Saturday, June 25, 9am-4pm
NOTE UPDATED building location:
TAGLIATELA ACADEMIC CENTER ATRIUM
Albertus Magnus College
New Haven, Connecticut

albertus magnuS DIRECTIONS | BUILDING MAP (PARKING ENTRANCE OFF OF HUNTINGTON STREET)

$99 - REGISTER NOW - INCLUDES:

• All-day 'Composing a Creative Life on Purpose' Conference

• Four in-depth workshops, facilitated by leading thinkers, teachers and practitioners

• Participation in community art project

• Lunch

• One ticket to David T. Little's Soldier Songs performance (6/25 at 5 P.M.)

• Networking with others interested in exploring and applying their creativity

We are all creative beings - continually challenged to tap into those fundamental passions that are part of ourselves, while leaving behind the judgments and blocks that keep us from living our purpose. Learn how to think in new ways, generate new ideas, and make new connections. Come and be inspired, apply imagination, and invent new possibilities for your life and work. You will:

• Learn practical strategies for unleashing, harnessing and applying your creativity. 

• Discover how creativity can help you discover meaning and live your purpose. 

• Explore the connections between creativity, purpose, spirituality and intuition.

Join facilitators with experience in arts therapy, education, creativity, art, spirituality and ethics to engage your creativity on purpose and for purpose.  

WORKSHOP DETAILS AND SCHEDULE

REGISTRATION AND CHECK-IN
8:00 A.M.

Tagliatela Academic Center Atrium
Albertus Magnus College
700 Prospect Street (enter parking off of Huntington Street near back of campus)
New Haven, Connecticut 06511

Albertus Magnus Campus Directions | Building Map and Parking Location

Hanging or suspended art can quickly alter a space, making a large area seem secluded and intimate or a dull, empty corner suddenly full of energy. You can experience this transformation of space by joining in the construction of a large suspended weaving that will combine yarns, material scraps, natural fibers and found objects. The 50-foot-long piece will be accessible throughout the day and you are invited to add to the weaving, using the materials provided or add some of your own.

OPENING SESSION ... SETTING THE CONTEXT
9:00 A.M.

A - The Mandala and the MARI
Evie Lindemann, Assistant Professor/Clinical Coordinator Master of Arts in Art Therapy Program, Albertus Magnus College

Mandalas are ancient shapes, used in cave paintings, Buddhist practices and rediscovered in the 20th century by CG Jung. You will have the opportunity to create your own mandala drawing, as well as learn about the MARI, a system that combines symbols and colors to create a map of the psyche and helps to answer those questions that most call out for attention. You will:

• Draw your own mandala to take home. No prior art experience necessary.

• Use the symbols and colors of the MARI to select and map out the information you have chosen onto a format that will help you make sense of your choices.

• Have the opportunity to compare your mandala drawing and your MARI to help you move forward to whatever is next in your life, your work and your personal explorations.

ABOUT EVIE LINDEMANN: Evie Lindemann, LMFT, ATR-BC, ATCS, has worked as a psychotherapist and as a researcher for a number of years. Currently, she is an assistant professor in the graduate art therapy program at Albertus Magnus College. Additionally, she works with combat veterans using art therapy and other creative arts modalities to treat trauma. She has studied yoga, Eastern philosophy, movement based healing systems, and has been deeply influenced by the teachings of Meher Baba. She is a printmaking artist who exhibits her work nationally and internationally, and believes the creative process is one of the most powerful means for self-actualization. More about Evie Lindemann and Master of Arts in Arts Therapy Program at Albertus Magnus.

Creativity is one of the major means by which human beings liberate themselves from conditioned responses and usual choices. Creative expression is unique to the individual according to the circumstances of her/his life and can be stimulated toward greater output through means designed to evoke responses both internally and externally. The spiritual is not morality, not ethics, not organized religion (although it can be for some), not psychic. The most important thing is to recognize that spirit is an essential need of human nature. There is something in all of us that seeks the spiritual. It is a yearning that varies in strength from person to person. We so often hear reference to the "Human Spirit" being given credit for pulling people through terrible crises. It is a sometimes intangible presence that we acknowledge. Intuition is the first phase of the creative process. It comes from within. It can be referred to as primary creativity or imagination. Buddha said, "Intuition, not reason, is the source of ultimate truth and wisdom." Frances Vaughan identifies four types of intuition which we will touch upon within this workshop: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. In this workshop, you will:

• Learn the unique characteristics of creativity, intuition and spirituality.
• Explore the interrelationships among the three.
• Participate in a number of activities to help you identify what your range is within these three topics.

LUNCH

Included in registration fee

C - Freeing What Waits Within
Anne O'Reilly

And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment.
     - T S Eliot Little Gidding

This workshop is an invitation to locate your life's purpose within larger horizons of being and becoming. Using poetry, guided meditation and opportunities for spontaneous writing our time together will open the door to your own creativity, uncovering a secret river of flow and possibility. When Seamus Heaney wrote about a child sitting in a wishing chair at the Giant's Causeway in County Antrim in Ireland, he imagined that child seeing and dreaming "beyond the range you thought you'd settled for." In a similar way, you will be invited into this space of beginner's mind with an opportunity to:

• Sit in non-judging awareness and mindful presence, open to whatever comes.

• Trust those first thoughts as the best thoughts. o Write from the heart.

• Discover a language that matches your soul's purpose.

The workshop will offer time to reconnect with that flowing stream of creativity that we sensed as children - those moments of light and play that opened us up to realms of endless possibility and newness.

May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.
     - Rainer Maria Rilke

ABOUT ANNE O'REILLY: Anne F.O'Reilly, Ph.D., is a performance poet, celebrating the healing and transforming power of poetry. She brings to this work many years training with voice, poetry by heart, sacred clowning, drama and meditation. She is the author of "Sacred Play: Soul Journeys in Contemporary Irish Theatre" (Carysfort Press 2004), and "Singing from the Belly of the Whale" (2009), a book of poetry, with original paintings by Caroline Hunter. The CD, "Breathsong" with her own poems and music by Wayne Sheehy will be launched in May 2011.

Language is a given for cultural flourishing and comes in many different forms. One language common to all has been around since prehistoric times - drawing. Drawing has endured because it has the ability to relay emotional and intellectual information about the human condition. Just as the Lascaux cave painters 17,000 years ago conveyed a sense of their own "presence" in time, the perceived wonders and evils in their environmental, kept records of their migrations, the kinds and numbers of animals they encountered with the changing seasons, and the beauty and the "awe" they inspired, we today use artistic expression for many of the same purposes…and more. This session will provide a space where you can explore your own emotional and intellectual development through a non-verbal experience in drawing. All are welcome. No previous drawing experience is necessary. All supplies will be available. You will learn how to:

• Draw and create within the space of a single piece of paper; recognize and use your imagination.
• Come into contact with space, line, form, and color as an expression of your own emotional and intellectual life.

CONFERENCE ENDS AT 4 P.M.

ARTS & IDEAS PERFORMANCE @
FREDERICK ISEMAN THEATER
1156 Chapel Street
New Haven, Connecticut

David T. Little's Soldier Songs
This theatrically staged song cycle blends theater, opera, rock-infused-concert music, and projected animations, performed by the amplified octet Newspeak and guest baritone David Adam Moore. With music and libretto written by David T. Little and conducted by Todd Reynolds, the piece adapts interviews with veterans of five wars. Don't miss this timely reflection on war and the soldiers whose lives were changed by it, created by one of today's "next generation" classical composers.

"Soldier Songs rocks. David T. Little brilliantly expounds upon the life of the soldier. His music is both complex and simple… convey(ing) the enormous range of emotions the Soldier experiences." 
- Houston Chronicle

$99 - REGISTER NOW FOR THE JUNE 25 'COMPOSING A CREATIVE LIFE' WORKSHOP AND PERFORMANCE

• All-day 'Composing a Creative Life on Purpose' Conference
• Four in-depth workshops, facilitated by leading thinkers, teachers and practitioners
• Participation in community art project
• Lunch
• One ticket to David T. Little's Soldier Songs performance (6/25 at 5 P.M.)
• Networking with others interested in exploring and applying their creativity

MORE INFO ABOUT 'UNLEASHING YOUR CREATIVITY' SERIES 
WORKSHOPS ON JUNE 18, 21 & 25

MORE INFO ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL 
OF ARTS & IDEAS