Tell me more
The idea for ensemble sessions and rehearsal spaces for writers is inspired by the amazing work happening around somatics, dance and movement within and beyond Dartington. Coaching writers, I’ve always found a more defined movement structure an inspiring aid in helping creatives engage more energetically and profoundly with their stories at emergence and revisioning stages. Embracing the language and embodied terms of choreography frees something within the writer that once was caged.
So what lies at the heart of this space we are entering?Choreography and Vital Practice
Gabrielle Roth’s 5 rhythms and the writings of female dance choreographers has proved a boon in approaching our writing process in more embodied, centred, collaborative, consensual ways. Making it both a pleasure and a joy once more.
Make-believe…
is another huge component of the writing process but one that is sadly displaced in the traditional workshop model. Imaginative enquiry is still alive though in improv and theatre, so we’ll borrow from those too.
Restored Relationship
The Navajo have a word ‘hozho’ which directly translates as ‘beauty and balance’ but as a concept it comes closer to living in harmony. The beauty and balance we will seek is between hearing oneself think, hearing the other - truly hearing them, communing with our vision in an environment that is actively seeking to guard each person’s vision and recognise one another’s uniqueness.
Poetic thinking
Readers read linearly. Writers think associatively. Scenes and chapters don’t follow logically. They pop out as images, ideas. They spawn. Only, in time, do we spot patterns. It takes time for a thought to form, and many thoughts are mere stepping stones along the way. There is a time for spawning and a time for gathering. So, poetic thinking is the firmest of companions we can ever make.
A change is a’coming
Regarding a new breed of facilitators.
“What we need is sea-change from within the writing and publishing community - pushing back and moving away from acting like gate-keepers, keeping certain stories in and all manner of inspired thinking out, and instead BECOMING guardians, guarding the flourishing of the imaginative visions of creative, feeling, thinking, intuitive beings - and that means editors and decision makers re-educating themselves in undoing their cultural conditioning. When publishers serve humanity, we all benefit. When you're only looking to feed a machine though, the cost isn't what's on a spreadsheet, the price IS our humanity.”