Improvised Writing

The beginning: sitting quietly with a paper and a pencil or being in the circle of light of your computer screen. Start writing and just follow the free flow of thoughts inside. Turn your attention to your inner theatre and see what pops up. Make complete sentences writing continuously on and on. Don’t go back to earlier words, don’t stop the writing but keep going forward. When you don’t know what to write you might write that down or describe the room, the people around you etc,. When a new thought comes up, finish the paragraph you are working on, leave an empty line and pick up with the new thought. Allow yourself to write down what lives inside. There’s no good or bad judgement while writing: the lights are all green and affirmative. Later you might go back and use some of the generated material. Later you might share certain parts with others.

Later you might adjust the order of your thoughts/writing and analyse it. But start with improvised writing…

Collecting Moments

Take your mind back to a session that took place. This can be the session that just ended a minute ago but also a session from a few days ago. Ask the more analytical part of your brain to shut up for a while and open your mind to the way you experienced that session.

What are the specific moments that you still feel, see, hear or experience? What moments are still close to the senses or seem to be still alive? Make a list of ten moments that come up like this. Create diversity: one moment might go into an image you saw, another about some specific words you heard, a third about a feeling inside, an insight, a sudden remark … and so on. Expand on every moment with a few lines of text written in a narrative mode: try to catch the liveliness and the scenic quality. Occasionally your own reactions might become part of it. In the end: look over your collection and see what speaks out. What do you learn? What could be an underlying question?

The Library

The participants of the group brought books with them: some of the books directly relate to the central topic, others are more general sources of inspiration or associated material. All the books are now lying on the table forming a diverse collection: the library.

Walk around the table and choose two or three books that resonate. Sit yourself in a quiet place and go through the chosen books in 10-15 minutes. Open yourself to find or - better still - ‘to receive’ a text fragment that surprisingly mirrors your current thoughts. What comes out of the books and resonates with your own ideas, what speaks to you? Allow yourself the attitude of consulting an oracle….

Write the text you found on a paper or copy the image. Leave a line free and then write down why this found footage is meaningful to you. Glue or stick your source and reflection on the reflective wall in the library. During the event a shared collection of fragments and personal thoughts will appear on this wall.    

Silent Coaching

Think of an important issue relating to your work which has come to the fore in these past few days. Whichever issue you choose, it is important that it matters to you, and that at this point, you are not sure how to proceed with it. It also needs to be an issue where you yourself are central to the action in some way. (ie it doesn’t rely on you changing something in someone else).

A series of coaching questions will then be asked. These questions aim to provide a framework for thought. They do not define the journey or its destination. The coaching is “silent” because although the questions are asked out loud, the coachees in the group reflect and respond silently (perhaps taking notes if it is helpful). Individual use of the questions is also possible.

It starts like this:

• What’s the issue?
• What makes it an issue now?
• Who owns this issue (or which part of this issue do you think you have ownership of?)

Thanks to Jo Hensel (Guildhall) for the text of Silent Coaching. Find the whole list of 40 all the time further unfolding questions through www.innovativeconservatoire.com or www.musework.nl or in the session.

Reflecting through Making

‘Why not make a drawing to reflect’ is the invitation. ‘I cannot draw’ might very well be the answer, ‘it is not part of my work as a professional’. The inviter however continues: ‘OK, but my invitation is not asking for the skills of drawing, it invites a mindset of making as a reflective mode. It is about finding images as an alternative for words’. And as an extra stimulus the inviter says: ‘just give it a try…. approach it as an improvisation in unknown territory’.

So you try. Now you sit with paper and pencil and maybe other materials like crayons in different colours. Overlook a session, a conversation or a topic in your mind. Allow yourself the transformation of thoughts and feelings into lines and imagery on paper. Invest some time. Slow down and linger a while with what comes up. In the making at a certain point the ‘work’ that grows starts to talk back. Be alert to receive unexpected meanings! The act of making will give you in addition a ‘long term memory’ to what was meaningful.

Design an Experiment

(how to move from questions to the actual practice?)

Five or six participants come as a small group together for at least a two-hour session. What do you want to work on? In what direction do you want to innovate your practice with a first concrete step? Every group member writes down a personal desire in terms of a question: “How can I succeed in….?”… “What can I do to…?”

The first person then opens by sharing his question. The others just pose a few (short) interviewing questions back to help maximise understanding. Then follows a silence. Every member ‘designs’ a small experiment that, related to the question at stake, can be done on the floor. Playful experiments are suggested to explore this first question using music, theatre, physicality, positioning in space and/or material. The bringer of the question chooses or mixes, from the offered possibilities, how to experiment for 15 minutes. After the experiment the group concludes with a short talk, followed by an individual reflective moment: everybody learns and takes something out of it. Depending on the completion time (between 30-60) two to four rounds can be done in one session.

Formation of Sources

(working form Sunday evening 16-10-2016)

It is always good to invite participants, colleagues, friends or whoever is involved to bring three sources of inspiration to a planned event: a text, an image and an object. Challenge them to choose sources connected to strong personal values and meaning.

In small groups (4-6) the conversation begins with one member explaining one of their sources. One tip for the group is to stay close to the source by asking ‘can you do it once more?’ or ‘can I see it again?’ Another tip is to ask each other ‘what resonates with them’ thus taking part in the conversation. After the short conversation each source is given a place on a table, the floor or put in context to the place of meeting. Then someone else explains one of their sources, then another and so on.

How to place and interrelate the sources? A formation of sources starts to grow as a work of co-creation, mirroring the conversation. Encourage the playing with positioning as part of the conversation to generate extra meaning. In the end two groups visit each other’s formation. Guests start to tell what they see and sense. Hosts follow with a summary of the conversation.