CreatiQuest

CreatiQuest

Photo by Marj Hahne

Creativity as a Way of Being

CreatiQuest is an inquiry-based exploration, a holistic approach to creativity as a way of being in the world. CreatiQuest is ideal for teacher inservice training, corporate team building, and salon-style gatherings.

I know artists whose medium is life itself, and who express the inexpressible without brush, pencil, chisel or guitar. They neither paint, nor dance. Their medium is Being. Whatever their hand touches has increased Life.  They see and don’t have to draw. They are the artists of being alive.
— Frederick Franck, artist and writer
Too often we talk about creativity as if it were a quality that we were either given or denied.  It’s not a talent or a personality quirk; it’s the fundamental fact of human nature.
— Joyce Wycoff, Transformation Thinking
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
— George Bernard Shaw

(1) We will distinguish prejudgments/preconceptions about self, others, and “creativity,” and investigate how language (what we believe/think/say) constructs our experience and hinders or heightens creativity and learning.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make our world.
— The Buddha
Most barriers to creativity are self-imposed. You can’t expect to think outside the box if you constantly put yourself back in the box.
— Elaine Dundon, The Seeds of Innovation[
L]ove the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language … the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.  It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
— 
Albert Einstein
Photo by Simon Koumjian III

(2) What this training is not:
A battery of how-to techniques and tools for idea generation and problem solving
A motivational pep talk

What this training is:
An experiential inquiry (a creation itself) that will provide breakthroughs in personal creativity (that will naturally extend into the professional realm, because creativity is a holistic way of being and thinking, not an application)

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.
 — Marc Chagall

Learning emerges from discovery, not directives; reflection, not rules; possibilities, not prescriptions; diversity, not dogma; creativity and curiosity, not conformity and certainty; and meaning, not mandates.
 — Stephanie Pace Marshall, Ph.D.

(3) We will participate in several solo and collaborative activities that promise immediate results, creating with language, image, and mixed media, with conscious attention paid to our resistances and self-talk.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
     — Carl Jung

Creativity is not a noun or even a verb — it is a place, a space, a gathering, a union, a where — wherein the Divine powers of creativity and the human power of imagination join forces, Where the two come together is where beauty and grace happens and, indeed, explodes. Creativity constitutes the ultimate in intimacy, for it is the place where the Divine and the human are most destined to interact.
— 
Matthew Fox, Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet 

(4) We will do a wrap-up reflection (in addition to ongoing reflection on our discoveries throughout the day), and I will offer suggestions for at-home activities/exercises that can further distinguish and dismantle our creative blocks.

Fee:  $500 half-day / $1000 full-day (negotiable)

If you want to be more creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society.
— 
Jean Piaget

Creative geniuses tend to return to the conceptual world of childhood and are able to wed the most advanced understandings of a field with the sensibilities of a wonder-filled child.
— Michael Michalko, Cracking Creativity

Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will.
     — Frank Lloyd Wright

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
     — Norman Cousins, essayist and editor

Don’t just ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and then go and do it, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
    — Howard Thurman, theologian and educator

CreatiQuestions? Contact me

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