Creating From the Inside Out

This workshop is an opportunity to stimulate your intrinsic creativity, refresh your body and express art from the inside out at the beautiful heritage site at Gatakers Creative Space.

You'll use slow embodied movement sequences to help you settle in your body and develop your sensory attentional skills. After the movement sequence, you'll participate in photography (or any portable art form of your choice) from this emodied state to see how mindful movement can shift everyday perceptions so they appear fresh and inviting. This is rich fodder for novel art and living.

This type of photography is about capturing the way the world appears to you rather than constructing a good image. You’ll capture the flashes of perception before ideas of what makes a good image take hold.

You don't need any technical skill, just a willingness to notice and your phone.

What do mindful movement and contemplative photography have to do with each other?

Both are about learning to grow your inner and outer attentional skills in rich and diverse ways. 

Why is this valuable?

When you can slow down and pay gentle, precise attention to how you move, you can often sense more of yourself more clearly and you will move in more coordinated and varied ways. Being deeply in tune with yourself in this way can ground you in a flow state and you may sense that your line of sight has changed as well as what you can see out of the corners of your eyes. This will literally change what you notice in the world; and therefore, your connection to it and the art you make will evolve too. In a way, you are participating in creating the world you see by inhabiting yourself differently. 

These practices will leave you with a sense of relatedness, curiosity and wellbeing.

Schedule

To start:

• a slow moving Feldenkrais mindful movement sequence

• contemplative photography in the gallery/garden or portable art form of your choice

To conclude:

• share your photos and impressions with other participants in small groups or we may even project them on the gallery wall

What to Wear?

• loose fitting, comfortable clothing to move around in

What to Bring?

• a comfortable mat to lie down on - somthing that doesn't slide on the floor

• a couple of towels for head support

• your phone if you'd like to try contemplative photography

• your art materials (something portable) if you'd prefer to create with familiar materials

Do I Need Experience?

• This workshop is intended to support appreciation and comfort in your body and inspiration from the world around you. It is suitable for all creatively minded people but you don't need to have an art practice, be fit or be able to take a good photo. Come as you are!

You DO NEED to be able to either get down to the floor or sit comfortably on a flat stool.

The morning will be a very gentle, slow process to support your creative process.