Meeting a Mermaid

Boardmasters, Cornwall · 2026
Drawing, play & collaborative making

We found a mermaid at a festival.
Not metaphorically. An actual mermaid.

At Boardmasters, my daughter discovered Sapphire and Ocean, and promptly fell completely in love — with her, with the world around her, and with the art tent run by Your Art Connect CIC .

We kept finding our way back.

My daughter spent the whole time questioning whether she was real.

She questioned me. She questioned the evidence. She watched her carefully. She wanted an answer I refused to give her. To see magic is a choice.

And then she drew her anyway.

We kept returning to the art tent, where mermaid tails became ocean dragons, scales multiplied across pages, gold tape became armour and strange creatures appeared that hadn't existed ten minutes earlier.

My daughter is a perfectionist. She likes knowing the rules before she begins. She wants things to look right. And yet, faced with something she couldn't quite decide was real, she didn't resolve the question before she created from it.

Perhaps imagination doesn't require certainty.

Perhaps sometimes “what if?” is enough.

Field Note
She couldn't decide if the mermaid was real.
So she drew her anyway.