Creative Raves: 4 online all-out communal gatherings to make art
Led by artist and Open Heart Project teacher, Crystal Gandrud
What is a Creative Rave?
It is obvious that The Open Heart Project is a community of creative people.
Creative people need one thing above all else: Time. (More specifically, uninterrupted time.)
Creative people need one thing above all else: Space.
Creative people need one thing above all else: Meditative Awareness.
Creative people need one thing above all else: a non-invasive, trustworthy community of support.
Okay, creative people need a lot of things, a lot of support. It’s very hard to engage in activities with no obvious outcome or guaranteed result. In 2020, the Open Heart Project sangha is going to offer just this support in the form of four day-long, turn-off-all-your-devices, get-ready-to-make-things Creative Raves, one for each season of the year.
These gatherings will not be workshops or forums for sharing work. They will be forums for sharing space; time; meditative awareness and wisdom; presence for each other. Collectively, we will create an environment where we can all explore whatever it is we know we need to do our work.
Whether your work is thinking, feeling, dancing, mathing, cooking…it is the quality of time we spend with each other and, therefore, ourselves that can radically shift our relationship with our creative selves; how we create or how we relate with what we create. Or ALL of that!
Whatever your discipline or interests are, we are here to support each other in the magical, radical, primordial work of creating. It is our birthright.
Let’s do it!
The Details
All gatherings take place from 11:00 am ET – 4:00 pm ET
Creative Rave Gathering 1: Time — February 15
When we embrace cycles and rhythms—rather than fighting against them—we are consistently engaged and interested and our work naturally resonates.
Creative Rave Gathering 2: Genius — May 16
When we observe and allow to fall away all the things we’ve been told about ourselves, what we think and feel, what we make—what remains is our genius.
Creative Rave Gathering 3: Wabi-Sabi — September 12
Beauty and meaning are irregular, asymmetrical, odd. Release perfectionism. It has no business in the creative process.
Creative Rave Gathering 4: Offering — December 12
How to offer what and when? No sacred act of creation is complete without offering—to self, another, or the universe does not matter—it is the act of offering that is key to the creative process.
About the First Gathering
The Online Schedule
11:00 – 11:30 AM ET meditation instruction and practice
11:30 – 11:45 AM ET how today’s practice will go
11:45 – 12:15 PM ET survey the terrain, then begin to or continue to make something
12:15 – 12:45 PM ET break for lunch or tea or bath or freak out
12:45 – 3:30 PM ET short sit (10 minutes); get to work
3:30 – 4:00 PM ET meditation and closing
Your instructor: Crystal Gandrud
Crystal Gandrud is an experimental writer based in London. Recent work includes the upcoming Chewbacca, Thin Air magazine, Yeatsian: We the Numberless Dreamers, The Encyclopedia Project, vol. 3, 2017; and Here, The Brooklyn Women Anthology, 2019. In artistic collaboration with artist Nuala Clarke, she has created many ‘installation-novels’ such as Numberless Dreams, Hamilton Gallery, Ireland; Fair Shouldered One, l’Université de Sorbonne, Paris, and As Above, So Below, Linenhall Arts Centre, Ireland. She is also the creator of Dream of the Drawing for Everything, an online installation concerning the oneiric. In 2017, she co-founded Lionheart Press with Susan Piver. The Lionheart mission is to introduce marginalised Buddhist thought-influencers to a more mainstream audience. She has practiced Tantric Buddhism for twenty-five years.
To secure your spot:
Join the Open Heart Project Sangha.
Click here to see all the benefits of joining the Open Heart Project Sangha.
If you are already a member (yay!), the Creative Gathering is free. Sangha members can register here (So we know how many will be attending.)
Questions? Please contact my assistant Lisa here.