I love so many things about Wheesht. I love how this book directly challenges the often trite and lazy assumptions about artists and creativity; I love how it demystifies creativity and presents it as a practical – and accessible pursuit – A PRACTICE – and I love the enabling exercises which can be downloaded from the accompanying Wheeshtbook website. Perhaps most of all I love the appreciation and genuine love for the skills and labour of the artists Kate explores through her writing and the intersectional feminism at work in her careful efforts to situate each artists’ work in relation to race, gender and ability.

- KNITSONIK review of Wheesht; find it here.

First published in December 2019, Wheesht continues to find particular resonance with the collective themes and challenges we've faced since 2020.

In a deeply inspiring series of 12 essays - each of which contains creative prompts - Kate Davies examines the strategies and processes 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 presents an inspiring and practical set of ideas that will be useful to 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 times of uncertainty and doubt.

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