Creativity & Navigating Uncertainty
A 16 week practice-based intensive for re-wilding your creative spirit
1st June - 14th September 2021
THIS COURSE IS NOW FULL
16 weeks of experience-based learning, exploring how we can integrate the creative principle into all elements of our living.
“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
how do I know if this course is for me?
'The most interesting moment of a person's life is what happens to them when all their certainties go away. Then who do you become? And then what do you look for? That's the moment when the universe is offering up an invitation saying, 'come find me.' - Elizabeth Gilbert
11 x live workshops on Tuesdays 10.30am - 12.30pm BST (UK time), sessions with visiting artists, reflection weeks, practice weeks, optional weekly Maker's Exchange drop ins, creative provocations, home enquiries, Creative Ally support teams, community - and more...
What it's All About Really...?
Welcome Video and Orientation
Week One: Attention As A Creative Resource
Noticing Where We Are Placing Our Attention - Creative Task
Focusing tools - Asking the body for creative idea generation - Zoom class - 1st June
Recording of Week 1 Zoom session
Body Listening for Creative Practice
First Creative Ally meet up.
Week 2: Vulnerability and Discomfort
Neurosis Cocktail Party: All The Reasons Why You Can't, Daren't, or Probably Shouldn't - PRE WORK
Creative Ally Meet Ups
Feeling Like An Idiot Practice / Failing at Something that Matters - Zoom class - 8th June
Beginning a Habit Breaking Habit Practice - daily practice
Date with the Artists work
Recording of Week 2 Zoom session
Week 3 - Pre Live Session Exploration
Week 3 - What An Artist Knows - Live Session with Sophie Abbot - 15th June - Zoom
Week 3 - Home Enquiry - Take Your Wonder for a Wander Date
Taking Your Wonder For A Wander - Video Intro
Recording of Week 3 Zoom session
Audio only - recording of Live Class - Week 3 - Sophie Abbott
Creative Ally Meet Ups
Intro to the Maker's Exchanges
Maker's Exchange Example session - Carina 18 / 06 / 21
Practice Week 1 - This is your first creative practice week.
Photographing what pleases, intrigues or fascinates you
First Creative Practice Week - Creative Adventure!!
Recording of Practice Week Optional Zoom Session
Week 4 - Practice Week set up (audio version)
Intro to Week 5 - Video
Different forms of Conscious Attention - Pre session reflections & Writing exercise
Ways In And Down - Not Knowing As Creative Opportunity - Live Zoom Workshop - 29th June
Go to Sacred Space and use it as a starting point to generate some creative material this week
Recording of Week 5 Zoom session
Audio only recording of week 5 zoom call
Q: Hi Sophie, can you tell us a bit more about what you do?
I use iPhone photography and sketches to record observations about the landscapes I'm working in and use these snippets to explore colour, mark making and composition to use when I'm back in the studio. Recently I've been painting en plein air in local woods and by the sea, exploring the colour and shapes and making small spontaneous paintings which I then translate into larger works when I'm back painting in the studio.
The spontaneous nature of my paintings means I'm trusting the process and getting lost in expressing the feel of the place, rather than focusing on the end result. I let the brushmarks, splotches and spills occur and often they become part of the work itself, which is for me a very physical process.
image by Alun Callendar
Q: What are you really into at the moment?
Ok here goes.....
1) Rollerskating... (for christmas i got rollerskates and have been out rollering regularly!
2) Sea swimming
3) House Plants
4) Gardening
5) Walking
6) Blue skies
7) Woods
8) Macrame
9) Odd box
10) Trainers
11) Weighlifting
12) The colour pink
13) Home making
Q: Hey Ila, can you tell us a bit about what you do?
A: I’ve worked across multiple platforms, including broadcast and digital channels like BBC, Channel 4, Vice and ITV. I’ve a track record of filming primarily on sensitive access docs. I’m a trained photographer with a creative eye and confident self shooter including undercover filming. I’m passionately into storytelling, have a keen eye to spot and develop one, skilled at negotiating and maintaining access, building strong relationships and working with vulnerable contributors. I have strong development research experience, my directorial debut feature in production follows a transgender woman and activist in Delhi over 5 years as she struggles and fights to bring pride and hope to her community.
Q: What are you really into at the moment?
A: Filmmaking, visual storytelling - I’m growing into marrying my passion for telling difficult stories with my love for the delicacy of the visual image to share with the widest audience.
Q: Hi Yael, what are you really into at the moment?
A little recent short trip made my heart sing, I visited the wonderful artist Michal Rovner in her countryside home and studio. Rovner is a blessed, talented being worth a search and a dive into her universe. It also included 30 minutes with four, two month old puppies, which felt like a blessing of tenderness and simple being.
Q: Where can we find out more about you? And who took these beautiful photographs?
My website is yaelkaravan.com
The top photograph is from my performance MA-MA, the photograph is by Josefa Searle.
The black and white photograph is from a photo shoot by Aliki Lempidaki & Jim Sanders.
Q: Where can we find out more about Brooke?
Brooke's Website: BrookeMcNamara.com
Photograph is by Jewel Afferbaugh
Theatre & Feeling Ridiculous | Embodiment & Somatic Re-Education
Q: Hey Rachel, what are you really into at the moment?
Nurturing biological intelligence. Bringing aliveness. My family. My home. My work. Friendships. Heart. Community. I know art can be a site of secular, sacred, collective dreaming and want to bring people into that. We are each a living heart. Imagination is a powerful place!
Weaving. Noticing. Translating. Receiving. Transmitting. Learning to de-colonise. Learning to honour ancestry and inter-species experience.
I honour the original custodians of the land where I grew up - Mostly the Bungalung and the Eora lands in now NSW.
Reading - Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
Watching - Giri Haji written by Joe Barton - made me miss making theatre.
Listening - Amber McZeal (On Being podcast)
Eating - Frozen cherries.
Time, Money and Process...