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Storytelling creates
connection and resonance

Creativity and Education: What’s the Connection?

11/13/2013

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By Melinda

As part of my PhD program in psychology / creativity studies, I recently wrote a paper exploring the relationship between creativity, learning, and education. Because education is one of our main areas of interest at Syncreate, I thought I’d share some of my explorations here in the blog. 

My paper explored three main ideas: 1) the educational process consists of a creative, dynamic, and ongoing negotiation between individuals and their worlds, 2) connection, interdependence, and relationship lie at the heart of meaningful learning, and 3) creativity, imagination, and the process of making meaning underlie the most profound learning experiences. In my experience teaching writing and religious studies at the college level, the most powerful educational moments for students (and for me) are those that that foster a process of active meaning making. They are those that ask students to draw upon, but also to investigate and question, their own experiences, and to actively consider how course material relates to their own lives. They are those that invite students to explore real-life situations and events outside of the classroom, such as cultural performances or religious ceremonies, and to write about them in light of course themes and theories. I find that this experiential, embodied, and engaged approach to education not only evokes deep learning and insight, but also can be personally transformative for students, broadening their perspectives and worldviews, and in some cases, forever changing the way they understand and relate to their own lives.

For example, while teaching freshman composition at Tulane University in New Orleans, I developed a course called “Performing New Orleans” that paired performance theory with readings about the rich cultural and performance traditions of the city. I invited students out of the classroom and into an experiential dialogue with those traditions through visits to Preservation Hall, Mardi Gras parades, the Voodoo Spiritual Temple, and The Historic New Orleans Connection. For their final papers, I asked students to synthesize all of this theoretical, academic, and experiential knowledge and to creatively analyze of one of New Orleans’ performance traditions. Similarly, while teaching comparative religion courses at Tulane and Austin Community College, I encouraged students to attend, observe, and participate in various religious events and festivals and write about them in conjunction with the course material we were covering our course readings and discussions. For their final course task, students had the option of completing a creative project relevant to their own belief systems and life journeys, and to present these projects to one another during the final week. I conceived of this assignment as an exercise in meaning making, an opportunity for students to more deeply explore their own passions, and to create a personal shrine or altar, work of art, musical composition, performance, or multimedia presentation that expressed their deepest convictions. When students took this project seriously, they created works of incredible beauty and poignancy, which evidenced deep reflection upon course themes. 

If we, as educators, began to seriously consider the relationship between learning and creativity, we would see that these two processes truly spring from the same source. Both learning and creativity involve an active, experiential, embodied, interconnected, and fully engaged process of meaning making. As this fundamental relationship between learning and creativity becomes more widely understood, I hope that educators and policy makers will begin to embrace creativity as absolutely central to the educational process.

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Finding Resonance with Your Creativity

10/8/2013

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By Charlotte 

Syncreate’s second creativity workshop, “Finding Your Voice” offered participants and co-founders Melinda Rothouse and Charlotte Gullick a rich opportunity to explore how slowing down and paying attention to the visceral, auditory, and communal aspects of our life might enhance our creativity and teach us how to listen in order to find our voices. The physical activities, the sonic meditation, and the writing exercises created an opportunity for an important “tuning in,” allowing for a rare connection to the quietest impulses we carry. Being a creative person requires a commitment to not knowing, to being able to encounter what we cannot control, and to being open to what might only be whispering under the normal chatter and stimulus that seems to multiple at an alarming pace. 

Usually, right before Melinda leads the group through an experience that provides exactly what I crave but often don’t know how to create, I feel uncomfortable, restless in my own skin, ready for the activity to be over and the “processing” to happen. Perhaps part of my discomfort comes from growing up in a religion that believes meditation creates an opportunity for the devil to enter our minds, but the larger portion probably stems from the fact that I cannot control what will come. What quiet desire or insight for my own writing or teaching or parenting or living might arise as a result of being still? On some level, it doesn’t make sense – I know that an insight might come and yet I resist it? What I think happens for me is a focus on the product of the activity rather than a surrender to the experience. Yes, insights will come, but that’s not even the point most days. 

When I allow myself to open to the incredible richness of the sonic meditation, I encounter myself beyond language, beyond thought, beyond meaning-making – I become an integral part of a group that is tuning in, listening and responding, an organism of sound, breath, music. Creativity offers us so much: solace, connection, vision, discernment, and Syncreate teaches me that finding resonance with my creative self requires regular encounters with surrender, intuition, and appreciation for the marvels of our imaginations. 

We will be offering a further adventure with such surrender in April of 2014 for our Deepening Your Creative Life Retreat in a spectacular location in Marble Falls during the weekend of the April 4-6. If the idea of intimate creative retreat appeals, please send us an email (info@syncreate.org) telling us why you’d like to participate and how this retreat will further your creativity goals. Cost is $350 ($295 Early Bird registration by March 20th), which includes food, shared lodging, instruction, coaching, and activities. It’s going to be a profound experience, subtle, electric, connective. Perhaps you’ll join us and find your creative resonance as well.
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Finding Your Voice – September 21, 2013

9/1/2013

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By Charlotte and Melinda

We’re currently planning our next Syncreate event, “Finding Your Voice,” which is scheduled for Saturday, September 21st (the fall equinox), at Casa de Luz in Austin, and we’re really excited. This experiential workshop will feature writing, vocal, and kinesthetic exercises designed to help participants tap into their creativity and intuition to develop their own unique voice and expression. The activities we’ll be featuring draw inspiration from several different creative and meditative lineages, including the movement and dance explorations of Arawana Hayashi, pioneer of the twenty-minute dance: http://arawanahayashi.com/truemove/. We’ll also be creating a sonic meditation, informed by the work of Texas-born contemporary composer Pauline Oliveros: http://www.osborne-conant.org/oliveros.htm. This is a practice I learned at the 2012 Shambhala Summer Arts Dathun at Karmê Chöling Shambhala Meditation Center, led by University of Kentucky music history professor Lance 
Brunner: http://www.karmecholing.org/program.php?id=4694, 

To conclude, we’ll be weaving the kinesthetic and musical explorations together with a writing exercise from Dr. Eric Maisel, psychologist and founder of the field of creativity coaching: http://ericmaisel.com/about-eric-maisel/. Our intention for the workshop is to invite participants into their own authentic expression by moving from the cerebral into the somatic and exploring sensation, rhythm, and silence to move into ever deeper layers of resonance.  One important facet of this work is the power of listening – to others, to the world, and most importantly, to our deepest selves. This workshop is open to educators, professionals, artists, and anyone interested in exploring their creativity and artistic expression. No particular writing or singing experience required; all are welcome. We want to help you find and feed your courage. We look forward to the exploration, and to finding deep resonance with you!

When: Saturday, August 21, 2013, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
Where: Serena Room, Casa de Luz, 1701 Toomey Rd., Austin, TX 78704
Cost: $85 / $50 with student ID, payable via PayPal or credit card in advance to secure your space.
Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/284864618321715/
Please email info@syncreate.org to register.
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The Classroom as a Neural Network

8/13/2013

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By Charlotte and Melinda

At Syncreate, we’re interested in what the brain has to teach us about how to grow connections, transform communities, and foster adaptability.  So far our investigations have lead us into discussions and presentations about the neuroscience of creativity, and the ways in which educators and leaders can strategically build creative communities. As community college professors, we are currently exploring the ways neural pathways grow, strengthen, and become pruned.  

We constantly keep these questions in mind:

• Can educators take inspiration from neural networks to create relational links that weave students and content more tightly together?

• If we encourage students to see themselves and their peers as resources, could we create a buzz within learning communities that encourages new and meaningful connections between people, ideas, and real-world challenges?

• How can play, ritual, and community-building exercises create new neural pathways through kinesthetic, embodied learning?

We don’t necessarily have all these answers to these questions, but we believe asking the questions may reveal the path to becoming more effective, engaged, and collaborative in our educational work.

New insights into neural architecture, (also known at the connectome) such as the work of Dr. Van J. Wedeen of the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital, reveal the deeply interwoven quality of the brain’s structure (see “New Discoveries in Brain Structure and Connectivity”). In addition, current neuroscience research offers exciting insights, such as the brain’s incredible ability to artfully enhance helpful connections or prune away unused pathways.  Every synapse creates a connection and the more times a neuron fires, the stronger a synaptic connection becomes. In other words, the brain changes with every new experience and nothing exists in isolation. We’d like to suggest that with every experience in the classroom (and within the institution itself), the student’s brain, thinking process, and understanding of the world changes. Educators who embrace this idea become empowered to skillfully plan classroom lessons, discussions, and activities to facilitate more powerful and lasting connections.

Each student is part of the classroom “brain,” if you will. It’s not that teachers stand in the front of the classroom and transmit ideas; instead, teachers can facilitate connections and pathways between students. However, in order for this to work well, we first have to acknowledge the creativity, unique perspectives, and resiliency of each student present. If we don’t, we might unwittingly “prune” the student from the necessary pathways he/she needs to connect, comprehend, and succeed. For example, the website Mindfulness Starts Here states, “Neural pruning is the process of removing neurons that are no longer used or useful in the brain.”  For those students who don’t have a positive family history or positive personal experiences with school and/or higher education, the figurative neural connection to the classroom may be shallow or tenuous, and therefore it only takes a few experiences of isolation to “prune” the student from engaging in the classroom.

Educators interested in enhancing connection can welcome a sense of play and associative thinking by conceptualizing the classroom as a type of extra-neural network that fosters meaningful connection, encourages empathy, honors student well-being, implements strategic collaboration, and emphasizes creative problem solving. At the heart of the neural classroom is a faith in creativity to forge new pathways and to connect students in meaningful ways so that each person is woven into the fabric of the learning environment. Many teachers already do this by encouraging students to work together outside of the classroom on collaborative projects. Learning to work with others isn’t just a social skill; it’s essential in both drawing out the strengths of each student and interlacing individuals to ensure the resiliency of the entire classroom.

We suggest that promoting creative/associative thinking can teach students how to value their own ideas and learn to enjoy the process of thinking. How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci author Michael Gelb offers many creativity-enhancing activities, including an exercise of comparing two seemingly unrelated items or concepts. Taking this into the classroom, teachers can ask students to consider what two disparate ideas have in common and write all of their answers on the board. Students thus learn to take risks (for example, a bird is like a typewriter because they both can involve pecking; the array of typebars is similar to a bird’s rib cage) and create connections to other students who resonate with their analogies. If educators can prioritize a portion of teaching time to making creativity a daily exploration, students learn courage, adaptability, and collaboration. Indeed, Linda Smarzik, author of The Mind of Thuse!! Thriving With Effortlessness, observes, “Taking small risks, and doing so consistently, shifts us out of our comfort zones into the process of creativity.”

Additionally, the instructor who emphasizes collaboration, active listening, and dialogue might, in fact, be using neural mimicry to weave together a classroom that breeds student success. Creativity can enhance neuroplasticity (the dynamic process of brain rewiring), which can serve as a classroom strategy for reaching all students and weaving them into the fabric of engagement and success.

If you find this concept worthy of further exploration, please vote for our proposed “The Classroom as a Neural Network” topic at the 2014 SXSW Education Conference (SXSWedu) PanelPicker forum. It will take about two minutes of your time. Voting opens Monday, August 19 and closes Friday, September 6, 2013. Thank you for your support!

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Humility & Trust

8/6/2013

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By Charlotte

In the creative process, so many challenges arise, and as a writing teacher, these challenges seem to boil down to two essential cries of the critic:

1)    what you want to create has no value, and/or

2)    you don’t have the skills to deliver on the idea that has come to you

What I have learned to live and learned to teach centers on this concept: since the idea has come to you, there is no one other than yourself to birth the message to the world. It is through your own five senses that you will be able to bring forth the vision–it is the air you breathe, the road under your own specific feet, the smell of cumin in the Israeli souq that epitomizes your year in Tel Aviv—it is these exact things that will bring forth the idea that has been born within your private landscape. There is no other filled with the sense of this specific story, this specific sculpture, this painting. What you sense is worth bringing forward has arrived singly to you, and it is this singularity that both thrills and terrifies us.

Once a person can accept that the idea, the vision, is worthwhile, he or she has to come to terms with the reality that the necessary skills may not be available in one’s current tool kit. I would offer that it is only through time and practice that one can find the insight necessary to birth the message.

More specifically, I am thinking of my friend Amy, who lived for a year in Israel, working for a time at the Diaspora Museum, the Museum of the Jewish People. She lived in an apartment that held a sentinel tree in the courtyard and a door barred by a large piece of furniture. One night she decided to re-arrange and moved the wardrobe. To her surprise, she discovered a small room and in it, a box of letters from a woman to her brother, both political refugees from Russia; the sister resolved to be part of the Jewish settlement in Israel, and the brother went to Paris to cultivate his screenwriting/directing (and when the Nazis invaded he had to flee France, being on a list of most wanted of theirs. He made it to the US and finally to Hollywood where he continued his career).

I won’t give away all the electrifying details, but Amy’s discovery of that box has led her to meet new people and to know the world through an important, altered lens, and yet, the book that is waiting to be born remains unborn because Amy needs to arrive—to the place within herself that understands process, the development of skills, and the power of drafts. There is no one else to tell this story, and I firmly believe she is only one to bring this story to the world.

Like so many of us, Amy struggles with her faith in her ability to do justice to the story. Perhaps we sometime confuse humility with doubt—perhaps there’s more comfort in discounting our ideas because we sense the amount of learning we will have to embrace. Amy’s experience is profound and worth sharing; I only hope she comes to the point where she allows process to teach her what she needs to know about the story, about the nature of the human experience.

I’m ready to read the book of her experience. I’m trusting she will write it when both the confidence and the faith in process combine to give her the courage to pen the story.

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How Writing and Storytelling Can Enhance Health and Well-being

7/1/2013

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By Melinda

Have you ever felt so connected to a story you read or heard that it changed the way you think about your life? Have you experienced the cathartic process of journaling, such that the act of writing about a trauma or challenge allowed you to release and transform it? I remember when I moved to Austin from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and then experienced the traumatic breakup of a long-term relationship; around that same time, I had the good fortune to come across Pema Chodrön’s book When Things Fall Apart. Reading Pema’s story about how her own marriage ended under similar circumstances, as well as her advice for sitting with difficult emotions, helped me through the panic attacks and allowed me to start rebuilding my life. I began practicing meditation and journaling about the anger, the betrayal, the hurt, and the sadness, until slowly my world opened up again, allowing me to live in a fuller and richer way than ever before.

In recent years, scientific research has demonstrated the profound effects of writing and storytelling, both on the people who share their stories and those who receive those stories. Storytelling, perhaps the oldest distinctly human pastime, allows us to make meaning of the events of our lives, to teach and transmit information in a compelling way, and to share our experiences with others. Writing, a newer and more sophisticated human invention, helps us to solidify our learning into memories and makes it possible to address a much wider audience over a broader span of time than oral communication alone.

Recent studies have shown that storytelling (rather than simply relaying facts or bullet points) exerts a powerful influence on our emotions and thoughts, and helps us relate to others. When we hear a story, our brains activate as though we’re actually experiencing the events of the story firsthand. Writing your story and reading others’ stories can also have a calming effect on breathing, blood pressure, and anxiety. For example, a study published in 2011 showed that medical patients who listened to others’ stories of similar health problems received benefits in the form of lowered blood pressure. And the benefits may go well beyond the physiological: a National Public Radio report also from 2011described how end-of-life patients encouraged to write down their life stories often find new meaning in their lives and create a legacy that they can pass on to their families.

Dr. James Pennebaker at the University of Texas, has spent his academic career researching the effects of writing on health. In one study, he asked trauma survivors to write about the traumatic events they experienced. Those that did were able to make sense of their experiences in new ways, leading to healing and long-lasting health benefits, even years after writing about their traumas. Dr. Pennebaker’s website offers helpful instructions for writing about traumatic events to improve your physical and emotional health.

Syncreate embraces transformation through the creative process; this is one of our major areas of interest. Have you experienced the physical, mental, and emotional benefits of writing and storytelling? We’d love to hear your stories!

Links:

Visual News – How Does the Act of Writing Affect Your Brain?http://www.visualnews.com/2013/05/28/how-does-the-act-of-writing-affect-your-brain/

The New York Times – When Patients Share Their Stories, Health May Improvehttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/health/views/10chen.html?_r=0

National Public Radio – Dignity Therapy: For the Dying, A Chance to Rewrite Lifehttp://www.npr.org/2011/09/12/140336146/for-the-dying-a-chance-to-rewrite-life

Weebly.com General Psychology – How Can Writing Improve Your Health?http://general-psychology.weebly.com/how-can-writing-improve-your-health.html

Dr. James Pennebaker – Writing and Health: Some Practical Advice http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/pennebaker/Home2000/WritingandHealth.html
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What Inspires You?

6/8/2013

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By Charlotte and Melinda

Syncreate grew out of Melinda and Charlotte’s weekly coffee meetings, where we felt continually inspired by each other’s ideas. Together, our individual interests amplified in an exciting and innovative fashion, and this synergy began to expand out to other people and the wider world, and so we formed Syncreate.

Our first offering, “The Art and Science of Creativity: Exploring the Path and Expanding Your Tools,” took place at Case de Luz, in Austin, Texas, with seven lovely participants. From the get-go, the room sparkled with a collective desire to take risks and explore how the neuroscience of creativity might enrich any artistic process.

Wanting to make the most of our time together time, we emailed the participants ahead of time, asking them to reflect on:

1) What engages and inspires you?

2) What assets do you bring to this experience?

3) What do you hope to learn or take away from this workshop?

These questions form the basis of Syncreate’s vision.  We want to help you ignite your powers of innovation, tap into your inner resources, and enhance your tools so you can radiate your contributions to an ever-widening sphere of positive influence.

The workshop explored the neuroscience of creativity, presenting several strategies for deeper explorations of artistic pursuits.  One key component of creativity is the ability to create connections between seemingly unconnected ideas and objects, also known as associative thinking.  Participants engaged in a personal exploration of what a necklace and a prayer might have in common, and then worked together to build upon the initial connections.  This simple exercise can reveal our individual perspectives, and how—with a little time and supported space—we can bridge seemingly disparate ideas. To increase our insights, collaboration can be an essential aspect of the process.

We encourage people to spend a little time each day considering how vastly different elements of our world have common characteristics. We believe that this kind of activity can both bolster creativity and knit together the social and neural pathways so that our work might move toward more clarity and precision.

Here are a couple of interesting links for more information on associative thinking and creativity:

The Handbook of Creativity, edited by Robert J. Sternberg – Chapter 7, “The Biological Bases of Creativity,” by Colin Martindale, touches on this topic:http://books.google.ca/books?id=d1KTEQpQ6vsC

“Being Creative with Associative Thinking,” by Thomas Cotterill:http://thomascotterill.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/being-creative-with-associative-thinking/
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Charlotte’s Credo

4/10/2013

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By Charlotte

I believe in the power of art to transform the frightened heart, the scarred psyche, the unquiet mind.  In the tradition of Spider Woman, I have been taught that the story is a co-creation woven by what we each bring to the circle, that to tell is as important as to listen.  Storytellers use the web of story to inform, educate, enlighten, explore how we might live as social beings, capable of inflicting the worst kinds of pain and dispensing the deepest moments of compassion.

I believe that humans crave narrative, and that storytelling offers a path for healing, growth, and clarity.  It is through the story we learn to know each other and to overcome our bigotries and our pettiness.  I believe art should be available to all, no matter a person’s education, class, race, gender, sexual orientation—any of those small-minded categories where too many of us get confined or lost.  I believe that art needs to remember to be humble, that accessibility is just as important as aesthetics, that the garbage man is just as important on the stage as is the senator.

Specifically, I believe art has taught me my most important lessons: to be patient with process, to keep an open heart toward all people; that to there is more risk in vulnerability than there is in intellectual posturing; that sentimentality is too easy.  Instead I want pursue the quiet moments of potential change that are housed in every moment of our lives; that stories are a certain kind of magic, one that we willingly seek out so that our lives might seem brighter, wholer, more intact.
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    Authors:
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