The Creativity Workshop in Florence
June 25-28, 2024
The Creativity Workshop in Florence will help you become more creative in your personal and professional life. We use many techniques in creative writing, memoir, art, photography, storytelling, mapmaking, mindfulness and guided visualization to help you explore your inner creativity.
San Miniato al Monte ChurchWhat Will You Learn?
The Creativity Workshop is an experiential course of doing and experimenting. Our exercises and instructors’ talks focus on helping you learn practical techniques to stimulate your imagination and innovative thinking.
- Explore the process of creativity, rather than simply focusing on the product.
- Discover how to find inspiration in the world around you.
- Get over creative blocks and the fear of failure.
- Work with many different mediums to develop your creativity in your chosen field.
- Use your memories to trigger your imagination.
- Engage your curiosity every day and make it work for you.
- Establish a 15 minute a day creativity practice to accomplish your goals after the Workshop ends.
Tuscan VillaWhy Florence?
Traveling outside one’s own culture is known to be one of the best ways to stimulate creativity and achieve self-discovery. We have chosen Florence to be one of our worldwide locations on account of its one-of-a-kind inspirational offerings.
- Renowned for its art and architecture, Florence is filled with sights that are sure to spark your imagination, whether you’re admiring the works of Renaissance painters, strolling across the Ponte Vecchio, or soaking in the scene over a delicious meal or taking a day trip to the lush countryside of Tuscany.
- While your experiences and surroundings in Florence will ignite your imagination, the creativity exercises we do in class will enhance the way you see this vibrant city.
Florence Workshop ParticipantDaily Schedule
Some exercises are done individually while others are collaborative. Here is a day by day schedule:
Day 1:
Introduction to the hows and whys of The Creativity Workshop.
Relaxation: Relaxation techniques to help your imagination flow.
Guided Visualization: Calling forth the vocabulary of your imagination using the myth of the hero’s journey as a framework.
Automatic Drawing: Finding our hidden imagery.
Show and Tell: Retrieving and sharing childhood memories to spark new ideas. This exercise will sharpen your storytelling skills.
Instructors’ talk: How some famous writers, scientists, and artists found their inspiration, and how you can use some of their methods to find yours.
Day 2:
Relaxation.
Mapmaking: Mapmaking as a way to find, chart, and communicate your creative process and projects.
Automatic Writing: How automatic writing (also known as “free writing”) can help you create in new and surprising ways. How you can use automatic writing to outrun your inner judge, get over creative blocks, and discover new ways of developing and editing written work. How alternating between writing and drawing can help you develop creative flexibility and mental dexterity.
The Interview: Listening to and experiencing a life outside your own. How listening is as important as doing in creative work.
Writing in Cafes: an exercise that will continue to take place over the next 2 days.
Instructors’ talks may include:
- How to do ongoing creative work in short modules of time.
- How to use luck and coincidence to jump-start creative projects.
Day 3:
Letter Writing: Letter writing as a way to express voice, character, and audience.
Miniature Worlds: Storytelling with found objects.
Writing in Groups: How writing and/or drawing with others can stimulate your imagination and expand your point of view.
Instructors’ talks may include:
- The importance of play in creative work.
- Valuing creative process over product.
Day 4:
The Myth of the Other: Imagining yourself living a parallel life. What would you do that you aren’t doing now?
The Sand Mandala: Making an Illuminated Manuscript.
Final Group Exercise.
Instructors’ talks may include:
- The Gift of the Amateur.
- Creativity is a Muscle: Use it or Lose it.
- Making your home and work environments inspiring.
- How to stay creative after The Creativity Workshop ends.
Location
The workshop will take place at Hotel Executive from 9 AM to 12.30 PM each day. The hotel offers a special price for our participants. Contact us for details.
You can also compare hotel prices in the area where the workshop will take place by following this link.
Registration
Tuition: $1,595
$150 at time of registration and the balance 90 days before the workshop begins.
Classes will take place between 9 AM and 12:30 PM each day.
Class size is very limited. Reserve your space well in advance.
