Marneta Viegas: Silence and the Creative Spark

Mime, movement and the Relax Kids revolution. 

Marneta Viegas, founder of Relax Kids, was the "fame school" student haunted by self-doubt who went on to become a pioneer of accessible children's relaxation. In this episode she details the emotional toll business growth had on her, and how she now fiercely guards her creativity.

• From Self-Doubt to Mime: Marneta shares her supportive, yet complex, childhood, including attending ballet and tap classes where she struggled with self-esteem. Despite graduating with a degree in performing arts (and crying daily over the music requirements), constant rejection from the children’s TV industry led her to pivot to the "silent way," studying mime. She funded this non-verbal training by entertaining children as a clown.
• The Accidental Birth of Relax Kids: While working as a clown Marneta noticed a critical drop in children’s concentration, and using accumulated skills (breathing, drama, mime, silence), she created her unique seven-step system and made relaxation for children "acceptable" by turning fairy stories into meditations, drafting her first book in just three days.
• The Struggle: Losing the Creative Spark: As Relax Kids grew, the administrative burden took over, and Marneta experienced a loss of  creativity, as well as feeling physically sick and struggling with "dark days".
• Creativity Found and Fiercely Guarded: There is, of course, a happy ending, and Marneta explains how she was able to find her path back to creativity, and how she now prioritizes new creative channels, including performing unique standup comedy, mindful movement, and forest bathing. 

Marneta's story is about the power of silence, stillness, and childlikeness to feed the soul and fuel creative liberation.

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Transcript

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Marneta Viegas 1:01

I did constantly wonder why I am doing this. I shouldn't really be here. So there was that thing of the self-esteem eating at me, watching Dragon's Den thinking, oh, I would never go on that. What a horrible programme. And then ended up getting an application. I remember the moment. I thought, well, maybe I could go on Dragon's Den. And I went on, they laughed me out of the den because it was too new, they didn't have any concept of social entrepreneurship then. Boris Johnson gave me the prize and the keys to this office for a year. That's when it was like, oh. Going into an office every day. Hated it. This is a really good point for anyone who wants to go, okay, what shall I do with my life? Go and look at your bookshelf, because I remember late 90s looking at my bookshelf, and it was all books on children, psychology type thing, meditation, and fairy stories.

Claire Waite Brown 2:05

Hi, I'm Claire. For this podcast, I chat with people who have found or refound their creativity as adults. We'll explore their childhood experiences of the arts, discuss how they came to the artistic practices they now love, and consider the barriers they may have experienced between the two. We'll also explore what it is that people value and gain from their newfound artistic pursuits. And how their creative lives enrich their practical, necessary, everyday lives. This time I'm chatting with Marneta Viegas. Hi Marneta, how are you? Hello, Claire, I'm really well. Brilliant. Let's start then by please you telling me what your current creative channels are.

Marneta Viegas 2:54

Fantastic, yes. So I've got lots of creative channels. I've started doing stand-up, inspired by my cousin Lucy Pearman, who is an incredible clown stand-up. And what I've started doing is dressing up as mad things. Last week I was a virus, the week before I was a tree, and I just do this stand-up. It's just for the retreat, so it's not like in the big bad world. Um, but it's really great for my creativity. And I also do movement, mindful movement, and forest bathing in Oxford. Must come. I should, I should.

Claire Waite Brown 3:33

Tell me about when you were younger at home and at school. Did you have positive creative influences?

Marneta Viegas 3:41

Absolutely. Although my father did want me to be a doctor, he was tearing his hair out at the fact that I just could not apply myself to maths. But they were so supportive. I was so fortunate. They scraped their money together to put me in private school because that's what I needed. So there was a lot of opportunities for performing. So every classroom would create something. So we had talent competitions. So I was really, really encouraged. Tap school, ballet school, even though I was the fattest child there, it was awful, but I was learning these skills, yeah. And so I did constantly wonder why I am doing this. I shouldn't really be here. So there was that thing of the self-esteem eating at me. But I pushed on. 13, I got in the children's opera company. I ended up being the lead. I was in the CBSO choir at 16. I was the youngest one there. So I had so many amazing opportunities. And then in the 80s, there was this like a fame school. It was a six-warm college, but there was a whole fame department, and it was the time of fame. You know, literally, we were jumping on tables. So I did my A-level music, drama, and O-level dance. Now I remember my teachers at the private school going to my parents, you can't send her there. It's such a bad area. But they they let me choose. So that was I'm really, really grateful for. And that sort of led me on to my own really weird creative way.

Claire Waite Brown 5:21

Yeah. That is so encouraging, and not often what I hear on this show, I have to say. So then, having done your A levels at the Fame School, what happened next?

Marneta Viegas 5:34

I got into the Welsh College of Music and Drama to study music for teaching, and I went for a year and I did love it, but then I just thought, nah, this isn't right. This isn't right. And I literally, I cannot believe this. But one month before, I called up my fame school teacher and I said, You have to get me in somewhere else. I can't go back. One month before. And he goes, Manita, there is a performing arts college in Middlesex. You can do a degree in performing arts. There were only two at the time. I said, You have to get me in, you have to get me in. And they went one over on the music to take me. Like it was unbelievable. I think he pulled in a favour with his friend, and I had to do music. I think because the music department was prepared to go to 26. They had 25 in each music, drama, dance. But we studied them all and costume and everything. But yeah, it was amazing. And I was horrific. I was awful. I couldn't sight sing, I couldn't sight read piano. I cried every day in the piano rooms. I remember three years of hell in one respect. But I got I got there. I did it. I got a two, I think I got a two-one even. I mean, I don't haven't even got the degree to prove it. And I even now I have dreams that I haven't got my degree. You know, like an anxiety degree uh uh dream.

Claire Waite Brown 6:59

I have anxiety dreams that I'm meant to be taking my A levels and I haven't done any revision. I even know in my dream that it's a dream because I'm like Claire, you're a grown-up, you're 53 years old, you did your A levels a long time ago. Crazy, yes.

Marneta Viegas 7:16

You found the music difficult, but you in did you enjoy the rest of it? Yes, I loved costume, so I really got into the costume, little bit of drama, and then what happened? I left there and I went to various talent, you know, to try and get an agent in the early 90s now. You have to get an agent. It was really hard to get an agent. I really wanted to be a children's TV presenter, you know, Floella Benjamin. I grew up with Floella Benjamin, and I thought, you know, she was such a good role model. But in the 90s, they were all thin, blonde, and beautiful. And I was going against all these thin, young, beautiful girls. So that just got into my self-esteem. And I just thought, I can't do this to myself anymore, this constant rejection. And so I thought, I'm gonna study mime. I'm going to go the silent way. And so I got a Michael Jackson fund to do mime with Adam Darius, then I went to the Desmond Jones School of Mime, and then I went to another French school, which was amazing. And I think I even did another one. So I did a good few years of mime. Alongside

Clowning and Mime

Marneta Viegas 8:33

that, I started my first business entertaining children as a clown at parties. So that funded my miming. So I was constantly performing, being in front of people, learning those skills, quick thinking, and going into all sorts of situations that, you know, quite scary sometimes. I could tell you a few stories. Yeah. Um, that's how I really sort of built my confidence.

Claire Waite Brown 9:00

Yeah.

Marneta Viegas 9:01

Why the mime? And what what what was that leading towards, if anything? I love magic and I love theatre, and I love the magic of theatre. I get really bored with talky type theatre. I love panto because the changes. And so alongside the mime, alongside my um, I'm going to answer the question, but I'm coming in a roundabout way, alongside my children's entertaining, I also started producing theatre for children. And the way I did it, it was always my friends would laugh, costume-led. Every single scene had to be a different colour, had to everybody had to have a different costume change. So we'd all have about four or five costume changes. I always had the nicest costumes, but I made them, so that's allowed. And so that is why I love mime, and I would go to, it was very popular in the 90s, the London Mime Festival in January, and Slava, the Clown, and there were all the famous mime artists would descend on the UK, and they'd do something just with the hands, a whole hour of just watching hand movements, and that is magic to me, and I just love that creativity and watching that on stage. So the reason why I went down the mine was to learn those skills to put them into my children's theatre shows. Whether they were individual, I was very lucky. I'm got to travel the world a little bit, go to Italy, and I did it all for charity, but it was all learning.

Claire Waite Brown 10:40

Yeah. I'm interested in that you say about the wordy theatre, and then you're talking about a very focused craft and a focused form of entertaining,

Relax Kids

Claire Waite Brown 10:51

which is now connecting with my next question, which is leading on to relax kids. So when you told me in the past that when you were entertaining the children, you started to notice something within your audience that then led to a next creative idea. So tell me about that.

Marneta Viegas 11:10

Yes, so I have been a children's entertainer for around eight, eight years. I think it was 92. I started once I left uni. And it was around 99 to 2000 that I noticed a change in their behaviour. Thought, why are they not sitting still and listening? Their concentration is not as good, and it can't be my show because I'm getting better and better. And I thought there's something happening to their minds. So in one of the particularly difficult ones, um, I remember there were a lot of I had a lot of boys and they were about sort of eight-year-old boys, and the key is they had come from school, and they were the worst parties that you'd always dread those after school parties because they were hyped, they'd been stressed all day, you know, tense all day, and then now they can let rip and they've been with each other, whereas when they come to a party, they're usually shy, and so it was so hard. And halfway through the show, I just went, Okay, everyone, lie down. And I just did a visualization, and the parents were like, they couldn't believe it, they couldn't believe it. And and so I just started bringing this into my shows, and parents loved it because the way that I had entertained children, if I had left with them quiet, eating out of my hand, that to me was a good show. Whereas other entertainers, and that's why I got booked, because other entertainers would whip the children up and think that the louder they are, the more fun they're having, and that's not how I worked. So I guess in a way, I'd always been using these methods, and so moving on from that, I just thought, oh, there must be something in this. And I thought I should do something meditation for children. I'd learnt meditation when I was 12, so I knew meditation was a good thing. I'd been laughed at throughout my childhood for meditating and eating lentils because we were vegetarian as the hippie thing. So meditation was a weird thing in the 90s, it wasn't mainstream. So I thought, how can I find a way to bring meditation mainstream? I researched and there was nothing in the UK, a little bit of whale song type new agey thing in America, but nothing like that in the new UK. So I thought, oh, I need to find a way to make meditation accessible to children and acceptable to the adults, to the parents. So I thought, I'll take the fairy stories. So I took all the fairy stories and I turned them into meditations, and I wrote my first book, and that was done in three days, in fact, on a meditation retreat in three mornings after meditation at five o'clock. The first draft, let's say, yeah. And then I I got a publishing deal to do two books and it went on from there. But alongside with that, I started getting some friends' children come to the house and and relaxing them, using all the things that I pulled, breathing from the singing that I um the drama games, the mime, the silence, the meditation. I put it all together and created a seven-step system to teaching children to relax. And this is what makes relax kids unique. I got a millennium funding grant to do my first classes in an area of deprivation. We had to do something for mental health. So they were starting to think, and I thought, oh, this is perfect for me. And so I got my money to start my business, and it went so well. And then as a result, five years later, so many people wanted the classes. I thought, I can't go down to Cornwall, can't go up to Edinburgh, I have to start training. So I started training, and to date, I've trained 6,000 coaches to do relaxed kids and another 4,000 teachers, so it's in schools as well. I'm gonna c I could come to vision boards in a second, but I didn't do projections, I didn't do anything like that. It was all accidental. I remember

Dragon's Den

Marneta Viegas 15:20

in 2004 watching Dragon's Den thinking, oh, I would never go on that. What a horrible program. How could they be so cruel to people? And then ended up getting an application. I remember the moment seeing an application. I thought, oh maybe I could go on Dragon's Den. And I filled it in half-heartedly, went to the next level. Half-heartedly went to the next level, went for a screenshot, and they said, well, you know, don't worry, if you get other funding, you know, take it, because we'll let you know in a couple of months. Next Monday they called me, can you come in next week? I thought, oh my god, I want to lose two stone before I go on the TV. And I went on, they laughed me out of the den because it was too new, they didn't have any concept of social entrepreneurship then that we could do business and be helping the world. But the key thing is Peter Jones did say to me, you know, you're obviously an actress, what's your dream? And I said, My dream is to put on shows for children in the West End for free. And he went, Well, would you like to do this for free? And I said, Well, interesting point, because I didn't set relaxed kids up to make lots of money. And they just went, Did you just say you don't want to make money? And that was the end of the investment possibility. Our values didn't align anyway, so it was fine. So that is how relaxed kids just accidentally developed. But just going back, if you don't mind, I'd like to go back to the vision board because now vision boards are a big thing, and yes, I do do them now, but in 1991, I remember drawing out my first vision board before I knew that vision boards were a thing. I had a white piece of paper and I was just scribbling pictures of clowning, great people, celebrities, and then I lost that piece of paper and I moved. Three years later, I found that piece of paper and it would all come true. All come true. And that was the first vision board. Yeah.

Claire Waite Brown 17:29

Oh, it's so exciting. Um now it all sounds, it all fits with what you're talking about and the content that you were creating. At any point, it seems like you took the Dragon's Den thing quite lightheartedly. At any point, did it become not so enjoyable or or more work? It's like it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Did that actually ever dampen your enthusiasm, do you think?

Marneta Viegas 17:57

Yes, Claire, great question. The reason why I set up Relax Kids was my mum gave me £45,000. I have an English mum, and my father, my Indian father passed away, but my English mum was going to go to India to live. So she sold her house and she said, This is your early inheritance. Go and put a deposit down for a flat. And I went, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to make CDs for children. She went, What? But that £45,000 has kept me in work for 25 years. So I don't have a house, but you know, when I first started, I had a ha a room full of CDs and I would send them out with a little bit of glitter, you know, each one. And then at the point that it started to be a big business, not a big business, but the headache of accounts and marketing, and oh, I've got to actually start promoting. Well, that's when it was awful. I had many, many dark days, many, many times I wanted to give it up. And then, especially when you know the idea of staff having to deal with the whole businessy side. I won an office a few years later, and Boris Johnson gave me the prize and the keys to this office for a year. And that at that point, that's when it was like, oh, going into an office every day, hated it so much. I can't do accounts. I literally would start to feel sick in accountant meetings, literally, because I'd just come over all hot. So then I did start getting staffed, but then of course, if you're not looking after them and you don't know how to manage them, then they do their own thing. So I'd had all sorts of all sorts of stories um round that.

Claire Waite Brown 19:52

So did you feel you were losing control then? Of the business, I mean, not yourself.

Marneta Viegas 19:58

Well, possibly both, but it was more about the business and less creativity. The creativity was lost. And I'm only happy when I'm writing the books, creating the programmes, meeting the people, helping the children, anything else, I just struggle

Fairytale Romance

Marneta Viegas 20:17

with. Yeah. Yeah. But there was a little light that came 2007 when it was all getting all too much. This is on a personal note now. I put an advert, you know, I had my vision board. I wanted to find a lovely partner, and I even put it on my vision board that he would help me with the business, he'd be good at computers, he'd be good at music, he would do the recordings, all that I really, really struggled with. And I put up an advert on Gumtree saying, going with the fairy tale theme, Cinderella's looking for a prince between this age and this age, kind, relate, da da da da. Listed all what I wanted, had 20 replies, and I had one that wrote in old-fashioned English. And for a week we created this fairy story. It was amazing. And he was, I remember he was like night ninety-seven working his way up to the top, something like that. And then after a week he emailed me and he said he didn't know who I was. These emails have changed my life. Can we meet? And I said, Oh, okay. We arranged to meet at Blenheim Palace, you know that well. How lovely! Of course, where could a where could a prince and princess meet? There has to be Blenheim Palace. And um but the day before, you will not believe this. It was unbelievable. I didn't know where he worked. I went to the Science Park cafe near me, and I went was meeting a friend, and I I remember getting ten pence change back for my coffee. That was when times of change. And I smiled at the woman, and I just thought, somebody saw that smile. It was just this weird, weird, weird moment. I got a text from him five minutes later. He said, I think I just saw you at the cash point at the Science Park Cafe. We'd not met, he just recognised me, and I I'm getting tingles now just thinking about it, and we almost freaked each other out, thinking I thought, oh, is he stalking me? And we met, and you know, four days later he asked me to marry him, and we got married in Blenheim Palace a year later. Wow. This is all I mean, for me, there is like the fairy tale element, and even my wedding, talk about creativity. I the only way I could do Blenheim Palace was if I did everything on my own. So I did everything, even making my friends all wear the Blenheim Palace colours, so everyone was in sort of like caramels and browns and dusky pinks. It looked amazing. So it's like theatre, isn't it? Life for me is like beauty and theatre. And he did the website, he did all my record. He was a computer programmer, so he left his work and came to work for Relax Kids a month later. Wow. And he was brilliant, he was brilliant, and he really was good at helping build the business, and then I was able to take a little bit of a uh a back foot, yes, but then I did lose my creativity. I I I lost myself a little bit. Something did happen where I went into a bit of a down and yeah, and I lost that creative spark.

How Marneta Guards Against Losing Herself

Claire Waite Brown 23:28

So presumably, well, actually not presumably, did you notice that? I mean, did you equate with going down, with losing creativity? Did you see that?

Marneta Viegas 23:40

Not at time. I probably looking back, the mistake was that I wasn't continuing my creative thread and also giving the responsibility away, my mistake, and just sort of like, I don't know what I was doing, but I just went into it like a quiet, yeah, just more inward. And I wasn't happy. Yeah.

Claire Waite Brown 24:03

But that's not your situation now. No. And you know, this is creativity found, it's always a happy ending, and we come back to the findings. So, what did change your realization and how did it come back to where you are now?

Marneta Viegas 24:17

Well, sadly, a few l years later, the the marriage did come to an end, although we did carry on working in the business together. And the year after the marriage ended, obviously broken heart and all that, but then here we go. Let's be creative. I wrote five books in a year, and so and and then I I carried on creating more programmes, and then I started in 2021 created an Ignite Your Spark Creativity Club where we meet and we do art every week, and it's just gone on from there. And then I started doing now going back to the beginning, the comedy, which I absolutely love, and the forest bathing. If I could do nothing else but forest bathing, movement in nature, and comedy, I would be so happy. Those are my three laughs now.

Claire Waite Brown 25:10

And did that then um you live on a retreat, don't you? I do, yes.

Marneta Viegas 25:16

When did that come in in the timeline? It was I think 2004. I woke up and I thought I've got to move out of London. And I thought the only place I want to live is near this retreat in this area. It's felt this this is my place, and I've been here for 20 years. I guess the entertaining, it's all been very much linked with my meditation journey. And I think this is a really good point for anyone who wants to go, okay, what shall I do with my life? Go and look at your bookshelf. Because I remember late 90s looking at my bookshelf, and it was all books on children, psychology type thing, meditation, and fairy stories.

Claire Waite Brown 26:00

Brilliant.

Marneta Viegas 26:01

And that's what I did. Yeah. I think the true creativity is like never. I mean, I've had so many people copy me now, but the true creativity is when you find your own thing, you know. Don't copy anybody else, take little bits, but create your own thing. And you know, just like you have done, all your guests, you just find your your creative spark using your whole life, really. And you can see for me, meditation and the mime, which comes, I guess, even into the forest bathing because the no words. I love this thing. We're now in a in a world of words and information. How much more can our mind, our minds, our brains take? We want to go back to the mind, we want to go back to the silence, the stillness, the clowning, the childlikeness. This is what feeds our soul.

Claire Waite Brown 27:00

And is that how you can guard against being taken over again? So you can guard against going back to a position you were in before that was uncomfortable.

Marneta Viegas 27:13

Yes, that will would never happen again. And I'm I'm very protective now. And Sarah, who works in in the office, she's brilliant at all, the admin and all that stuff. So I know that I don't have to get involved, and I know if I did, I would lose myself again, yeah. But definitely keeping that spark, that creative spark alive in whatever way is so so important. But also the silence, finding the spark in the silence.

Claire Waite Brown 27:45

Yeah. You see, for me, I can equate that in an opposite way, in that I love the audio, but not the video. Everything is pushing for video these days, and I'm like, I just need the audio. I don't need all of my senses to be working at the same time.

Marneta Viegas 28:03

Yes, that's very, very interesting. I think in terms of information, I prefer the audio. Although, interestingly enough, if there's a video, I would actually rather read about something.

Claire Waite Brown 28:17

Yeah.

Marneta Viegas 28:17

Then I can I can skim and I can get the points that I need.

Claire Waite Brown 28:21

Yes. That is exactly how I do it. And I get so well, I don't get crossed, but I search something up that I need to do on internet and it gives me YouTube things. And I'm like, no, I don't want that. I just want the words, and then I'll pick out the words I need, and then yeah, I'm exactly the same. How interesting. You must be old school, Claire. Definitely, definitely. I still read books that are um actual paper books, not on a Kindle or anything. So before we go, explain a little bit more about how Relax Kids works now, how anything else you're doing uh works now.

Marneta Viegas 28:56

Yeah, so with Relax Kids, obviously I have got my 20 books now that I've written. So for parents to work with children or teachers to work with children to help them manage their anxiety and emotional. So the way I've done it is I've found lots of different creative ways, not just the meditation, but interesting creative ways to get children to relax. And then I've got the training where people can come or go online and learn to be a relaxed kids coach or use it in school. I've also got a toolkit for school teachers, karma class to use in schools. There's a charge-up programme for teenagers, which is basically a handbook that every teen needs to have: art of consent, how to have relationships, mind, body, understanding that you understand your phone, but you don't understand your brain, you know. So switching off, downloading positive software, etc., all that. And then we have a baby mindful program, which is for naught to 24 months, teaching the mothers and babies from zero how to relax and eco-regulate. So lots of things happening with relaxed kids. And then the Spark program, that's once a a week we meet online and create and chat.

Claire Waite Brown 30:22

And yeah, that's lovely. Oh brilliant. Thank you so much, Marneta. It's been such an uplifting chat today. Tell me how people can connect with you, where people can find you.

Marneta Viegas 30:35

Relaxkids.com is the website. Find me on LinkedIn if you want to connect with me personally or Facebook. Yeah, I'm love to chat to you and help anyone who wants to be creative or help children be creative and relax. Perfect. Thank you so much. My pleasure, Claire.

Claire Waite Brown 30:56

Thank you so much. You're welcome. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, perhaps you'd like to financially contribute to future episodes at buymeacoffee.com slash creativityfound. There's a link in the show notes. If you are listening on a value for value enabled app, such as Fountain, TrueFans, or Podcast Guru, feel free to send a few sats my way. And if you have no idea of what I'm talking about, you can find out more by listening to my sister podcast called Podcasting 2 in Practice.