Friends of AUBIN

Ollie Feather & OctAVIA CALTHORPE

we recently had the pleasure of visiting some wonderful and hugely creative friends of ours, Ollie Feather and Octavia Calthorpe, in their beautiful home in frome,somerset. Ollie is about as london as it gets, having grown up in balham, but when thoughts of starting their own family became reality last year they made the move to be nearer to Octavia's sister. We first met ollie last september when he came along to our friends of aubin photoshoot for autumn '22, so we were delighted when he invited us back to their home to hear more about where life is taking them.

Octavia has been a breath-work therapist for the last 5 years, using the breath to explore supressed trauma and anxiety in the body. She found her way into it through her friends, Nova Ayrton Wright and Stuart Sandeman. Nova and Stuart both run Breathpod. After having a session with Stuart, the positive effect it had upon her own mental health was life changing. She wanted to show others how powerful this simple, intuitive therapy could be, how to "reconnect to the power of their breath, to help relieve emotional issues, improve physical health and connect more deeply to their inner wisdom". Living in New York at the time, she began her training there.

"What I experienced about myself in one week of breathwork training was more than I'd felt for a whole year, it was really intense and really transformative"

With a clear intension to help others, her training continued back in the UK in various modalities of breathwork and with teachers in england and ireland. these trainings bought it all together for her as she tailored the courses she took to learn about the areas she found most fascinating and relevant. As well as holistic breath-work teachers, octavia worked with a yoga teacher, psychotherapist and breathing technician specialising in sporting and aerobic breath techniques. She now has a therapy practice which is totally unique and in tune with what people need, now more than ever. her work uses the breath, as well as some conversation, sound and movement, to access her clients own innate ability to heal themselves both mentally and physically.

" When you see the penny drop and things start to shift for people, when they start to reconnect to their bodies it's amazing".

As well as her regular open breathwork classes and workshops which she teaches both virtually and at studios around London and the surrounding area, she also provides some very important group therapy sessions at Mind in Bexley. A branch of the national mental health charity, Mind in Bexley is a non-profit organisation who help people within the local area. For the last two years octavia has been running weekly 30-minute online sessions specifically for unpaid carers. As caregivers she has found that they often get forgotten about and suffer from mental health issues as a result, octavia finds these sessions particularly rewarding and important.

"That kind of work I find the most fulfilling, connecting with people and connecting them to each other. Too often I find these wonderful people are lonely, so I really love getting them together".

Ollie has always had a fascination with words. from about the age of 14 he wrote poems and diary entries every day,"mainly for the purpose of lyrical content for the band i was in". He grew up in south london and, until recently, has lived in the city his entire life, other than when he sat his degree in sociology at bristol university. So, ollie's poetry is naturally influenced by the 'ebb and flow' of the city. there is a very engaging melodic rhythm to it which draws people in.

After writing music and lyrics for two sold out edinburgh fringe musicals and being the frontman for a blues band, the 1945, he began to make a name for himself. he went on to perform across the country including appearances at the playhouse theatre and the savoy theatre with 'platform presents' alongside actors such a juliet stevenson, rhys ifans,denise gough and joely richardson. poetry and music then have always been interlinked,one feeding the other,maybe if there is a third string to his bow it would be sound.

"More recently I'm less interested in performing and more interested in the written word. You get more time to sit with it. I think i'm getting old".

Recently Ollie's main focus has been on his music consultancy and events agency, Future Sound which he founded with his friend Zak Day in 2019. Last year they were joined by another friend, Pablo Wansbrough, who left top events agency Marble LDN as Head of Music to consolidate the partnership. Future Sound work with brands and businesses to curate musical experiences and event strategies.They are London based but as Zak grew up in Ibiza and Pablo in Madrid there's lots of connections around the world. There are two arms to the business, the sports and entertainment side, where they work with global sporting events and tournaments. These are businesses looking to use music and entertainment to engage new audiences and specifically the younger generation, such as the Dubai Rugby 7's. They conceptualise engaging 360 music, entertainment and marketing strategies creating a festival-like atmosphere, bringing sporting events to life. This is really where they specialise. Then there's their domestic arm, which is more centred around corporate clients and private events in the U.K. They work with private members club group, Pavillion, for example designing all of their music and events programming and strategy across the board.

"Music is just joyous, i love live experiences. You can't beat it and i think that's why i chose to take my professional path down that route because the feeling of creating a show and having hundreds or thousands of people enjoying it is a wicked feeling".

Poetry will always be a big part of Ollie's life, it's a cathartic release providing a much-needed outlet from the stresses of travel, structures and settings of his work with Future Sound. He performed one of his poems for Aubin called Milton Grove, inspired by a much loved area in London where he lived with Octavia and artist Kesewa Aboah and the relationships between people and the interwoven cultures he has experienced in the city. To have found these guys and to collaborate with them has been inspiring. Like the interlinking of human experiences Ollie explores in his poems and Octavia through her therapy, working with our friends and finding that shared passion for simply doing things really well brings renewed purpose to Aubin as a brand, and a lifestyle.

If you would like to learn more or access one of Octavia's classes, you can find all the information you need on her instagram page- @octaviacalthorpe or her website www.octaviacalthorpe.com

To find out more about Ollie's poetry go to his website- www.olliefeather.com and for Future Sound it's www.future-sound.co.uk