Welcome to Still Space with Sian Clifford.
Hi!
I’m Sian, a British actress born and raised in London, probably best known for playing Claire, the sister from Fleabag and I’m experimenting with a little detour back into writing, my first love.
What is Still Space?
In 2015, the idea for Still Space woke me in the middle of a humid LA night like a bolt of lightning, gripped me by the PJs and shook me like thunder. I got out of bed, grabbed a notebook, the nearest pen and started scribbling furiously. Two hours later, stinging-eyed and spent, I rocked back on my heels, snapped out of my reverie and looked back at what I’d written.
I had been practising meditation for 5 years at that point, as well as delving deep into everything spiritual and esoteric the universe could offer up. I had benefitted enormously from a lot of it but I felt frustrated by how it was presented to the world — how it mostly felt out-of-date, held hostage by New Age thinking and its fluorescent paisley aesthetic. I would often have to side step a lot of that in order to resonate with its teachings so I wanted to carve out a space to share what I’d learned in a way that if I was new to it, I could immediately connect to.
When I returned home to London I started teaching meditation classes out of my living room and had a complete plan (see midnight feast notebook) to expand the business over the course of the next two years. Within two months I had won an award and was named Psychologies Magazine and Hay House publishers’ New Wise Voice of 2016. I was also enjoying success as a producer. And then, the universe decided to spin me in a completely different direction. Fleabag the first television show I was in proper, was released into the world and my life as an actor, changed forever.
What sort of thing will I be sharing?
At its heart, Still Space has always been about connecting to ourselves in deeper and more meaningful ways. And presenting conscious living practices in their purest form: simple, accessible, available to everyone—
No sitting still or clearing your mind required.
What’s also become clear since I relaunched in February 2023 is that I absolutely LOVE writing about culture and the arts too—and the creative process itself.
Still Space is ultimately a philosophical, evolutionary and exploratory space for myself through long-form writing but it is my intention to create offerings each week that speak to and from my soul as a conscious living practitioner and thus trust that they will be enjoyed and discovered by the people that are called to read them.
There will also (hopefully!) be discussion and there will, eventually, be toolkits (I’m working on that and lots more in the background).
Why subscribe to Still Space?
You’ll get the most out of this platform by becoming a paid subscriber, that way you receive all new content direct to your inbox as it’s published.
Free subscribers will receive all updates but won’t have access to all published posts. As a full member of Still Space, you’ll get access to in-depth articles, inspirational tools, thoughtful community discussions, arts and meditation related gatherings, plus the full back catalogue of archived posts. You’ll also be supporting all the work I do and give away for free. It’s a really wonderful community and I recently reduced my prices to as low as Substack would let me but here’s a 10% off code your first year as a ‘thank you’ for reading this far.
A little more about Sian
Sian Clifford is a BAFTA-winning, Emmy, SAG and Critics Choice Award nominated actress best known for her role as Claire in the multi-award winning, global phenomenon and critically acclaimed Fleabag, for which she won the BAFTA for Best Female Performance in a Comedy. She was also recognised at Stylist’s Remarkable Women Awards as 2020’s Actor of the Year.
She is the founder of Still Space an online platform dedicated to inspiring conscious living, for which she was named Hay House Publishers’ and Psychologies Magazines’ New Wise Voice, in 2016.
Most recently as a writer, Sian was asked to be a contributor for actress and producer Zosia Mamet’s original food anthology series My First Popsicle. Published by Penguin Random House US in November 2022, Sian’s essay Intuitive Eating can be found deliciously sandwiched amongst the extraordinary tastes of Beanie Feldstein, John Leguizamo, Ted Danson and many more.
In 2023, Sian was also selected twice as a featured writer on Substack Reads, for her articles Access Hollywood and Fleabag: The Scriptures.
To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.
