As a writer, lecturer and workshop leader, I have been deeply involved in the exploration of the Creative Process and  human potential. During my 30-plus years as the creative force behind The Maine Photographic Workshops and Rockport College, I explored and developed the “Transformational Experience” model that was at the core of every one-week workshop and degree course we offered. What happened during these one-week workshops was magical, often leading to profound personal change in many of those participating. The intense focus each student brought, along with the ability to play and encouragement to fail, combined with honest critique and fellowship brought about profound change.

The Workshops provide me with a living laboratory where I could experiment with different ways of teaching, creating new experiences and testing ideas in learning. This process of experimentation, as well as my association with many of today’s working artists, those who taught master classes for me, that formed many of my opinions on education and the development of human potential.

Artists work best when working intuitively. It is from the intuition that the gifts, surprises and creative work come. The intuition grows and becomes stronger through experiences, rather than formal academic study. It’s through the doing that the hand learns. By structuring workshops and courses that included practical work, students became aware of these gifts, and the potential and  limits to their craft. They began to realize that “process” is more important than the product and that the real goal of every experience was the discoveries they made, about the process itself, the subject matter but mostly it was about themselves. Couple this intuitive development with the scholarly study of history, contemporary trends, technology and intellectual debate and what emerges is well rounded individual who has a good idea of who they are as creative individuals and what they might accomplish.

I am working now on a book that describes a work form based on “The Band.” Much creative work is done alone, by a single individual, the soloist,  but once the “idea”  is formed, getting it made requires the collaboration of other, working in a small groups, in a studio, a workshop in a loft where a team of fellow creators, each unique, each with a different though compatible skills, come together to collaborate to create something new, something far greater than the work of anyone of the members. This band, or studio team unit, needs to be introduced in academic education. Small teams of 4 to 6 people work on projects and assignments, helping each other realize the value of their fellow creators while they themselves discover their own gifts and come to understand the process of team work. Large universities teach how to cope within a large corporation, the military, or within academia itself. University students learn less about the subject they study, then they do from the experience of residing within a large campus . . .  where it’s easy to hide, to be shaped into someone who is fitted through experience to work within the structure of a large corporation or other organization. By their very nature, these large organization are anything by creative. Creativity scares managers and CEOs, for creativity means change and often that change was the wrong direction, but growth can’t happen unless there is change, so wrong directions sometimes have to be tolerated. It’s the way creativity works. Mistakes are part of the process.

THis is an on-going essay . . . so, I’ll be back soon to add more . . . in the mean time here the link to a YouTube video you may find interesting. It includes excerpts from my one-hour on “The Artist’s Path” and the Creative Process.