creativity lab – Christopher Malapitan

To help support everyone cope with the challenges of living in confinement with the COVID-19 crisis, I created a series of online webinars titled “PENCIL WALKING” – creative mindful activities aimed to help calm the mind. Since we’re confined to our homes, Calmness is a superpower because it’s the best cure to anxiety helping us remain resilient. Everyday for one week (13-17 April) from 6-6:30pm I guided participants through straight forward & fun activities helping them access a state of relaxed focus.

Every session underwent a 3 part structure.

First we a started with a short guided breathing exercise to help calm the mind.

Second, I guided everyone to follow a focused drawing activity.

Then finally, everyone was invited to take a moment to reflect and harvest some of their learnings from the experience. This allowed them to recognise and appreciate their inner strengths.

Approach

I used mindfulness-based art therapy (inspired by Dr. Laury Rappaport) as an approach to improve our understanding of our inner self and emotions. Creativity as the gateway to the inner self. Engaging in a creative process of making art as a way to explore the inner self. With a focus on self-care, personal growth, and wellbeing, the benefits of this approach helps lower distress levels and improve quality of life.

List of activities:

Session 1: Take my pencil for a walk – We will bring our full awareness to the movement of the pencil on the page by connecting it to our breathing.

Session 2: Around the park with my pencil – By focusing on a single object we will travel across its silhouette.

Session 3: Pencil hears a sound – We will explore how we might visualise different sounds.

Session 4: Finding balance with my pencil – We will create charming images by drawing simple structured patterns.

Session 5: My pencil leads the way – We will travel through imaginary bumpy and twisting paths.

What some of the participants had to say about their experience:

All sessions were happily supported by our dear friend Bruno Selun from Kumquat Consult who shared his Zoom channel with us. Thank you for saving us Bruno! And thank you to Anuschka Ruge for her enthusiastic support.

Please sign up to our Creativity lab meetup to join in our activities

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance
– Aristotle

I created the Brussels Creativity Lab in beginning of 2020 because like any skill, creativity needs practice too. The monthly meetup is open to anyone interested in exploring new possibilities, questioning assumptions and discovering their creativity.

It is very important to establish a safe and supportive environment to foster learning in a collaborative way. To be able to encounter one another and learn from our varied expertise. Creativity thrives on diversity.

The first edition of the meetup (29.1.2020) was titled, “Seven Deadly Sins of Creativity” – through a series of collaborative activities we explored various barriers preventing us from connecting to our creativity and how might we overcome them. By moving beyond barriers of our creativity we enable unimaginable possibilities to emerge.

At the start of the session participants were invited to activate their explorer’s mindset:

to invite curiosity
to expect resistance and push forward
make connections
be flexible and open to possibilities
share stories of our understanding of the world

The Approach

Drawing inspiration from Logotherapy by Victor Frankl , participants were encouraged to approach all activities with “paradoxical intention” which is to demonstrate the opposite of what you are aiming to achieve.

So instead of trying to find a “way out” which typically suppresses a barrier, with a paradoxical intention approach, we exaggerate the barrier to a point of irony making it look seem ridiculous thus reducing it’s “power” over us. Using humour helps reverse our attitude towards it. Therefore resistance is reduced or disappears.

Activities

I created a deck of 39 cards with a single barrier on each card such as ego, fear of rejection, impatience, distraction, conformity, complacency, and over thinking, to name a few. Before each activity participants received a single card, then were invited to take part in a creative activity such as:

Generate 5 tips to promote the barrier
Create a personification of the barrier
In your group create a human sculpture representing the barrier
Create a unique dance move of your barrier. Everyone replicates the move

The meetup continues to nurture and grow creative behaviour within ourselves and with others. Join in the fun, tap into your creativity and meet some awesome folks.

We are creative beings, our lives become our work of art
– Julia Cameron