Letters to a friend part 5

Hi Michael
Interesting.
Yes, I would say more than just a 'subliminal presence' in the painting video; seemed well orchestrated (and not just the music... boom boom!)
Your 80s dream school sounds similar to those based on Steiner principles?
Love the unschooling & Lehla's blog. What a wonderful way to teach & learn about The World. Learning is doing & all the more meaningful & relevant because of it.
Thanks for the thoughts.
Melanie

Michael's reply
Hi Melanie,
Similar yes in a practical way, but our dream was that the Education System would replicate our model and make it a universal learning concept. How naive we were.
And now, as a result of sheer power of the information flow, it seems that the old ways can only crumble in the medium to long term. Parents and their children will just vote with their ipads.
And unschooling will be the driving concept, because their will be a need for centralised organisation.
It is happening slowly through the sheer energy and commitment of a minority.
I have witnessed unschooling projects where children share research topics with kids of other nations;
and sometimes in real time too. It is not linear or chronological and I know that some teachers find it frightening to behold. Kids love it and develop a love for learning.
Which is what it's all about, don't you think? The fostering of a love and passion for learning, for life.

Michael

Check out Michael's Starstone retreats in Italy at the beautiful Casa Faustina in Assisi
Next retreat 'The Creative Mind'

I'm not sure what you'll make of this

Stephen Bray, with whom I shared an exhibition in Turkey last year recently shared his five top tips for creative photographers. In fact he addressed the piece to their spouses, but that's another story.

Not everyone will agree with what he writes. Even I am unsure about some of it, but he does provide food for thought, so I thought I would share the document with you.

Here's the link: http://bit.ly/Top5PhotographyTips

Let me know what you think.

Best wishes,

Michael

The fee for our Bristol workshop is £160, with a reduction for early booking. Contact Colin Tracy UK 01305 889476 or, mobile 07874 910877 for full details.

    or email: colintracy66gmail.com

News Flash... Still places available on our Creative Mind retreat in June in Italy
Call Michael +39 3283535358

pitfalls and creativity pt 4

 Melanie Newstead from Adelaide replies to pt 3 blog

'Very true Michael. However, as a teacher of young children, I have to say that television, ipads & computer games have a lot to answer for!
I often struggle to elicit creativity from my students and much of their play, making, art, construction etc is based on ideas or characters from television or computer games. If I see one more picture of whatshername from Disney's 'Frozen', I'm likely to scream!
There's a lot to be said for my childhood (all those aeons ago...;) when we were told to simply 'go play'. What joy in creating, inventing... games, dances, radio plays etc.
Our modern lives are highly structured and organised, both in family & school settings. Where are the opportunities for precious free and unstructured play time? This is when the creative and inventive minds are nurtured and grow.
Thanks for the post :)

Michael replies...

Hi Melanie,
In the late eighties, there were a bunch of us in London, professors, artists and media folk who, sensing change in the education arena, applied for European funding to launch a project on the creation of a more balanced form of learning. It included the creation of a new type of school; half farm really, where children researched subject matter guided by enablers and organisers. The plan was that children spent half their time inside the lab/classroom and half outside getting involved in practical stuff; mud up to their eyebrows sort of thing. Needless to say, it didn't get funding and The Education Dept just snorted at it. And now of course we have Cloud Learning and Unschooling which have been created thanks to the internet, and schooling seems to be unraveling by its own momentum. But still, even here, there are problems of containment and constraint.
I really do like what you say about 'precious free and unstructured play time, that this is when the creative and inventive minds are nurtured and grow'
Maybe you have seen this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccPoUrLv4wo. and I know what you are going to say. 'Twenty five kids in my class doing this?' And what about the dry cleaning bills and the materials?
But even here there is a feeling of a subliminal adult presence and direction, don't you think?
Nonetheless, creative play is natural to a child and the skilled teacher knows when to infuse rational learning into unstructured play.
(BTW I can't help but notice that the subject of Education was decidedly absent from this election campaign (UK). This astounds me)
My final thought is that things are stirring and changing almost by default and it is well worth a look at the two areas I mentioned above. Cloud Learning , Unschooling 
Also check out Minecraft, wonderful for kids, a way to connect with others aroud the planet
I would love to hear your thoughts,

Michael

Michael runs retreats on Creativity in Assisi, Italy

Pitfalls and creativity pt 3

Arthur Fox writes in reply to my previous blog, that..........

'Children tend to be creative because everything is new to them and they are not pre-wired to connect things in specific patterns.  This frees them up to connect things in whatever pattern comes to them.  Each child is different with different influences resulting in even more diversity of connections and ideas.  As we grow older, we naturally start becomig wired through school, cultural socialization, by what we read and view on TV, etc.  However, this is not the same thing as saying the creativity is beaten out of us.  When something new enters our experiences, we tend to make new connections and ideas again. '

And my reply....

Thanks Arthur for extending the debate on this issue which lies at the very heart of difficulties festering in our education systems. You are quite right when you talk about each (young) child being different with different influences resulting in even more diversity of connections and ideas.

And here I say HOORAY! Because this is a house of treasure that sadly these young children are about to leave as they make the transition from infant and junior schooling to High School and Secondary School

But these wonderful childhood qualities are exactly what industry, commerce, (and even such august institutions as the RSA) are crying out for, and blabbing on about, i.e.creativity (or should I say the lack of) in the adult workforce

I was speaking with a young lady yesterday at lunch and she happened to give me the usual line about not having an ounce of creativity in her, but that she would love to paint etc etc. So I asked ' So what happened then?'

And she paused and pondered for a while and told me that when she was at school she had painted a picture of a blue house she had stayed at on her family holiday. And her art teacher had scolded her for doing so and told her that blue houses didin't exist and that she should be more sensible. And that was the end of her creative dreaming, daring and imagination. I asked 'Were you aged 7 at the time?' and she looked surprised and asked 'How did you know?'

I could give you dozens of such examples but you get the gist. That good teachers who ecourage the flowering of creativity throughout a child's school life; it is they who mould the adult to be curious and forever inflamed with wonder. We need a balance between rational and poetic learning processes and not the misinformed idea that testing and more testing is in any way a solution (to what I wonder?) Better exam results? Is that what education is all about? I think not.

Michael
at starstone
Michael and Anthony Rogers run Creativity Retreats in Assisi, Italy.
Next retreat 'The Creative Mind' in June 

Pitfalls part 2

DonP wrote this reply to my blog (see his full comment on my last blog) and I'd like to reply.
He writes;' I know of no answer to the problem of insecurity, even after having talked it over with both clinical and occupational psychologists. Having read your post, I wondered if you think that using creativity in the way you suggest could help. I note that the RSA now has "The Power to Create", almost as a strapline, so you are aligned with that direction of travel. Do you agree with my point, and if so, what role could creativity have in helping to eradicate this destroyer of values?
Dear DonP, In reply I would venture this...
That I view art as therapy, and living creatively, as two different spheres. Allow me to explain.
Art therapy can help in wonderful ways to take sufferers way from their pain for a while and through a guided therapy, much progress can be made in soothing troubled minds. Some indeed make it through to a state of release from their troubles and learn to live creative lives. Most however default and need constant encouragement and help. 
You mention your childhood in your comment and of course for all of us, this is where the damage has taken place. I say damage but it is more correct to say that chidrens' creativity is usurped, at school and at home, by the tyranny of rational subject matter which is tested and re-tested until the creative instinct is weakened and then simply ignored into non existence. But if a balance were kept alive between rational learning and poetic creativity (which should not be tested but simply encouraged and observed) I would venture that life in adulthood would be without many of the problems that adults are struggling with in our society.
So what do I mean by living creatively? (and you are correct in mentiioning the RSA and industry in general in this context); that they are all barking on about creativity as if the mere mention of the word were enough. Fact it, is has to be re-awakened. And I contend that this God-given instinct is never really destroyed, that it remains within us all, simply waiting for us to wake up to its power.
If you talk to artists, you will think that they are strange creatures and half mad, but dig deeper and you will find that, usually by sheer luck, that they have escaped the tyranny of rational overload and although they can be as miserable and as petty as any other souls, that they carry with them a sense of freedom. And that with this freedom they create beyond themselves; that they continually create and evolve, as if they are always in search of their true selves. That great adventure.
So, art therapy is more of a pastiche (and it has its uses and values of course). But to learn to live creatively (and I'm not just talking about painting, poetry or any expressive art form); to live creatively is to embrace every single day of our lives in wonder. In the things we do, make, create in our kitchen, in our gardens, in our friendships.
And those of us who teach (re-awaken) creativity in others, know that there is no other instinct more powerful than that of creating beyond ourselves. And that once this is realised, it is like watching a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. 
Here's an image to remind you of how beautiful that miracle is ;O)

Michael runs retreats in Assisi, Italy on the re-awakening of creativity
He is a guest speaker at the FRC conference at the RSA in London September 29 and 30
If you'd like to contact him click here

 

the pitfalls of passivity, psychologists and pills

At lunch with a writer friend yesterday. The day was already clouded with news coming through about the air crash. That and the results of the Amanda Knox retrial, events which for a day at least pushed aside the horror stories from the Middle East. And all this in a week where I'd watched the first episode of Louis Theroux's series 'By reason  of Insanity (BBC 2)

I told my friend about when I used to teach art at a Maximum Security Prison and how feelings from that time, questions if you will, about normality and what it is, and isn't, were coming to the surface on watching the programme. In my class were murderers and violent criminals but apart from a few odd events, these guys were like lambs with me. And I soon came to realise how fundamental these classes were to their grip on sanity; their holding on to some vestige of normality in a very abnormal environment

And I read in a Guardian article yesterday morning that a huge percentage of professional people suffer acutely from stress and depression, but that with pills and psychological support, how they manage to get by on a working day.

We talked about his writing and my painting and how lucky we were to have this poetic world to sink into, one which in turn colours our lives and makes them richer. And he asked 'What about the rest of humanity?' Big Question.

I replied that this is the reason why I teach, to get the word out there. And then the conversation drifted in another direction but it has hung in my mind ever since, because there is a better, fuller, answer.

It is that I believe that we are all creative beings but that the precious gift of creativity has been taken from us (most of us) during childhood and that we yearn for it for the rest of our lives. It is like a hole in our soul. And the wound from this deprivation is harsh and deep. And that now we have to remember; yes simply remember, what it was to be a child, to play and float in a world of fantasy and creativity without judgement or restraint.

Yes I know I'm banging an old drum here but maybe not loud enough. Because we live in perilous times and we are suffering the pitfalls of passivity, psychologists and pills. We are looking for easy fixes and they abound. But these fixes are ephemeral and do nothing to satisfy our (sometimes unconcious) yearning to be creative.

Now, I am not going to pretend that creativity is the only answer to the world's problems but I am truly wary of quick fix tricks and this obsession with change that currently abounds. That if you keep on searching, that you'll eventually hit on the right one, the right trick.

You see, my experience tells me that all the finer aspects of humanity, courage, compassion, adventure, love for our fellow man, and of course creativity, that all these values are still within us. They have not disappeared. Suppressed in childhood yes, and ignored, of course, in the adult world of stress and striving. But that these values are still there waiting for us to return to them whatever age we are and in whatever sort of life we lead. We just need to wake up, to return once more to our innate God-given creativity

Michael runs Retreats in Creativity in Assisi, Italy, throughout the summer
Please click HERE for details

Assisi summer retreats

         Retreats at the Casa Faustina in Italy this summer

If you are looking to supercharge or recharge your creativity and wellbeing then you will love our retreats.
Set in magical Italy near the birthplace of St Francis of Assisi we will immerse you in every aspect of good living and creativity. Our approach unlocks potential and provides a well needed respite from the pressures of daily life, allowing you to reflect, unwind, relax and refocus.

Our retreats are held at Casa Faustina a beautiful calm venue in the foothills of Assisi.
You can have accommodation to suit yourself and you will be delighted by the cuisine, the kind attention and the sheer beauty of this wonderful part of Italy
Spaces are limited so please book early.

For details of all our summer retreats, click here.
Email; michael@starstone.org