Mixed Media Video, Artwork, Stories, A World in a Suitcase 

“I am an artist, illustrator, storyteller and published writer as well as a Creative Director of A World in a Suitcase. The power of images and stories places us in an historical context and helps us make sense of the world, in finding out who we are and who we can become”. Myrna Shoa
World Turned Upside Down is an animation I made in January 2018. The World did turn upside down in 2020 with the global pandemic.
"Over Lockdown 2020- 2021 I conceived and created 2 video animations. The Man in The Red Suit and You Can't Come In. I also made Our World in Lockdown with Timuchin Dindjer. I recorded Inma Meruelo reading her delightful book she wrote and illustrated for children, Once Upon a Time in Covid -19 Time". Myrna Shoa
9 people from diverse communities share their responses to lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic 2020.. Produced and directed by: Timuchin Dindjer and Myrna Shoa (C)
"The Man in The Red Suit - Life is like a jigsaw puzzle is an experimental video animation created during Lockdown, 2020 (C)
"You Can't Come In is a video animation."You need a password to enter".  is an experimental video animation created during Lockdown, 2021 (C)

A World In A Suitcase
A World in a Suitcase is an innovative mixed media ongoing visual storytelling project, conceived and developed by Myrna Shoa and Timuchin Dindjer that inspires people from diverse communities to take a fresh look at their 'Worlds' through sharing stories, art, photography, paper collage & film.
A World in a Suitcase works with a diverse range of ​Grassroots community groups ensuring that there is a tangible, meaningful outcome, that the participants can feel ownership and part of. 
The aim of the project is to foster closer relations, understanding, empathy and tolerance between communities.

Strange Ways Stories

I am in a story gathering time. When I hear a story that resonates with me I can it as a picture. Then I have to convey them.
 I have written and illustrated true family stories, Strange Ways Stories  published by Gatehouse Books.
The Sofa, The Marriage, The Box of Chocolates and Rosie & the Iron Bar. I co - wrote with author Hazel Riley and also illustrated the beginner readers 'From The Heart' ​series, ​retelling the Greek myths in a modern urban setting.

The Fool

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The Fool women's fashion 1970s
Myrna Shoa created The Fool website as an historical record and resource showing how she, Ruti and other creative women gave birth to a successful enterprise. ​The Fool a designer women’s hippie fashion company started in 1973 with a little bit of magic. The Fool caught the zeitgeist, the spirit of the time.
The Fool designed manufactured and sold colourful, flowing, lacy hippie style women’s clothes around The Portobello Road area at a time of great change. ​From Aden, Manchester, Eritrea, Cheetham Hill, Scotland, Clydebank, Dvinsk, Russia, Ruti, Myrna and Aury set up The Fool.
​This hotchpotch combination made the magic happen brought the spark alive and created a successful entrepreneurial business. ​​​​

A Childhood Remembered

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Sandra and Myrna
"In the last year of my sister Sandra's life we passionately gathered together our stories from our childhood for this website. We disagreed sometimes about what happened realising that we saw the world through our own eyes. This enlivened the recollections, made them richer. Without this wonderful story gathering I would not have been able to write, illustrate and have published Strange Ways stories about our shared upbringing.These stories are mainly for our families to read, to answer questions about their backgrounds, history and connection to the other cultures they have come from.
"Since Sandra's death I have been trying to find out any more information about our backgrounds. In May 2021, I discovered the actual newspaper articles about our grandfather Myer, Rosie and Morris, recently digitised, uploaded and available free from the British Newspaper Archive. Sandra would have been amazed and delighted to see all this. I hope she is looking down and smiling. SEE STRANGE WAYS STORIES our version of these stories told to us over our upbringing."
With Sandra's passing I am the last of the Horowitchs. No one else is alive. As children the only relatives we had were our parents, Uncle Morris and Aunty Rosie. The relatives on our mother Ina's side, the Hendrys are all dead. Sandra and I met Aunty Betty in London,  our mother's sister several times in London and Uncle James our mother's brother a few times, in Scotland.
​Sandra lives on in these stories, These stories may resonate with yours," Myrna Shoa 2020
"Since Sandra's death, I have been trying to find out any more information about our backgrounds. May 2021 through another search about my Horowitch stories, unbelievably I discovered actual newspaper articles that verified my stories.
The British Newspaper Archive allows free searches, but to view original newspaper pages, which you often don't need you'll need to pay. The British Newspaper Archive website gives access to over 40 million fully searchable pages, featuring more than 1,000 newspaper titles from every part of the UK and Ireland, and some overseas titles.
 We are bound together by stories, our own personal story we tell ourselves as well as our national story, of the larger world we live in, that we share with others". Myrna Shoa
(C)