“Making sense of the world through experimental play”
Playdates should come back. We should all live in a world of whimsy and childlike curiosity. This is an intentional effort to bring back that culture.
A directory of self defined creators and makers. The goal is to schedule “playdates” with one another, in pursuit of engaging in something creative. Folks can choose whether or not to collaborate with other people.
Ways of gathering
There will be a couple ways folks will gather:
- “Playdates” - intimate, intentional and PLAYFUL gatherings with a small group of people (2-5), where the goal is to make progress or get unstuck on a project and create alongside likeminded people
- Inspiration Hunting sessions - Strategies to get “unstuck,” be in creative community with one another, skill-building & art workshops (ex. letterpress printing, bookbinding, graphic design, etc.), COMMUNAL teaching. A time for creative rest.
- Showcase - THE FINAL SHE-BANG! Where people will showcase their amazing projects and we get the immense privilege of reveling in community.
(a stretch) Online gatherings might be on the table, depending on how this project pans out. Unsure yet!
Why?
This way, folks get to know each other more intimately & get involved with other projects - building trust and creating a community that feels tender & supportive. Multimodal forms of gathering feels important to me. It’s easier to get work done when you feel less “perceived,” lending to the more intimate playdate format.
Some key themes to follow throughout:
- Freedom / Self Agency & the capacity for play
- Curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge / how to funnel that into an “output”
- Ways of engaging with creativity / the creative process
- The emotional labor it takes to create and the regenerative power of rest
- How to collaborate with one another / growing each other’s mind gardens / community as collective cognition
- Decentralized community and gatherings / community accountability
We are communal dreamers.
My internal motivation: I read this quote and it resonated with me…
“Community based and community driven output will always remain at the core. It’s less about bringing one specific vision that I have to life and more about being a facilitator of multiple visions and perspectives, seeing how they come together and inform one another. I consider my role more as a seed planter and a waterer than anything else — it’s not about the tree in the end per say and more about the process of mutual cultivation.”
Another really meaningful quote… “But then the second thing he said was, ‘You are interconnected to everyone, because the world doesn’t work without everyone.’ You may think that you’re alone, but you’re never actually alone. This was really important because at a very young age that made me understand the importance of collectivity, and that we can’t do anything alone that’s worth it. Everything worthwhile is done with other people. So that became the soundtrack in my head.”
Some fundamental beliefs and values:
We are interwoven beings. Nothing exists alone. Individuality is an illusion. Life on this planet is an interwoven mesh of relational becoming.
I found this on Are.na and it feels particularly compelling for what I want to cultivate this experimental space to feel like
- A shift from consumer to creator/member
- Community as identity, not a geographical localeshift
- Breaking free from desiring based on what we know - new strategies, not just known ones
- I’m not creating an experience for you, I am providing you with a seed to create your own experience - we must all be given the opportunity to become part of the creation process
- Fostering culture, or “horizontal depth” in culture can be at odds with grown. What does it mean for growth to be a goal?
- How will you assert that you are “here” in the world?
“Creativity is just connecting things”