For Several years, my friend Kathleen has led a Word of the Year Playshop at the beginning of the year. She usually uses a more linear approach - using Dictionaries and Thesauri, after a quick review and release of any 'baggage' from the year just past ... This year, she'd invited a friend who facilitates Soul Collage(t) to join us, and we used images! Both Kathleen and Deandra brought a bunch of images from magazines, cards and calendars, and laid them out on three tables for us to choose from. Card size is general 5x8" and we could choose from several colours of mat board for our background, plus an index card. Other materials are glue sticks and scissors. My workstation We did a quick year review and release, then choose images, and started to fine tune and arrange them. After we'd glued the images, we paired up, and one of the dyad acted as scribe for the other: I am the one who .... My partner, used to the more linear approach, was delighted with his word...
ᎤᎵᎮᎵᏍᏗ ᎢᏤ ᎠᏕᏘᏱᏍᎬᎢ U-li-he-lis-di i-tse a-de-ti-yi-s-gv-i / happy new year! What's on your creative table in 2025? For 2024, our pastor Erika Marksbury got a grant to use Bonnie Smith Whitehouse 's lovely book, Seasons of Wonder, for inspiration and focus. The grant covered copies of the book for the congregation, plus supplies for our monthly Makers Meetings and funds for field trips; and we met in small groups for monthly discussion. I really enjoy Bonnie's approach of interweaving gathering as a circle (!!), sharing creativity, connecting with nature, each other and the Divine. I've ordered her Kickstart Creativity cards. In the introduction, Bonnie quotes Steven Charleston , ' It is all a circle, the ancestors said -- an endless circle within a circle. The drum is a circle. The dance ground is a circle. The earth is a circle. There is no us or them, no top or bottom, no beginning or end, no lines of division -- o...