Creativity And Navigating Uncertainty
A practice based intensive for rewilding the creative spirit. 28th October 2020 - 10th February 2021
What it is and why
A 3 month practice based course, for re-wilding the creative spirit.
15 weeks of learning and exploring together. We begin as the light gathers in for winter and ends as spring bursts forth in 2021.
The times are uncertain. Everything is turbulent and up in the air...But there are ways of working with uncertainty that Creativity understands deeply. This course aims to lead you back to the part of yourself that knows all about this intrinsically. There is a generative principle at work in all organic life, that follows a cycle of birth - life - death . It bears little relationship to the false dominant narrative of 'continual growth'. This course will support you to build practices that dismantle these false narratives and grow pathways towards articulating your heart and nourishing our collective dreaming.
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How it works
Starting from the 27th October 2020, We meet most Wednesday evenings 5pm - 7pm GMT. This is experience based learning and takes place via a combination of live zoom classes, creative preparations, visiting professional artists, video classes, provocations, peer 'creative ally' sharing, home adventures (as opposed to 'homework';-) and reflection weeks. There will be opportunities to follow approaches you are enjoying as well as invitations to test out your edges. This course is also about application - so ultimately, you will be supported to bring this new (old) tool kit out of the practice room and into your life.
What's all this about then?
...and how do i know if this course is for me?
This course looks at what creative practice can teach us about navigating uncertainty with more courage, playfulness and application. This course is for anyone who wants to rekindle their relationship with the creative, generative principle in any aspect of their life and work. You don't have to want to be an artist or have any experience of being intentionally creative in your life. Curiosity and openness are the only prerequisites.
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Image by David Jericó.
Working with Artists
To help bring some of the themes to life, we will be joined by three incredible artists and friends: Darvish Fakhr, Benji Reid and Brooke McNamara. Each of whom makes work that speaks deeply to that adaptive creative principle, with playfulness, depth and vulnerability. The gift of bringing in practicing artists is that they are used to working with uncertainty as a resource. Perhaps even courting it. So we have much to learn from them. Here's a bit more about them
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this image is by Greg Allum
Darvish Fakhr
http://darvish.com
Darvish Fakhr is the first of our visiting special guests. He will be joining us live on the 11th November to explore the theme of Beginning With What Is.
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Darvish Fakhr is a half Iranian, half American visual artist whose work ranges from painting to performance. He creates gentle civic disruptions in an attempt to smuggle in a ‘lightness of being’. His mediums include, oil paint, tai-chi, hip-hop, trampolines, roller-skates and flying carpets. He strives for spiritual liberation through physical play. He enjoys recalibrating notions of masculinity by allowing himself to relinquish control over the now.
Image by Hugh Fox
Benji Reid
https://www.benjireid.com
Benji Reid is the second of our visiting special guests. He'll be joining us live on the 16th December to explore the theme Navigating Obstacles and Road Blocks.
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Benji Reid is an award winning photographer. He is the winner of the Welcome Trust Mental health category 2020.
'My work is inherently political. I choose to shine light on the black British experience and communicate that to a world-wide audience. The aim of the work is to focus on our humanity and the fragility of black men, to offer a counter-narrative to what is on offer in the main stream, focusing on the the magical and and incongruent. The themes in my work explore mental health, fatherhood and self-actualization through stills photography.'
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Image by the artist, Benji Reid
Brooke McNamara
https://www.brookemcnamara.com
Brooke McNamara will be joining us as our third visiting special guest artist. Brooke will be joining us live on the 20th January to explore the theme Being On A Workable Edge.
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Brooke McNamara, MFA, is a poet, dance-theater artist, teacher, and Zen dharma holder. She has published two books of poems: Bury the Seed (2020) and Feed Your Vow (2015). For her poetry, she is the recipient of the Charles B. Palmer prize from the Academy of American Poets.
Brooke has taught at Naropa University in Yoga Studies and at the University of Colorado, Boulder in Dance. She is co-director with Lauren Beale of Eunice Embodiment, an organization that offers cutting edge performances, embodiment education, and CULTIVATE creative practice workshops and retreats.
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Image by Jewel Afflerbaugh
Rachel Blackman - Facilitator
www.tinyfailures.com www.vibrantbody.co.uk
Rachel Blackman will be your guide and lead facilitator through out this course. Most of your course content will be either be hosted or led by Rachel.
Rachel is an artist, somatic educator, theatre maker, trainer and mentor. She is passionate about nurturing biological intelligence and believes art can be a site of of secular, sacred, collective dreaming. Rachel's latest piece is a celebration of the creative potential of failure, called, You Aren't Doing It Wrong If No One Knows What You Are Doing and is a Brighton Festival Commission. You may remember her best when she had a lot less hair, as Charra in Matrix Revolutions.
Image by Dave Bramwell
“Magic doesn't sweep you away; it gathers you up into the body of the present moment so thoroughly that all your explanations fall away: the ordinary, in all its plain and simple outrageousness, begins to shine -- to become luminously, impossibly so. Every facet of the world is awake, and you within it.” ― David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology
What's The Investment?
Time, Money and Process...
There are 10 live x 2 hour long classes on a Wednesday afternoon (GMT) and about 25 prerecorded mini classes and creative explorations you can do in your own time. If you can't make any of the live classes, they are all recorded and mailed the next day. To get the most out of this course, you'll want to allow minimum 4 hours in the week on the live class weeks and 3 hours a week for the practice and reflection weeks. Plus space to meet up with your 'creative ally' peer groups, which we recommend you do weekly but you can tweak to suit your schedule. Of course the more time you invest in the explorations and make space in your life for this work, the deeper your experience and the more value you will get from it.
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Suggested price for the whole thing is £329. You can get other payment options, including concessions and pay monthly instalments over 4 months. Take a look at the options below.
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image by Leo Rivas
Course curriculum
here's a few class examples to give you a taster...
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1
Welcome to the Course!
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What it's All About Really...?
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Welcome Video and Orientation
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Week 1. Attention as a Creative, Generative Tool
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Week One Attention As A Creative Resource
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Noticing Where We Are Placing Our Attention - creative task
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Focusing tools - asking the body for creative idea generation - Zoom class
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Body Listening for Creative Practice
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First Creative ally meet up.
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Week 2. Being with Vulnerability and Discomfort
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Week 2 Vulnerability and Discomfort
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Neurosis Cocktail Party: All The Reasons Why You Can't, Daren't, or Probably Shouldn't) - PRE WORK
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Feeling Like An Idiot Practice / Failing at Something that matters. Zoom class - Rachel
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Beginning a Habit Breaking Habit Practice - daily practice
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Date with the artists work
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Week 3. Starting With What Is - What An Artist Knows I - with Darvish Fakhr
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Starting where you are
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Week 3 - 11 November - What An Artist Knows - Live Session with Darvish - Zoom
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Cultivating Curiosity - What is this thing that is happening now? Creative Task
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Doing things for their own sake. Giving Less Fucks Practice - Creative Task
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Week 4. Reflection Week
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Reflection Week 1
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Week 5. Practice Week 1 (Video only - no live Zoom class)
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Practice Week 1
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Week 6. Active Day Dreaming and What-Ifness
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Different forms of conscious attention
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Ways In And Down - Not Knowing As Creative Opportunity - Live Workshop - ZOOM
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Take A Wonder / Wander Date - weekly practice
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Week 7. Being a Transmitter and Receiver
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Taking a line for a walk - weekly practice
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guides, genies and muses - Zoom class
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Date with the Artists work
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Week 8. Navigating Obstacles and Road Blocks - What An Artist Knows II - with Benji Reid
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Week 6 - 16 December What an Artist Knows - live zoom session with Benji Reid -
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State Shifting for different starting points - Zoom class - new tool!
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Week 9. Reflection week 2
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Reflection week 2
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Week 10. Practice Week 2
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Practice Week 2
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Week 11. Problems, Irritants, Inequalities and Injustices - Art as Transformative Medicine.
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When Nothing Comes...
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Problems, Irritants, inequalities and injustices - art as transformative medicine - zoom class
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Date with the Artist prep
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Week 12. Being on A Workable Edge - What An Artist Knows III with Brooke McNamara
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Week 8 - January 20 - What An Artist Knows - with Brooke McNamara
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Week 13. Practice Week 3
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Practice Week 3
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Week 14. Co-creating What Is Already Becoming
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Composting - Turning Crap into Fertiliser
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Alchemy - Your Life as Raw Material - zoom class
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Week 15. Endings and Celebrations - Onwards Journeys
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Ritual for Ending And Commitments to Continue - Zoom class
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revisiting our journey together
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Like to know more?
If you're interested but unsure about a few things, you're welcome to get in touch and ask me anything you'd like. Before you do, please take moment to watch the video and re-read all the content here to make sure your question isn't already covered. x Rachel
