Collective Arts Blog

Exploring Creativity Workshop in Review

A Sample of feedback from our Exploring Creativity Workshop participants:

"Thanks to all of you for a most stimulating and enjoyable day. The setting was great as were all those involved. Hope to see more of you."

"Thank you very much for enabling me to participate in these sessions; and to share them with others whom I found unfailingly interesting. It was a great pleasure and a valuable experience."

"I was amazed at how far we could go in so little time."

"The mix of creative forms worked beautifully."

"I genuinely thought the whole day, the structure, the content and the thought that had gone into organising it was fantastic."

"This will spur me to find some time for myself and my creativity."

 

"I approached it an open (but fundamentally cynical way..) and was pleasantly surprised by every session, they all can be applied to my life."

 

"The rooms, the arrangements and the organisations were all supurb."

Jam

The week I found myself at two conferences -  three if I am to count Exploring Creativity.

 Social Enterprise London offered a day of speakers focusing on marketing and promotion and today I was at the Arts Council to listen to a discussion entitled Be Creative Be Well put on by the London Arts in Health Forum.  The themes running through these two events were surprisingly synergetic and I felt a sense of zeitgeist not unlike the process of making Jam. I listened to Marketers telling me to be real, follow the Obama way and engage my audiences on a journey using new media, to be honest to be myself, to Google search ‘will it blend’ for inspiration – it’s not what you think…really.

And then Arts professionals describing work that was evolving organically, like a creative chef whose recipe is never quite the same way twice. So here I am, in new media, punctuating my blog with meta text and searchable current events, but thinking about making jam, because I am seeing a discernable shift, a move towards more creative ways of thinking, being, engaging, something earthy, homey without additives that are all about the numbers.

This past weekend I took part in my own piece of the making jam Zeitgeist as we delivered Exploring Creativity, where the mix of ingredients and environment led to something more desirable than its individual parts. It encapsulated every lovely metaphor you can think of to describe making jam. And do you know what…it was good. 

 

“A List of Books whose titles came up this weekend that I haven’t actually checked out myself, but which interesting people have recommended”:

The Spirit Level - Good to Great -  Built to Last - A Flat Earth

EXPLORING CREATIVITY

 

Exploring Creativity

~A one day workshop and symposium~

Create time for a  stimulating day of writing, sculpture, drawing

and engaging group discussion

 in the beautiful setting of Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham

Saturday, March 21st, 2009.

10:00 – 5:00

Programme of events:

"Inventing Confidence" - an introductory talk examining the role of self-belief in creativity

“The Organic Process of Writing” – in this hands-on workshop Novelist and Writing Coach Jacqui Lofthouse dispels the myths around planning in advance.

"Drawing from Within" - a practical drawing workshop suitable for all levels with Artist and Life Coach, Lee Campbell

"Creating Visual Goals" - focus your aspirations using sculpture and metaphor with Conceptual Artist, Julia Ruppert

"Ornament and Perception" - explore the impact sculpture has had through history on our experience of the landscape with Antiquarian, Sharon Powell

£75.00 per person including materials, refreshments and lunch. 

Please call 07711 938 921 for more information or email info@collective-arts.org

www.visitrichmond.co.uk