters from weiyu”)

Yours in the miraculous loops of Life,
🌊 weiyu 🔥

p.s. Interested in learning how to crochet in a grounded, kind, mindful, and hopeful way? Please get in touch, I’d love to help 🧡

p.p.s. Special thanks to for the most life-affirming and wonderful birth blessing of storytelling for Mila and the Fool ✨🐦‍🔥✨🌊🌝🔥

14/08/2025

So well said!

“Applying the results of culture-specific studies to all people isn't science, it's supremacy.

Being divergent from these expectations is something to be proud of. “

We've all heard the idea that neurotypicality is the center of a bell curve, but who is that bell curve based on?
It's not representative of the entire population, just a tiny segment.
Applying the results of culture-specific studies to all people isn't science, it's supremacy.
Being divergent from these expectations is something to be proud of.

🧠My 8-week virtual study group is a place we can discuss topics like this as a group. We start August 20! Lesson topics: Polyvagal 101, Polyvagal 401, Energetics of the ANS, the BioPsychoSocial Nervous System, Neurodivergent Trauma, Attachment Trauma, Systemic Trauma, and Pathways to Healing.
Details here: https://traumageek.thinkific.com/courses/2025-summer-study-group

31/07/2025

What is therapy at Many Arts Studio?

I am trying to unbound this exotic, over-educated, and either raved or booed thing from ableism, diagnostic labels, systemic oppressions, and big and small cultures of dominance.

I want both this thing and myself to simply rest upon the ground of Love and Support, and in the clear light of Awareness.

And when we’re ready, I want this thing to guide us all into cultivating Safety, Satisfaction, and Connection. All for one, one for all. Continuously.

Mostly I am learning, especially from the young ones within and amongst us:

We FEEL to grow HEART-er together.

Your delightful fool in psychotherapy,
🌊🌝🔥🙇🏻‍♀️🌿

20/07/2025

This one is for my dear client-artists, the children and their parents, as well as those who’ve grown up too fast only to be challenged by the task of parenting themselves 🌻

It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.

And none of us is alone.

Here, please catch this sense of WONDER, and drink it all in 💖

🌿 “I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to FEEL.

If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.

The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil.” 🌱

Rachel L. Carson, The Sense of Wonder: A Celebration of Nature for Parents and Children

13/07/2025

🌊 Thank you for another cosy makers circle, blissful stillness in a rough windy day🙇🏻‍♀️

🌿Today’s post quiet making conversation felt like a gentle walk to me. It was spacious, curious and warm.

🪷Things that each of us made led us to sharing different ways of mindfulness/being present in the everyday. We were reminded of the joy and hope and spaciousness even in the daily grind.

💞And as grownups from very different backgrounds, we all agreed on the value and necessity of play.

✨Yes, play - even if it’s quiet as sketching a window, or small as reading a personal poem hidden in a tiny book to a couple of people in a little hideout.

🌸Please join us, monthly in person at Many Arts or anywhere over Zoom. Next on 25 Aug, 1-4. Free. Registration essential. Link in bio.

💬We’ve also decided to set up a WhatsApp group for us to share our creations as we like. Please let me know if you’d like to be added to the chat :)

12/07/2025

In this mess of a life
Some of us like to talk it out
Others of us know to clay it out

Many of us have been taught out of our body and stuck into our intellect:
What’s wrong and how to fix it and quick BUT

A small lump of clay
Some water and a pair of hands
Call for your response

Pound it, squeeze it, hold it, smoothen it, dissolve it, wait for it to dry, rehydrate it, roll it, sculpt it, twist it, even glitter it up!

So delicious like you could eat it, and share it
There, you regain your place
In the mess of a world we’re in
Satisfaction from being alive and with one another

REMEMBER