The human animal is born playful, curious, and creative; it is through our socialization that we learn creative docility: the state of being self-inhibited, critical, and ashamed. In adulthood, we suffer from creative blocks, burnout, and estrangement from our own desires. How does society shape creativity, and how might we recondition ourselves?

This 4-week workshop series is a creative unlearning laboratory open to artists of all kinds, designed to help you reject perfectionism and impostor syndrome, reconnect with play, explore new territory, and build sustainable creative habits of your own invention.

Part open studio, part collective inquiry, these sessions focus on exploration over evaluation. Through hands-on exercises, group discussions, and a non-judgmental environment, we’ll examine the assumptions we’ve inherited about creativity and artistic identity; especially those shaped by colonial, cultural, and intellectual histories.

In group discussions, we’ll explore questions like:

• How do cultural values of maturity and success shape our relationship to play?
• How do social expectations and professional norms influence our trust in our own creative impulses?
• How do social structures affect our connection to embodied experience?
• How do artistic norms shape our sense of creative belonging and community?

You’ll come away with a clearer sense of your creative values and a more permissive relationship to artistic exploration. Past participants have returned to mediums they once loved, felt relief from the pressure to be serious or successful, and found themselves creating more freely and actively than they had in years.