First published in December 2019, Wheesht has recently been reprinted after finding particular resonance with the collective themes and challenges we faced through 2020.

In an enabling series of 12 essays, Kate Davies examines the strategies and processes of a range of creative practitioners, and proposes how we might put their ideas to work in our own acts of making. Refreshingly free of buzzwords, self-help or the weirdly mystifying language which can sometimes shroud the ways in which artists think and make, this book is instead an inspiring and practical set of prompts for anyone who wants to make things thoughtfully. In the words of the author, it is a "creative call for us all to haud our wheesht and listen, before making our work, with conviction, with purpose and with heart".

Wheesht int.v., n., adj., Scots and northern English dialects: to be quiet, to quieten, to hush, to remain silent. To haud or keep one’s wheesht: to be quiet, to hold one’s tongue. Also in diminutive forms (whish, whishie): the slightest sound. The least whisper. The faintest rumour or report.

Wheesht directly challenges the often trite and lazy assumptions about artists and creativity. It demystifies creativity and presents it as a practical - and accessible pursuit - A PRACTICE - and one which is presented alongside enabling exercises that can be downloaded from the accompanying website. 

Whether you work with sounds or socks or words, this book will give you new frameworks within which to develop your creative practice and helpful tools for ties of doubt and uncertainty.

168pp. Book printed and bound at Bell & Bain, Glasgow, Scotland. 

– Kate Davies, 

See wheeshtbook.com for links and photos related to each chapter, and also for downloadable templates and charts

£12.00

186 page paperback book litho-printed 

First published by Makadu Press in 2019; now in its second print run, printed 2021

Printed in the UK by Bell & Bain, Glasgow