Artists Who Focus: Focusing & Creative Practice

Wednesday 16th June 2021 at 10.00am-12.00pm Sydney, AEST
Wednesday 16th June at 12:00pm-2:00pm, New Zealand, NZST
Wednesday 16th June at 8:00am-10:00am Perth, Western Australia, AWST

US: Tuesday 15th June 2021 at 8:00pm-10:00pm EDT
Click here to convert to your time zone

The TIFI Membership Committee is pleased to offer this series of Oceania Focusing Roundtables designed especially for members of the Institute. Roundtables afford members a valuable opportunity to engage in casual peer-to-peer conversation with other members who share Focusing-related interests.  Please join the Oceania Focusing Community in this Roundtable exploring Focusing and Creative Practice.

Being, making, reflecting - How do we experience ourselves as artists who Focus?

How do we integrate Focusing in our creative work or creative practice?

Good art is by nature therapeutic and playful, and at its best, it can serve communities by holding and transforming our deepest and darkest cultural experiencing. It takes strength, support, and self-awareness to mature as an artist who is capable of doing this emotional work, and the path is rarely straightforward.

As artists who Focus, we may have found Focusing – or were found by it - at a time when we were broken and in need of healing. However, given the dominant problem-oriented Focusing paradigm, we may then struggle to find ways to incorporate this life-forward gift into our creative processes, especially if our practice is primarily a solo enterprise. We may feel like wanderers in a desert, riders outside a boundary, or worse … fake therapists!

Felt sensing is a capacity innate to any creative process - indeed it is the space from which we create. And yet what is it that we need to learn so that we can apply felt sensing safely and reliably - on our own, with our collaborators, and with our audiences?

As we consider how to integrate Focusing in our creative work and practice, we might together explore the following topics:

• grounding and presence work
• generating and improvising ideas and content
• development of concepts, characters and narratives
• finding patterns, rhythms, energy and motifs
• finding the right distance and fresh perspectives
• staying with aliveness and in flow
• self-empathy and self-care
• navigating creative blocks and professional challenges
• tools for recovery, rejuvenation, and building creative resilience
• collaboration

Other questions or topics may emerge from our mutual exploration during the Roundtable. We hope you'll join us!

Connection >Focusing> Community

Who might be particularly interested in attending this Roundtable? Creatives and artists and any Focusers who are curious and interested in this topic.

What to expect from Focusing Roundtables:  

We warmly encourage you to register and settle down with us to join other Oceania Focusers and Focusers from around the world who are passionate to explore topics of interest and get to know each other better. If you have an area of interest, curiosity or passion you would like to see opened up in a future Roundtable, please let us know.

Each Focusing Roundtable is designed to promote informal peer-to-peer sharing. Rather than acting as expert presenters, the hosts will serve as sharing moderators to encourage exploration of the topics from the participants’ own perspectives. All participants’ sharing’s are welcome and valuable, no matter what level of experience or knowledge you have on the topic. The main emphasis is on connecting and listening to each other.

To preserve the nature of informal conversation, the program will be offered live only and no recordings will be available. Participants are encouraged to create follow up opportunities for connection among themselves after the Roundtable.

Focusing Roundtables are presented as a free benefit for members of TIFI. If you are not currently a member, you may attend this Roundtable by becoming a TIFI member at http://focusing.org/membership, and then return to this page to register. Registration is limited and available on a first-come, first served basis until the spaces fill. By joining at the $25 Friend Level or higher, you will be eligible for this and all future Focusing Roundtables and other benefits of membership during the year following your membership date.

Please note that capacity for this Roundtable is limited and registrations will be accepted on a first come-first served basis.

About your hosts:

Donna Abela is a playwright, dramaturge and scriptwriting lecturer whose practice is devoted to writing and supporting the development of stories that the Earth needs now. Since discovering Focusing, she has explored ways to incorporate Focusing in her writing practice and in her teaching on the creative process and resilience. Donna is currently working towards certification as a Focusing trainer.

Lynette Lancini is a musician, composer and facilitator who seeks to track and symbolize the felt sense and rhythms of human experiencing through her creative output. Fascinated by the phenomenon of inner-directed movement and its applications to ritual, performance and improvisation, Lynette is a Certified Wholebody Focusing Professional and represented with the Australian music centre.