Joy Pitt

Studied Graphic Design at Portsmouth College of Art from 1974 -77, and is also a qualified nurse, play worker and tutor of further education.

She has worked as a mosaicist and muralist, as a school nurse for children with special needs, as a Marie Curie nurse, run a well-woman clinic, trained and practiced as a healer, been a costume designer, and is now an artist, storyteller and workshop leader.

She tells stories from folk traditions, myths and legends from all around the world, in the oral tradition, and performs as a standup storyteller in her own right, while extensively performing using her own hand-made puppets. She has told stories in health centres, nurseries, schools and colleges, out of school clubs, in libraries, hospices, prisons, supermarkets, pubs, clubs, theatres, womens' centres, festivals at home and abroad, to the extreme elderly, to new born babies, to children and adults with special needs, and at weddings and funerals!

In 2003,Joy and her husband David Judd established the arts business ''Tales form the Heartwood''.

With David, they love working with people, particularly with families, the elderly, and with people of all ages with special needs. Recent works include:

Working with refugee and asylum seeker children and their families, to make puppets and write a performance for a puppet play, ''The Great White Elephant with Only One Tusk'', which was commissioned for the World in One County Festival, and showcased there in 2005;

Working with a group of elderly people from the ''Growing Bolder Project'' at Mansfield Museum and Art Gallery. Here they wrote, made puppets for, and performed ''A Midsummer's Nightmare'', also performed at World in One County in 2005;

Working at the Workhouse, Southwell, with the traveller women of Tolney Lane, Newark, to produce a sound installation of reminiscences aspart of the ''Untold Stories Project'', for the National Trust....;

Writing a healthy cookery book with the Manton Creative Storytelling Group, ''Get Stuffed the Healthy Way'', which was published in 2005.
Extensive work in schools and libraries is ongoing .......

-return to artists page-