To celebrate the New Year, I am re-sharing one of my free and favorite e-workshops from a couple of years ago!
Creative Covenants
How would you define your creative covenants? Your creative covenants are values that you believe are core to the way you create, practice, and live as a creative and artful being. When you know your own creative values, you can activate them to empower your creative life. In this e-workshop, you are invited to create an inspiring book made from a series of permission tags that honor these promises to our creative self and practice. Content in this workshop will also be nurtured through a series of prompts exploring what celebrates, challenges, and empowers the creative goodness in each of us!
This free workshop download includes a PDF & video offering and is available here:
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An oldie, but goodie New Year’s creative practice I’ve enjoyed for almost 10 years now:
To celebrate this first full week of 2016, I am excited to announce that my e-workshop Creative Covenants is now available through this blog!
How would you define your creative covenants? Your creative covenants are values that you believe are core to the way you create, practice, and live as a creative and artful being. When you know your own creative values, you can activate them to empower your creative life. In this e-workshop, you are invited to create an inspiring book made from a series of permission tags that honor these promises to our creative self and practice. Content in this workshop will also be nurtured through a series of prompts exploring what celebrates, challenges, and empowers the creative goodness in each of us!
This free workshop download includes a PDF & video offering and is available here:
Enjoy! Wishing you all an artful 2016!
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Check out these freebie downloads from past Creativity in Motion posts that are still available here:
Earlier last month, Hali Karla Arts’ holistic online creative circle Spectrum opened to much excitement and anticipation! I’ve so enjoyed seeing all the creativity, inspiration, and encouragement being shared within this community.
In this post I want to share a peek into some of the Creative Covenants that have been made by Spectrum participants (and who kindly gave me permission (thank you!) to share their art with you!). Each time a new collection of Creative Covenants graces the Spectrum community space, it’s exciting to take in what has been created- in form, colors, symbol, intention, and the promises being made to ones creative self.
It’s also a delightful surprise to see the different ways everyone’s Creative Covenants take shape, the materials being used and how each set has its own artful personality, creative energy, and enthusiasm:
Celeste’s Creative Covenants
Celeste transformed her Creative Covenants into these round beauties! (left image are the fronts & right image features the backs)
Laurie’s Creative Covenants
Laurie included her heart shaped Creative Covenants in her art journal!
Carol’s Promises to Her Creative Self
Carol has been working on a series of different Creative Covenants on cards and tags that honor her permissions and celebrations!
Eleni’s Process & Creative Covenants
Fun to see Eleni’s Creative Covenant process from start to finish!
Britt-Marie’s Creative Covenants
A beautiful collection of Creative Covenants created by Britt-Marie!
Witnessing these Creative Covenants and many others come to life through art expression is a sacred reminder of the power of intention & its important value in our creative life. What a courageous, soulful adventure this has already been… Thank you Hali for bringing everyone together through Spectrum’s art filled invitations!
I’ve slowly been working on the altered book I started for exploring the theme of covenant based care giving. Here are some work in progress photos:
I’ve been using a lot of acrylic paint on the raw surface of the chipboard page that I’ve stripped of its glossy coating and its former life of a children’s board book. Over the dried acrylic paint I’ve also been using some white colored pencil. It’s been a super liberating process.
Each of these beginning pages are forming a visual pledge connected to my professional and creative work… to instill, engage with, and honor.
It’s been a super busy last couple of weeks and I am grateful within that time I was able to schedule in attending a day of the National Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children’s Annual Childhood Trauma Practitioner’s Assembly.
One of the workshops I attended was facilitated by Nora Stanger and focused on overcoming childhood trauma through reframing experiences, exploring & discovering life purpose, as well as the connection of foundational values and personal leadership in finding that calling. Check out Nora’s TEDx talk Embrace Your Past…. Define Your Future (8:39) to learn more about her powerful, inspiring story of post traumatic growth:
Acknowledge and Apply Your Strengths- What personal strengths can you bring to the situation?
Find & Use the Positives- Using your strengths, how can you make the situation better?
Accept the Uncontrollable- What parts are not in your control? What are you willing to give up?
Focus on the Controllable- What can you control (thoughts, feelings, actions)?
Reframing invites a different way of seeing the experience and challenges us to explore our beliefs about the situation and to change or reverse its meaning. This perspective can help us manage the experience better and from a strength-based and empowering mind set. I was super happy that this workshop also included shout outs to the pioneering positive psychology work of Dr. Martin Seligman and his site authentichappiness.org.
On life purpose, Nora discussed how looking beyond ourselves and situations helps discover, give voice, and action to the bigger meaning and calling of our existence, no matter what our past and circumstances. She cited the work of Dr. Bill Millard and his Life Calling Model, which outlines a series of values rooted in character, faith, and service connected to our strengths, passion, and experiences to explore life purpose. Foundational Values are at the core of our being and helps form the way we think about the world, ourselves, and others. Our values are the basis of our choices (Millard, 2012).
I was inspired by Nora’s content and these presented models not only in relationship to my work in trauma with survivors, but as another addition to covenant based caregiving that I learned about last month. More inspiration and awesome ideas for transforming this stuff into altered book form! Thank you Nora!
Also at the TLC Assembly, I was able to present a workshop on art journaling, trauma intervention, and self care, which was a nice way for attendees to end the week. This part lecture/part art-making workshop explored the use of art journaling as a safe, contained space for processing emotional expression, promoting self care, and sharing ones personal narrative and intentions related to trauma work. Content also included themes and the benefits of art journaling as a visual voice and means of trauma intervention with youth and women survivors. The group engaged in creating their own mini art journal with paper bags with mixed media to help identify and support their own professional self-care practices:
It was such a pleasure to work with this group! Thank you to everyone who attended!
You can check out all the photos from the Assembly’s great week via TLC here. 🙂
