Introducing the 2026 Theme: Tend — A Year of Gentle Stewardship
Every year, Whistle & Page (aka, me, hi!) chooses a theme—not as a marketing slogan or a shiny New Year declaration, but as a subtle compass. Something soft enough to sit in the palm of your hand, yet steady enough to guide the rhythm of a studio, a home, a garden, and a life.
For 2026, the compass points to a single word: Tend.
At first glance, it’s a small word, almost fragile, like something you might whisper rather than announce. But the longer you sit with it—truly sit with it—the more it reveals itself. Tend is not a call to improve, achieve, or overhaul. It is simply an invitation to care for what already exists, slowly and lovingly, with the kind of consistent attention that transforms the ordinary into something wonderfully extraordinary.
To tend is to move through the world with presence rather than urgency. It asks us to notice the things we’ve been skimming past—the half-finished cup of tea cooling beside us, the garden bed we meant to check, the tiny creative idea that keeps tapping at our shoulder, the relationship we’ve been meaning to soften into again. Tending is the art of gentle stewardship: guiding without gripping, nurturing without rushing, honouring the good that’s already here instead of exhausting ourselves chasing what we think we should have by now.
In the studio, Tend feels like a deep exhale. It means choosing refinement over rush, letting clay teach its lessons in its own unhurried way, and remembering that handmade traditions hold wisdom that doesn’t bend to modern urgency. It’s the long, meditative process of rolling and shaping and smoothing; the patience required when pieces dry too slowly or too quickly; the humility of embracing imperfection as a natural part of craft. It’s a year where the goal isn’t to make more, but to make with deeper intention. Pieces that feel grounded, pieces that feel human, pieces that carry the fingerprints of both maker and moment.
At home—here in the Hyland Hills—Tend takes on its own hushed shape. It looks like caring for the garden beds with a sense of companionship rather than ownership, and greeting each new seedling not as a task but as a tiny promise. It looks like nurturing family rhythms with softness, creating pockets of steadiness in a world that constantly pulls us toward the next thing. It’s the slow repair of a corner of the house we’ve been politely ignoring, the steady rebuilding of creative habits that have gone shy, the decision to give your inner world as much care as you give the washing basket, the pets, the deadlines, and the ever-expanding to-do list.
Tend is not a theme reserved for the studio or for me alone; it’s an open invitation. It may meet you in a moment where your heart feels stretched thin, reminding you that you don’t have to rebuild everything at once. It may find its way into your mornings, nudging you to water something—not just a plant, but perhaps a habit, a dream, or a part of yourself you’ve quietly set aside because life demanded faster things. It might encourage you to reconnect with a friend you’ve been missing, to dust off a hobby that once made you feel alive, or to simply sit still for the length of a single deep breath.
There is no grand performance required in tending. It is a practice woven from small, consistent touches—the kind that don’t look like much until you look back and realise they have shaped an entire season.
If 2025 was a year of rooting—of stabilising, settling, anchoring—then 2026 is the year of nurturing what those roots hold. It is a year that asks for less striving and more grounding, less proving and more being, less noise and far more noticing. A year shaped not by ambition but by devotion to the things that matter most: creativity, connection, community, and the daily rituals that make life feel meaningful rather than merely productive.
My hope is that 2026 feels like a year where your hands touch things that matter, your days meet you with gentleness, and everything you care about grows—not because you pushed harder, but because you tended to it with patience, softness, and love.
Happy New Year, my friend!
Until next time,
Nawsheen, your friendly homebody artist from Murrumbateman.
