Tag Archives: Creativity

Sept 2012 Soul and Solace

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Key 2 Violence Project

Our August e-newsletter introduced our proposed “Key 2 Violence” project. The project invites persons who have experienced violence to respond by first naming its impact on their lives, and then transforming violence through creativity. Learn more by viewing the photos on our website or Facebook page.

We will supply materials for visual, written, and performance arts so interested persons and groups may choose from an array of creative possibilities. If you have suggestions of groups that might benefit from Key 2 Violence email kaye@aspaciousplace.com.

September 2011 Soul and Solace

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Follow the Learner

A Spacious Place is founded on what we call our six “Playground Principles.”  Read an overview of “Follow the Learner,” the second of our six “Playground Principles,” below.

2. Follow the Learner: A Spacious Place sets up an environment rich in choice-making opportunities. Participants feel safer and more valued when they are provided with a range of choices for creative/educational/spiritual exploration. We invite participants to choose activities based on their interests.

We seek to avoid the “My Way or the Highway” approach, in which the guide communicates one “right way” to do art, to express learning, and/or to think about things spiritual. Instead, we favor an egalitarian approach that recognizes the worth of all people and that honors the unique shape of each human heart.

Our symbol for “Follow the Learner” is a set of paper dolls. Rather than favor a “one-size-fits-all” approach, in which every participant, like a paper cut-out, is taught in the same way, “Follow the Learner” seeks to provide an environment adapted to each participant’s learning and creative needs.

Do you take creative risks? Would you like to challenge others in their creative process? Then you are our kind of people and we’d love to hear from you!

August 2011 Soul and Solace

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Experience Over Expertise

A Spacious Place is founded on what we call our six “Playground Principles.” We’ll employ the next six “Soul & Solace” columns to give an overview of each principle.

1. Experience Over Expertise: A Spacious Place employs attentiveness and encouragement while avoiding “dangerous praise.” Dangerous Praise robs the participant of power while placing too much power in the hands of the guide. Dangerous praise includes flattery, condescension, and shaming. A Spacious Place also avoids comparisons, which can create disharmony and can discourage participants from taking creative risks. Last, A Spacious Place focuses on the person and on the creative process, rather than on the finished product. While we hope participants will create art that delights them, our primary focus is on the person doing the creating. Why? Because we believe each person is creative and because we believe the act of creating can both empower and transform.

Are you willing to take a creative risks? Would you like to challenge others in their creative process? Then you are our kind of people and we’d love to hear from you!

June 2011 Soul and Solace

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On Parade

While strolling through Austin’s Old Pecan Street Festival, we happened on a strange parade: three children, stair-stepped in height, marching single file through the crowd, heads down, hands holding foreheads. Those are some very worried children, I thought—until I saw the steady drip, drip of clear liquid between the largest child’s fingers. The three were applying ice cubes to their foreheads—Texas heat, meet the ingenuity of children!

How did this “mobile cooling unit” idea come into being? Was it one child’s brainstorm? A group inspiration? Had one of them “applied” the method successfully in the past? However the idea was birthed, all three knew—and literally applied—a good idea when they heard one.

What powerful, imaginative ideas surround us! This month, let’s be inspired by inventiveness. Let’s scope out great ideas. And let’s take it one step further: let’s put feet to inspired ideas and take them on parade, whether we’ve iced our foreheads or not!

Where do you find great ideas? What do you do with them?

February 2011 Soul and Solace

Creativity/Spirituality, , , ,

Am I Creative?

A grandfather watches patiently as his granddaughter lifts fallen cedar bark into the nooks of two cedar trees: places the bark, steps back, places another strip of bark, steps back, studies her creation, rearranges it. For the child, this moment is All.

In his yard, another child hoists curved PVC pipe to his lips and exhales, creating a poignant, otherworldly tone. Exhaling, he moves the tone up and down the scale, absorbed in the magic he is creating.

These children never ask themselves, “Am I creative?” They might as well ask, “Does my heart beat?” “Do my lungs exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen?” They are, naturally, creative. We all are.

We express our creativity every day:

  • in how we guide children through the rough waters of human growth;
  • in the charts or graphs we prepare to communicate concepts;
  • in the ways we adorn our living space or our bodies;
  • in handmade gifts we create, from a PB & J sandwich to a CD mix of special tunes; and
  • in the ways we show love for other creations/creators, to name just a few.

How do you express your natural creativity? We’d like to know!

November 2010 Soul and Solace

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Living in Sept. 12

Looking toward Thanksgiving has me gazing backward to our family worship time the weekend of Sept. 11. We folded paper into thirds so that it opened like the Isenheim Altarpiece (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isenheim_Altarpiece). On the outside we depicted events from history, from around the world, and from personal experience that carried elements of Sept. 11, 2001: the hatred, the terror, the violence, as well as the dignity, the valor, the mythic heroism. Inside the paper altarpiece, we depicted our choice to live in a Sept. 12 world: first acknowledging the truth of Sept. 11 (as well as other events and experiences that rock us to the core), then choosing to live the next day and the next . . . in hope.

What practices would belong to your Sept. 12 world? What, for you, is hope? How important is hope in your life?

August 2010 Soul and Solace

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Messiness & Chaos

Thursday of creativity camp week is Messy Art Day—I figure after three days of creative concentration, it’s time for a break. We head outside for ice sculpting (otherwise known as hacking away at large ice blocks with butter knives, then running relays with those blocks held against the belly as some sort of endurance ritual), marble painting (otherwise known as drenching marbles in paint, plopping them onto a sheet of paper in large box and, by tilting the box this way and that, sending the marbles careening across the page, leaving tracks of clean and muddy color in their wake), and shaving-cream painting (which starts as shaving cream and powdered tempera on old cookie sheets and ends up with campers as their own foamy and colorful artworks).

Sitting in the sweltering heat, watching it all, I am reminded of the need for chaos in the creative process. Indeed, the word “process” hardly seems, in such times, to fit; there appears to be no direction at all. We are simply being one with our mess!

Messy Art Day ends with a garden hose baptism. We traipse inside, shimmering with water, dripping on the floor, shivering, and grinning from ear to ear.

—And it is good!

What are your experiences of chaos and process?

February 2009 Soul and Solace

Creativity/Spirituality, ,

Let’s face it: much in twenty-first century life, at least in America, permits isolation. Big vehicles, often equipped with tinted windows, hide us—and our actions toward others—from view. Through technology we communicate when we like, as we like, if we like, and block what we wish as well. Most of us live in single dwellings, where we can lock ourselves in and everyone else out. But what if we chose to become anarchists? What if we used our very anonymity to honor our connectedness to all creation?

What if we chose to become Kindness Anarchists: committing kind acts without “being seen.” Such as—

  • allowing a car to merge in front of us onto the highway
  • creating a beautiful and inspiring YouTube video or PowerPoint for others to “happen upon”
  • adorning the landscape outside our homes for the enjoyment of those who drive or walk past.

The possibilities available to a creative Kindness Anarchist are endless. We’d love to hear what kinds of Kindness Anarchy inspire you!

“Ahh, Bach!” — Creative Guitar Playing

Creativity/Spirituality, ,

“Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.” (William Congreve)

I mentioned in a previous blog Hawkeye’s comment that when you said “Bach” that you’ve said everything (“I think once you’ve said that, you’ve said it all.”). For me there are “Ah, Bach!” moments that occur when musicians challenge my mind and soul. The literary references in Led Zeppelin, along with the music, soar above so many songs that I hear today; The Beatles wove stories through their music; U2 speaks for social justice.  Classical music is not the only genre that inspires and moves.

So, the other day I discovered—well, actually, I was sent this link (http://www.mikerayburn.com/flv/comicallyderailed.html) to—Mike Rayburn, who bills himself as The World’s Funniest Guitar Virtuoso. His artistic presentation, Comically Derailed, showcases creativity and performance that provided me with a lift to my soul and spirit. The range of music is amazing. Check him out. “Ahh, music!!! I’m charmed.”