I am a Leeds-based writer/performer and T’ai Chi and Reiki practitioner.
I teach independent classes on Zoom, and across the city, in Creative Writing (See my WordPlay page), as well as running regular classes in T’ai Chi and Chi Kung (See my Breathing Space page). In autumn 2018, I opened a Reiki Room in Oakwood, Leeds, and in 2022 I moved to Rothwell, south Leeds – where I now see people for one-one sessions. (See my Reiki In Leeds page).
From 2009 to 2022, I was Creative Associate at Leeds Playhouse where I worked on the Creative Engagement programme. Leeds Playhouse is a Theatre of Sanctuary, and I ran workshops there called Finding Your Voice, to encourage confidence and performance skills in the refugee and asylum seeker community. I also collaborated regularly on two exciting projects: Heydays – a dynamic programme for older people; and Our Time, groundbreaking arts work for people with dementia and those who support them.
For the Every Third Minute Festival of Theatre and Dementia 2018 at Leeds Playhouse, I co-wrote a short play, A Horse Called Freedom, with Rosa Peterson, a woman living with dementia. Despite the public perception of this complex condition, our work together was surprisingly poetic and uplifting. We laughed (and cried) alot!
Rosa and I continue to write together from time to time. We both performed monologues for a piece called Bus Ride in 2018, brainchild of director Alan Lyddiard, and his company the Performance Ensemble. You can read more about that here. In 2019 we collaborated on a bitter-sweet prose poem called Going to Barbados, in which Rosa gave a vivid description of her experience of emergency care in hospital, commissioned and performed at the NHS conference, Living Well with Dementia, in September of that year. We even managed to write together during lockdown, when Rosa created a beautiful fairy story in 2021, called Rosa and the Magic Quest, in which she explored, in allegorical form, her own deep fears, and showed her determination – against great odds – to live a rich, fulfilling life.
From 2018 to 2021, I was a member of the Performance Ensemble creative team, working as dramaturg, writer/editor and performer. Our production of Crossing was performed at Stage at Leeds in February 2020, just before Covid 19 reared its ugly head and shut everything down. Throughout my time with the company, I helped gather and edit stories from the ensemble – stories from real life, and stories from lockdown – which you can read here . In the summer of 2021, I performed with the company in a major production at Leeds Playhouse, called The Promise of a Garden. The story I delivered was about the remarkable Hungarian poet Attila József, and you can read the text here.
As an arts journalist, I have written freelance features for the Guardian, Psychologies Magazine and Femail – some of which you can read by going to my Blog and Features Archive page – and have published three books.
The first, way back in 1986, was Flowers in Hell (Pandora Press), an investigation into women and crime.
The second, A Handful of Earth (John Murray), came out in 2007. This was a diary of grief and recovery in the garden. (For five years I was garden correspondent for On:Yorkshire magazine, and now write for them online, regularly reviewing books.)
My most recent book, Old Dog (Simon and Schuster), was published in 2013, and is about the exceptional bond between dogs and humans – in particular, one special mongrel called Muffin. It is also a deeper meditation on life and death, bereavement, and recovery from loss.
Currently, I am working on a new book, called Dancing with Bruised Knees. This is a memoir of the body: what it teaches us, in sickness and in health; and how we pick ourselves up when we have fallen, to find new light, and make new beginnings.
I am also a linguist, am currently a student of Hungarian – very hard language, wonderful country – and love singing and playing the ukelele, travelling to Eastern Europe, exploring the deep green of the British countryside, walking by the sea, and messing about in my small yard garden. Communication is really important to me – in words, in movement, in voice, in music. Giving voice – in whatever way you can – is a powerful thing.
Facebook, Author: @BarneyBardsleyAuthor
Facebook, Reiki: @barneybardsleyreiki
Instagram: @reiki.in.leeds
A Handful of Earth (John Murray)
Old Dog (Simon and Schuster)
Barefoot Barney 
Hi Barney,
I read your article ‘Requiem for a lost youth: Hitting the menopause’. I now going through a particularly difficult menopause. In the article, you mentioned you wrote another article ‘the change’ which I cannot seem to find anywhere. I am interested to read that as during this really hard time, it is kinda reassuring for me to know that there are many in the world going through similar experience and that thought keeps me sane. Thank you and I appreciate your time.
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Hello Serene, I am sorry you are having a hard time. It WILL PASS, but is certainly challenging whilst it’s happening. Like being a teenager again, but in a kind of reverse. All I can say is, I do definitely feel a new expansiveness, a new sense of self, now I am out the other side, so to speak. I haven’t actually written anything else on the subject, although was on the brink of having a book idea accepted, that I think would have been helpful to women. But the publishers didn’t want it in the end. There is plenty of stuff out there if you dig around. Also, I found acupuncture to be extremely helpful with dealing with many of the symptoms, and steering me into balance. Very best of luck. Be kind with yourself. Rest a lot. And thank you for being in touch. Best wishes, barney
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Just wanted to thank you for a generous and imaginative review of my book on George Eliot.
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Barney,
Thank you so much for your article about menopause being hell. You’re words have given me hope during this difficult and physically painful time. I’ve felt so alone until I read your experience.
SB
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Oh, I am so pleased you found some solace in my writing. That was an article I wrote for the Guardian and Femail ten years ago! But I believe it still holds good. What a turbulent and utterly disorientating time menopause is. And isolating. But you will come through it! Meanwhile seek support wherever you can, and rest, rest, rest as much as possible. Very best wishes to you as you go on your journey.
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