Creativity Workshop
Creative Writing,
Drawing,
Storytelling
and Memoir
Creativity Articles
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Creativity Articles:
a selection
The Creativity Workshop - Babel
Q.- How would you describe your workshop on creativity to those who have
never heard about it?
A.- The creativity workshop is, first of all, not about producing an artistic product, it's about the creative process... Read More...
Tapping
Creativity
In an innermost
room of the Lascaux cave, a hunter picked up a paint-loaded reed or hollow
bone, drew in a breath, and gazed
at an empty wall. In the next moment, using a sophisticated blowing technique,
the artist lifted his airbrush to his lips and began to create. Thirty
thousand years later, a professor in Iowa's International Writing Program
wants to remind us that we're all still primal hunters. In the intimacy
of a small classroom in the English-Philosophy Building, Shelley Berc
and her husband, visual artist Alejandro Fogel, 95MFA teach, the lost
skill of tracking down our own wild animals, the life-sustaining beasts
of our dreams and imaginations. Read More...
Business Creativity
Since 1993, the Creativity Workshop (creativity seminars, creativity
class) has been taught to people in businesses of all kinds from all over
the world, from CEOs to scientific think tanks to small business owners,
working in specializations as diverse as finance, IT, marketing, PR, industrial
design, accounting, and public relations. The Creativity Workshop offers
a series of tools that help participants develop their creative, collaborative,
storytelling and writing skills, as well as their self-confidence. To
this end, the workshop concentrates its experiential exercises in the
following areas:
1. Getting over fear of creativity
Getting over fear of creativity and gaining belief in one's ideas. We
do exercises which help students get over 'blocks' which make them afraid
to express themselves, say the wrong things, paint a bad picture, take
a stupid photograph, write a foggy paragraph. The workshop works against
self-censorship in the early stages of development so that critical analytical
skills can come into play later and more forcefully. To this end, we use
techniques of free form drawing and writing, the importance of playfulness,
as well as visualization and meditation exercises.
2. Collaboration
The Creativity Workshop believes that by sharing work in intimate groups,
participants learn self-confidence and respectful listening towards others
which is vital to any collaborative process. The Creativity Workshop involves
several modules in which collaborations, ranging from 2 person teams to
a whole class are explored.
3. Map making
Every project has a process or 'way'. The Creativity Workshop teaches
individuals how to track their processes by making journey maps of its
steps and the on-going progress of their work. The maps help participants
see where they are in their projects and where they can go with them.
4. Free form writing and automatic drawing
These exercises help participants find innate ideas and develop them without
fear. The workshop also teaches imaginative editing techniques and idea
framing.
5. Storytelling
Storytelling is vital to getting your ideas across. Be it visual or literary,
it is one of the most direct and human ways to share our ideas convincingly.
6. Expanding and changing perceptions
How we see is important to what we see. We teach a variety of exercises
aimed at altering perceptions physically (through cameras, cut out shapes,
kaleidoscopes, telescopes, microscopes) and emotionally (through fairy
tales, memoir writing or inter-generational interviews), which assist
participants in looking at projects from many different angles.
8. Using your environment
We teach participants how to use their natural surroundings to generate
ideas for the workplace. Exercises to be done in local cafes, libraries,
cafeterias, woods and mountains show that inspiration can come from the
most usual and surprising of places.
9. Time
In our busy, multi-tasking world we seldom feel we have enough time to
try something new or have creative fun. We teach participants how to ‘stretch
time’ and use 15-minute blocks to do satisfying creative work on
an on-going basis.
10. Self-Nurturing
We spend so much of our time encouraging and supporting others that at
times, we forget to nurture ourselves! The Creativity Workshop teaches
the importance of self-nurturing, play, and curiosity and not always knowing
the ‘right’ answer. Failures after all can be the catalyst
for the most astounding successes.
11.Tax-Deductible
Your workshop expenses may be tax-deductible if they are for your professional
development. Check with your accountant; the Creativity Workshop has been
taught to people in business all over the world from small business owners
to corporate leaders.
What people in business
say about the effect of the Creativity Workshop |
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Creativity Comments:
a selection
Thank you for the great, great inspiration and
fun of the Creativity Workshop. It helped me get a whole screenplay
done during a trip to Mexico afterwards. It was great for me and my
students. I don't think I've ever seen them so happy.
Doris Doerrie, Filmmaker, Professor, Munich Film School, Germany
I was fortunate to participate in the Creativity
Workshop in Paris. The course offered everything it promised and both
Shelley and Alejandro are masters in their craft . The workshop helped
me to determine the elements I needed to have in my life for me to continue
to be a successful creative thinker. As principal of an elementary school
I have been able to put together enough the workshop’s material
to last this next year as I teach my staff the skills of being a more
creative thinker and, in turn, they will teach the students.. All the
best in your creative thoughts.
Lee Koran
Principal, St. Patrick Fine Arts Elementary School, Alberta, Canada
The new millennium needs bold, creative men and
women who can turn their dreams into reality... Shelley Berc and Alejandro
Fogel show how you can do this through their challenging and inspiring
creativity workshops...even a simple first contact will prove what these
two talented teachers can do for your own gifts.
Dr. Kirpal Singh, Writer, Professor and Head of Creativity Studies
Singapore Management University, Singapore
I will cherish my 10 days at The Creativity Workshop
for a lifetime. Shelley and Alejandro instantly felt like old friends
when I first stepped into the classroom, as if I had met them before
in my travels. Through automatic writing and drawing, developing stories
in cafes and interviewing classmates, all that inspired me unfolded
in ways I never imagined. The exercises in class were a reflection of
Shelley and Alejandro's love of the artistic way of living. They taught
me to honor who I am as a writer and how to make time for creativity
in my daily life at home after the workshop. As I stepped out into the
streets of Paris-- a place I have visited many, many times since childhood--
my senses were open to my surroundings in a new way.
--Stephanie Merrill, Writer, New York City
The Creativity Workshop is one of the best ways
to discover a new city. Exploring our creative spirits each evening
opened my visual and kinesthetic senses for the following day. Barcelona
is a wonderfully beautiful city, enhanced by the sensitivities that
were stimulated in class. The participants were as rich as city and
they so warmly shared their personal lives through the creative writing
and drawing exercises.
Nancy Welch, President, Welch Design Group
Creativity Workshop Locations
Creativity Workshop in New
York
Creativity Workshop in Crete
Creativity Workshop in Prague
Creativity Workshop in Florence
Creativity Workshop in Dublin
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