What’s your relationship with creativity?

Do you see yourself as a creative being? 

What do you know about your creative process?

What if I told you that you are innately creative? 

What comes up for you when I tell you that all humans are creative - especially you - do you feel freer? Or do you feel a push-pull energy? Or does a full-on rejection or fear come up?

Creativity is your superpower. And in this next Creativity Lab, we are focused on Discovery so that you can tap into and build a reciprocal relationship with your creative power. At the heart of your creativity is vision, purpose, and intuition - it’s about opening up to what your soul wants and how you regenerate resilience in a whole and well way. Your creativity is what brings you out of a deficit mindset and into abundance.

But what is Creativity Lab?

I created Creativity Lab as a group space or laboratory for experiments and deep explorations into our inner and outer Creative Muse(s) to nurture and (re)grow creativity. In my years of working with graduate students and mentoring faculty and professionals, I found more and more that our innate creativity has been stifled by a society fueled with competitive capitalism, an educational system of rules and small boxes, and our own inner gremlins of imposterism and perfectionism.

On top of all that, we as overers often lack scheduling time and space for creativity but rather it has been co-opted for profit making or toxic productivity. Often when I ask folks about their creativity, they tell me they wait for inspiration. What is possible if you were to foster a regenerative relationship where inspiration flowed regularly because you were ready and open to discovery?

I first started publicly sharing in 2019 my own healing journey with creativity. If you’re interested in a glimpse of that journey, I shared first about shame and creativity self-worth as I healed the toxic ways academics give feedback and other creative posts here. This inner and communal based creativity work continues to be one of the biggest and juiciest ways for healing and growing.

What is included in Creativity Lab 2023-24?

• 1 live group orientation call to orient ourselves to the work and community.

• A guidebook of practices to support your creative growth during and well after the series.

• 12 guided 90-minute live (will be recorded) workshop sessions to go with each chapter. That’s 18 hours of live content and connection during which we will:

  • Process experiences with any and all of the weekly 3 tools.

  • Discuss topics and book content (think super fun and supportive book group and it’s okay if you don’t get to all the reading. You will still get so much from our time together).

  • Guided practices for embodiment, implementation, and application.

  • Be in connected community with like-minded folks on their own journey.

• Invitation to private Creativity Lab Slack channel to share pictures, quotes, reflections, and questions within our group community in between calls. 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.)

What are the logistics?

When: Fridays at 10:30-12pm MST

• We will have an orientation on Friday, September 29th 10-11a MST. (You can still join

• Our first full session October 6, the last session March 22, break from December 18 - January 5 and picking back up on January 12th. 

• We will meet every other week LIVE for 90-minute sessions. The goal with this format is to allow for time between our calls to work with the chapter and with the tools (morning pages, artist’s dates, and weekly walk). 

Where: On zoom. All calls will be recorded and uploaded to a shared password protected page for you to review, rewatch, or catch up during the course of the 6 months. 

What: For structure purposes, we are following the 12 chapters of Walking in this World: The Practical Art of Creativity by Julia Cameron. She outlines 12 topics that we will use for each of our 12 weeks of the Lab. The 12 chapters are structure as discovering a sense of:

1. Origin

2. Proportion

3. Perspective

4. Adventure

5. Personal territory

6. Boundaries

7. Momentum

8. Discernment

9. Resiliency

10. Camaraderie

11. Authenticity 

12. Dignity 

Each chapter has reflection questions, tasks, and check-ins. The depth that you go is up to you. Creativity Lab is a space of community processing, reflection, and support - not a space of shame, finger-wagging, or rules. As a follower of Julia Cameron’s work, I will be doing this book alongside you as well as facilitating our collaborative co-constructed space. 

In my last round of the (Re)Generate Creativity Lab, we used The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron to Recover our sense of creativity. In this round, we are using The Walking in this World: Practical Art of Creativity, which Cameron wrote a decade after The Artist’s Way. Maybe you’ve done the Artist’s Way before or not. Either way is fine.

The only prerequisite is that you commit to your creative discovery through practices, experimentation, and community accountability in our group. And if that sounds fun, then this is the place and community for you!

Integrated through these topics are three tools Julia Cameron uses: daily morning pages (which I talk about here), a weekly artist date, and new to this book are weekly walks, which I love the added embodied component to our creative discovery. Our schedule allows for us to meet live every other week giving you two weeks to play and explore each topic.