Tag: retreats

self-care for creatives

Suppose it’s a Social Studio

What do I mean by social studio?

Inspiration for a social studio came directly from the experience of enduring COVID in a nonprofit arts organization. With a very small team over a matter of months, we transformed a mosaic studio into an online creative space, adding skill-building and artistic opportunity for peer groups of kids, teens, and young adults.

A studio is a special place, different from an office, classroom, or conference room. It’s home to curious tools and unusual materials. The furniture is often specific to the task. The customs and habits of studios are made and maintained by their keepers, always an odd bunch. Studio spaces are imbued with magical thinking, places where common logic branches, flips, curves, explodes, and transmutes. Not unlike a garden.

Learning is central to most studio processes, and sometimes direct instruction (like a class) does happen. In other spaces, the learning activity is more aptly described as transmission or osmosis. curriculum-based teaching methods are less useful. Hands-on coaching is more common. A place to be and a for one’s songbird soul, I suppose.

In the upcoming studio circle, one tantalizing possibility is arising. What is it like to unfold our work side by side over time? I am always studying up on Quaker meeting practice and quilting bees as I prepare.

I imagined the online studio as if anyone could drop by like a neighbor. My life was full of such occasions at the Washington Writers Retreat, and among creative clusters in DC. It was that way in the Coronado District in downtown Phoenix years before, too. Corner office conversations on the front porch or in the shed out back. Quiet time together. Hands moving, hearts changing.

Circles and cycles organize our time in the studio. Each hour comprises three 20-minute movements. First, greet each other and chat at the top of the hour. Next, focus on a topic for 20 minutes in the middle. Then, mute ourselves to work quietly together to the end of the hour. Same time-cycling in the second and third hours with bio breaks in between. I leave the screen on, mute myself, and move about my space as needed. It’s odd at first, then becomes coffee shop cozy.

How to arrive in the circle?

Set your intentions for the session and be ready with your work at hand. It’s important to arrive at the top of the hour so our cyclical timing will work, and perfectly fine to step away anytime. Though I am a writer and the topics center on creative practice, it’s always an option to bring your handiwork and simply listen.

What does drop-in really mean?

Pretend you live nearby. You know I’m doing this process during these hours. Drop in when you have the time. Stay an hour, more or less. Come back each week, more or less. You are welcome in all cases 🙂

What should I be doing in the social studio?

Good question! Self-directed inquiry among friends is the point. Here are some places to start.

The Completing & Creating prompts are here.

Try taking the questions two at a time and working in Dynamic Duos

Examine the unfolding effects of Appreciative Inquiry. More evidence of My Love Affair with the Circle.

Ask yourself what Animating Tensions are at play.

Bring something to color or draw to the table, and sink into questions 3 and 4. Soothing patterns and shapes help me go deeper into where I missed the mark and what needs mending.

Completing this Cycle and Creating the Path Ahead

For me, the Completing & Creating cycle is aligned with the winter season, woven among the family time, holiday rituals, and colder weather. Reflecting back, the questions elicit gratitude, affirm limits, and tend to relationships. Looking forward, the opportunity is to carry on from the sacred center of somewhere in a somewhat sensible way.

Over the years, my management practice improved through this routine, though I often found it difficult to ‘complete’ against the demands of year-end fundraising. In those days, I savored my thoughts and feelings in a Sunday morning journal but did little about it until late January. Then, I cloistered away for a long weekend to make measure. The MLK holiday is often the chance to move in the creative direction.

All together now has been an important mantra this year, so I’m hosting a circle and holding the weekly Wednesday online studio space for the completing and creating process. The simple scaffold is useful to me, and of course, the experience itself unfolds in wonder among friends.

Serving as host (not leader, teacher, or guru) is intentional. The exchange model is dāna, the secular Buddhist practice of balanced exchange. Practitioners contribute to the host what they feel is right and can offer joyfully. Often gifts are not cash, but sometimes a payment is an easy option. The equivalent management practice is PWYW, pay what you wish.

It’s a model that rests in abundance, respects personal limits, and gestures outward toward opportunity. You’re in to begin for free. Your presence is a gift itself. What you contribute (or don’t) is entirely your decision.

Self-directed inquiry is the basic practice with tools I provide, like the Creating & Completing questions. I have adapted the practice and tools over decades learning alongside mentors and coaches. In my time, I made the questions more cyclical, less finite, and carefully unwired notions of obligation. I love to write my responses and often explore other media. I’ve added visual thinking tools that I will share. Movement, music, cooking, crafting – it all adds to the experience.

Gratitude, personal growth, accountability, renewal, and imagination are common touchstones. Grief, guilt, overwhelm, and upset come for visits, too. We don’t fix, crosstalk, or endgame with each other. Rather, we keep that quiet, open space for reflection. We listen as you unfold the insights.

Some of the best leaders tell their own stories so that others can learn. This is a sort of self-leadership that prepares the way.

Or not. Hold on gently is another helpful notion. In an era where rest and recovery are urgent social prescriptions, my work includes unlearning old management habits and states of mind that drive negative loops in life. Moving from vicious cycles to virtuous ones — grace and patience are the main ingredients, alongside the desire to take a dip in divine ambiguity.

To begin, think about the period of time or cycle just closing. Is it simply the calendar, or something different? Then, what about the time ahead? Set your thoughts to the time envelope of what you’re creating.

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Here’s a list of writing and discussion prompts to close one chapter and open another. Do you begin at the beginning? If not, start with a question that has energy in it. One at a time, with inner attention.Download

To Each Their Own

Prompts this week are tying back to the Washington Writer’s Retreat, a five-year social engagement among a community of writers and artists. More than thirty scholars stayed in my home in Mount Rainier, Maryland, and we sat around my table often.

Creative practice became central to the experience. Its importance, what it is, and how it is done. The short answer is: uniquely. Of course, there are patterns that follow notable texts and teachers. The upclose view at the retreat included interesting deviations.

For example, a prolific historian was the model of stoic discipline. He stayed for six weeks. Each day, he got up, drank one cup of coffee, exercised, worked on his own projects in the morning, ate a modest lunch, and took afternoon phone calls.

His routine was deliberate and consistent. Importantly, it worked for him. He was on his eighth academic tome.

As host, I was witness to it all. From my perch, his routine was rigid and exhausting. I relished my daily opportunity to sleep in as needed and had happily tucked the necessities of each day around my own amusements. I loved it when guests left, not for the goodbyes but because flipping a room is the perfect time to listen to music, dance, and fuss the day away. It was a secret pleasure.

Months later, another academic stayed in that same room. She mostly toodled on her bike, exploring the city with her sister and niece. We all knew she had a massive book proposal to write. No matter, she filled an ice chest with luscious lunches, taking successive days in what appeared to be vacation mode.

Having a project and doing it was part of the invitation to stay at the retreat. A vacation in DC wasn’t precisely the point. I grew suspect. In the days before Airbnb, I was careful to bake integrity, trust, purpose, and focus into the decision to invite a guest. As a social exchange, building a reputation of productivity around the retreat was also important to me.

Then she came home one day, parked her bike, wrote the proposal, packed up, and drove off. The book was quickly greenlit and is now done. She’s doing field research on women’s health in Africa. Perhaps it was me who missed the point.

In reflection, the greater insight is apparent. Every person who stayed had their own way of working. Some sat with me in blissful chatter for hours over a simple soup. Others cocooned behind a closed door. Turns out one or two folks just needed a place to be. That was ok, too.