Program dates: Wednesdays, May 22 through June 26, 2024 from 11am-12pm MT
This Creativity Lab’s theme plays with the metaphor of cocooning because of its symbolic transformative process of nurturing ecosystems with practices that foster creativity.
Why creativity?
Creativity spaces help leaders and change agents with:
Innovation to explore and ream unconventional solutions and responses to challenges and opportunities
Problem-solving that encourages divergent thinking and collaboration
Adaptability to practice true resilience which is to adapt and transform in response to environmental changes
Growing your window of tolerance and neuroplasticity rather than the toxic resilience of bounce back or break
Personal growth because life-changing professional development is an inside job
Regular creativity work regenerates your resilience and grows your window of tolerance for uncertainty and change. Creativity is a burnout salve or protector.
Creativity soothes anxiety and stress and is an all-around mental health booster. In Creativity Lab, we pair creativity with other key beneficial practices – writing and reflection, movement and embodiment, nature and play – so we can build intentional, slowed-down lives filled with connection and wholeness.
What is Creativity Lab?
Creativity Lab is a collaborative space designed for deep exploration and experimentation with our inner and outer creative inspirations. Think of it as a laboratory where we nurture and cultivate creativity, rather than teach it.
Through years of experience supporting leaders and educators’ transformation, I've observed how societal pressures, rigid educational systems, and internal doubts stifle our innate creativity. Moreover, our busy lives, the noisy world, and this digital age often leave little room to place our attention on creativity. Having a dedicated community space, like with Creativity Lab, has been a way for clients to shift into a regenerative relationship with their creativity where inspiration and ideas flow with more ease because they learn how to be open to discovery and how to set aside their inner gremlins of impostorism and perfectionism.
Creativity Lab emerged from my own healing journey out of the toxicity of career climbing and academic publishing where unconstructive feedback and gatekeeping is a badge of merit for many. Creativity Lab is here for you to reclaim your self-worth and birthright as a creative powerhouse. Creativity is your superpower. At the heart of your creativity is vision, purpose, and intuition - it's about opening up to your bolder impact and how you regenerate resilience in a whole and well way.
What is this summer’s theme of Creative Cocooning?
Creativity Lab is a program that runs at different points in the year, each time with a new focus and theme. To move us into summer, Creative Cocooning harnesses the build-up of spring’s growth with space of:
Transformation: A commitment to creativity helps transform your ideas, concepts, and emotions across these weeks.
Nurturing environment: Essential to all my programs is the co-created community environment where creativity thrives so that you can feel safe to explore and express without judgment or criticism, only support.
Inner growth: Creative cocooning is an inner process of exploration, reflection, and growth to generate new ideas and insights.
Persistence: Harnessing your creative process requires regular habits and routines to continue each week, moving through challenges and moments of uncertainty.
Emergence: Through the alchemy of creative commitment and community something new can emerge as the culmination of your creative process.
Cocooning in a growth-oriented community for 6 weeks will land you firmly at the feet of summer with a foundation of possibilities for your creative energy/endeavor. It is a process to move forward one of your projects and ideas, or space to move your creative energy forward. It is a container to build your creative routines, process, and momentum forward.
Creative cocooning is a deconstructed structured container of community to help you reestablish your creative habits, create space for visioning, expand possibilities in problem-solving, grow your neuroplasticity
What is the structure?
Each working session follows this format:
First 10 minutes: a guided embodied or writing prompt to drop into your creative endeavor and to focus your mind, body, and emotions
Then, 30 minutes dedicated to your creative practice
We’ll wrap up, and you’ll be invited to share with the community
Each Friday during the six weeks, you will receive an email with some optional soulwork-embodied writing prompts. Soulwork, like homework, is always optional here, but these prompts are an invitation to go deeper with your work in between our sessions if desired.
What is included in Creative Cocooning?
Six working sessions - one hour each week for six weeks
Dates: Wednesdays, May 22 through June 26
Time: 11am-12pm MT (1-2pm ET)
Creativity Lab Slack channel
Weekly email for guidance and prompts
All sessions are live on Zoom and recorded.
The invitation to the private Creativity Lab Slack channel is to share pictures, quotes, reflections, and questions within our group community in between calls. A slow practice recommendation is to set notifications to silent or during work hours only. (participation in Slack is optional as I want to be intentional about our tech use and model slow intentional engagement.)