THE SYNCREATE PODCAST: EMPOWERING CREATIVITY
HOSTED BY MELINDA ROTHOUSE, PHD
WELCOME TO SYNCREATE, WHERE WE EXPLORE THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN CREATIVITY,
PSYCHOLOGY, AND SPIRITUALITY. OUR GOAL IS TO DEMYSTIFY THE CREATIVE PROCESS,
AND EXPAND THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CREATIVE.
SUBSCRIBE / FOLLOW US ON SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS, YOUTUBE
OR WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS
HOSTED BY MELINDA ROTHOUSE, PHD
WELCOME TO SYNCREATE, WHERE WE EXPLORE THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN CREATIVITY,
PSYCHOLOGY, AND SPIRITUALITY. OUR GOAL IS TO DEMYSTIFY THE CREATIVE PROCESS,
AND EXPAND THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CREATIVE.
SUBSCRIBE / FOLLOW US ON SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS, YOUTUBE
OR WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS
EPISODE 22: CREATIVE SPARK SERIES - CREATIVE PLAY
WITH MELINDA ROTHOUSE & CHARLOTTE GULLICK
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO EPISODE HERE:
WATCH THE VIDEO VERSION HERE:
In this episode of our Creative Spark series, Melinda and Charlotte describe the Play, or ideation, phase of the creative process. In our view of the creative process, we begin with play. This is where we dream, fantasize, imagine, and envision the work we want to create. It’s where we play with ideas, build our skills, and experiment with different ways of bringing our ideas to life. We share insights and prompts from our book, Syncreate: A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities.
For our Creativity Pro-Tip, we focus on “woodshedding,” a term from the jazz world, which involves honing our craft, putting the time in to practice our scales (or the equivalent in whatever medium we’re working in), and developing our skills. It involves the (playful) discipline of building our skills so that we can be best equipped to actually bring our creative ideas into being.
Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced at Record ATX studios with in collaboration Michael Osborne and 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Syncreate logo design by Dreux Carpenter.
If you enjoy this episode and want to learn more about the creative process, you might also like our conversations in Episode 7: The Syncreate Story with Syncreate Co-Founder Charlotte Gullick, Episode 14: Anatomy of a Song with Singer/Songwriter George McCormack, and Episode 21: The Walk of Faith & Courage with Actor Ren Jackson.
The Syncreate Podcast is now on Patreon. We’d love your support in continuing to grow the podcast and our Syncreate community. For a small monthly contribution, you’ll receive exclusive content and access, including previews of upcoming episodes, monthly calls with Melinda, and more.
For our Creativity Pro-Tip, we focus on “woodshedding,” a term from the jazz world, which involves honing our craft, putting the time in to practice our scales (or the equivalent in whatever medium we’re working in), and developing our skills. It involves the (playful) discipline of building our skills so that we can be best equipped to actually bring our creative ideas into being.
Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced at Record ATX studios with in collaboration Michael Osborne and 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Syncreate logo design by Dreux Carpenter.
If you enjoy this episode and want to learn more about the creative process, you might also like our conversations in Episode 7: The Syncreate Story with Syncreate Co-Founder Charlotte Gullick, Episode 14: Anatomy of a Song with Singer/Songwriter George McCormack, and Episode 21: The Walk of Faith & Courage with Actor Ren Jackson.
The Syncreate Podcast is now on Patreon. We’d love your support in continuing to grow the podcast and our Syncreate community. For a small monthly contribution, you’ll receive exclusive content and access, including previews of upcoming episodes, monthly calls with Melinda, and more.
EPISODE-SPECIFIC HYPERLINKS
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Melinda: Welcome to Syncreate, a show where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. Our goal is to demystify the creative process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative. I'm Melinda Rothouse, and I help individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life.
Charlotte: Hi. And I'm Charlotte Gullick, and I am a writer, educator and editor, and I co-create many things with Melinda.
Melinda: So, today we're going to be diving a little bit more deeply into our Syncreate model of Play, Plan and Produce, and we're going to focus on Play. Yay! And play is all about ideation and dreaming and fantasizing and imagining the possibilities. We talk about in the book, the “what ifs,” what's possible. And so play really should be something joyful, you know?
And often our creative process starts out that way. We have this idea, we have this inspiration. And so how do we nourish that playful sense? I see it almost like as, you know, allowing ourselves to be like a kid again and just (absolutely) play. Yeah.
Charlotte: So I think what's really important in that is for us to think about our book, and we encourage people to break down the process into Play, Plan and Produce. And if you separate them out into these different phases, you actually can have more playfulness. So like, what should I do? And play, exactly as it says, knowing that you will plan and you'll produce down the road so I think it's almost like a mindset shift to just say “I'm here to just show up and see what I'm interested in, and to see where this can take me.” And it seems like both courageous, risky and joyful all at the same time.
Melinda: Yes, I love that. I love that. And so in our book, we kind of break, each of these phases we kind-of break them down into three parts, and there's a chapter on each part. So I'm just looking at our table of contents. And for Play, we have Creative Ideation, which we just kind of described, as well as Skill Building and Experimentation. So Skill Building is all about, you know, honing our skills, whatever our medium is, or sometimes it might be about exploring new skills, learning new things that might inform whatever medium that we're working in, whatever we consider to be like our main creative focus, right?
And then we have Experimentation, which is where we try different things out, like throw things at the wall, see what sticks. You know, giving ourselves permission to, you know, just experiment and see what happens. And it doesn't have to be perfect, and it doesn't have to be right. But maybe we'll learn something in the process, right?
Charlotte: Absolutely. And then thinking about one of the definitions of creativity: finding connections between things that people haven't seen before. That really comes out in Play and Experimentation. So we talk about in the book where we're like, we're going to write a new version of this masterpiece (we won't tell you right now so you can buy it right now). [Laughter]
But just like, how can you experiment in ways that offers the world something new? Because sometimes people feel like they don't have any more creativity or it's all been “thunk” before. And we think there's still more thinking to do and playfulness to happen.
Melinda: Absolutely.
Charlotte: So one of the things that folks can do is to think about what's an area where they would like to build their skill. So, that is, you can also try something outside of your main medium. So like for me, one of the things I'm trying, I'm a writer, and one of the things I try to do is build my skill in another language. So I'm learning Spanish.
Melinda: And you're very diligent with the Duolingo. I must say.
Charlotte: I'm on Day 1365!
Melinda: Congratulations, Wow!
Charlotte: So all that came out of the pandemic, I wanted to give myself some structure. But it's so great because it's helping me learn English (sic) [Spanish] more thoroughly, or get to know it more thoroughly, and the stakes are also low. Like, it's not like I need to be a Spanish interpreter for anything. So there's that, there's my serious stuff, but there's also this experimentation in another realm, which is very awesome because it feeds my primary area of focus in new ways.
Melinda: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So in our book, we end each chapter with a series of what we call Creative Sparks, which are kind of prompts to help you work with, you know, that particular aspect, whatever is the focus of each chapter. And so one we want to share with you today as a Creativity Pro-Tip has to do with woodshedding, which is a term that comes from music, and jazz specifically. And it's this idea of like going out to the woodshed, and chopping the wood, and just honing your skills, practicing your scales, like really, really, really crafting your process.
So tell us more, Charlotte.
Charlotte: So, you know, we encourage you to try to do this for 20 minutes a day, and that you also build muscle memory. So it's not a foreign activity. So you're like, “This is what I do at this time of day.” And t allows for more joy, even though it's so hard at the beginning. But you are basically, you're building your skill, and at the same time letting creativity trust you.
Melinda: Yeah, I love that. Yes, you trust the process and the trust process trusts you. And I don't know, it's just bringing to mind, I just watched that wonderful documentary about Jon Batiste. I don't know if you've been watching it, right?
Charlotte: Yeah, we’re watching it right now.
Melinda: Yeah. American Symphony. And you know, he's just the embodiment of all the things that we're talking about here. So check it out if you haven't seen it yet.
So at Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors. So if you have an idea for a project or a new venture, please reach out to us for 1x1 coaching or join our Syncreate 2024 Coaching Group.
Charlotte: Which we're really excited to be offering. This will be a small group of folks who identify a project and take it through its process, and we meet regularly to check in and be inspired.
Melinda: Yeah, so we'll be walking you through the model that we've been talking about in these mini-sessions of Play, Plan and Produce. So you can find more on our website, syncreate.org, where you can also find all of our podcast episodes. We’re on social media as well under Syncreate, and we are on YouTube. We are releasing our episodes both in audio and video on YouTube, so find us and connect.
And we are recording today at Record ATX Studios in Austin, and with Charlotte in the Hudson Valley. So glad to have you with me on this new endeavor of our Creative Spark episodes. And the podcast is produced in collaboration with Mike Osborne at 14th Street Studios. So thanks so much for being with us and we'll see you next time.
Charlotte: Hi. And I'm Charlotte Gullick, and I am a writer, educator and editor, and I co-create many things with Melinda.
Melinda: So, today we're going to be diving a little bit more deeply into our Syncreate model of Play, Plan and Produce, and we're going to focus on Play. Yay! And play is all about ideation and dreaming and fantasizing and imagining the possibilities. We talk about in the book, the “what ifs,” what's possible. And so play really should be something joyful, you know?
And often our creative process starts out that way. We have this idea, we have this inspiration. And so how do we nourish that playful sense? I see it almost like as, you know, allowing ourselves to be like a kid again and just (absolutely) play. Yeah.
Charlotte: So I think what's really important in that is for us to think about our book, and we encourage people to break down the process into Play, Plan and Produce. And if you separate them out into these different phases, you actually can have more playfulness. So like, what should I do? And play, exactly as it says, knowing that you will plan and you'll produce down the road so I think it's almost like a mindset shift to just say “I'm here to just show up and see what I'm interested in, and to see where this can take me.” And it seems like both courageous, risky and joyful all at the same time.
Melinda: Yes, I love that. I love that. And so in our book, we kind of break, each of these phases we kind-of break them down into three parts, and there's a chapter on each part. So I'm just looking at our table of contents. And for Play, we have Creative Ideation, which we just kind of described, as well as Skill Building and Experimentation. So Skill Building is all about, you know, honing our skills, whatever our medium is, or sometimes it might be about exploring new skills, learning new things that might inform whatever medium that we're working in, whatever we consider to be like our main creative focus, right?
And then we have Experimentation, which is where we try different things out, like throw things at the wall, see what sticks. You know, giving ourselves permission to, you know, just experiment and see what happens. And it doesn't have to be perfect, and it doesn't have to be right. But maybe we'll learn something in the process, right?
Charlotte: Absolutely. And then thinking about one of the definitions of creativity: finding connections between things that people haven't seen before. That really comes out in Play and Experimentation. So we talk about in the book where we're like, we're going to write a new version of this masterpiece (we won't tell you right now so you can buy it right now). [Laughter]
But just like, how can you experiment in ways that offers the world something new? Because sometimes people feel like they don't have any more creativity or it's all been “thunk” before. And we think there's still more thinking to do and playfulness to happen.
Melinda: Absolutely.
Charlotte: So one of the things that folks can do is to think about what's an area where they would like to build their skill. So, that is, you can also try something outside of your main medium. So like for me, one of the things I'm trying, I'm a writer, and one of the things I try to do is build my skill in another language. So I'm learning Spanish.
Melinda: And you're very diligent with the Duolingo. I must say.
Charlotte: I'm on Day 1365!
Melinda: Congratulations, Wow!
Charlotte: So all that came out of the pandemic, I wanted to give myself some structure. But it's so great because it's helping me learn English (sic) [Spanish] more thoroughly, or get to know it more thoroughly, and the stakes are also low. Like, it's not like I need to be a Spanish interpreter for anything. So there's that, there's my serious stuff, but there's also this experimentation in another realm, which is very awesome because it feeds my primary area of focus in new ways.
Melinda: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So in our book, we end each chapter with a series of what we call Creative Sparks, which are kind of prompts to help you work with, you know, that particular aspect, whatever is the focus of each chapter. And so one we want to share with you today as a Creativity Pro-Tip has to do with woodshedding, which is a term that comes from music, and jazz specifically. And it's this idea of like going out to the woodshed, and chopping the wood, and just honing your skills, practicing your scales, like really, really, really crafting your process.
So tell us more, Charlotte.
Charlotte: So, you know, we encourage you to try to do this for 20 minutes a day, and that you also build muscle memory. So it's not a foreign activity. So you're like, “This is what I do at this time of day.” And t allows for more joy, even though it's so hard at the beginning. But you are basically, you're building your skill, and at the same time letting creativity trust you.
Melinda: Yeah, I love that. Yes, you trust the process and the trust process trusts you. And I don't know, it's just bringing to mind, I just watched that wonderful documentary about Jon Batiste. I don't know if you've been watching it, right?
Charlotte: Yeah, we’re watching it right now.
Melinda: Yeah. American Symphony. And you know, he's just the embodiment of all the things that we're talking about here. So check it out if you haven't seen it yet.
So at Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors. So if you have an idea for a project or a new venture, please reach out to us for 1x1 coaching or join our Syncreate 2024 Coaching Group.
Charlotte: Which we're really excited to be offering. This will be a small group of folks who identify a project and take it through its process, and we meet regularly to check in and be inspired.
Melinda: Yeah, so we'll be walking you through the model that we've been talking about in these mini-sessions of Play, Plan and Produce. So you can find more on our website, syncreate.org, where you can also find all of our podcast episodes. We’re on social media as well under Syncreate, and we are on YouTube. We are releasing our episodes both in audio and video on YouTube, so find us and connect.
And we are recording today at Record ATX Studios in Austin, and with Charlotte in the Hudson Valley. So glad to have you with me on this new endeavor of our Creative Spark episodes. And the podcast is produced in collaboration with Mike Osborne at 14th Street Studios. So thanks so much for being with us and we'll see you next time.
