Hi there,
So, I came across this image while I was trawling the interwebs recently:
It’s the poster for the 2023 Kyiv Book Fair. It’s a stunning piece of graphic art and made me curious about the fact that, in the middle of a war, Kyiv hosted a book fair. A Google search about this yielded the…
Article of the month
On the trail of Zelensky at the Kyiv book fair in the The Christian Science Monitor Daily.
It’s a short article packed with great quotes:
“What is democracy, how do we experience freedom, what do we mean by inclusivity or the unity of the country, and are these values really worth fighting and dying for?”
and
“’Suddenly all of these theoretical concepts have become real to people, they mean something more and different,’ she said. ‘With missiles striking randomly, the simple ‘Have a good night’ becomes something urgent,’ she added. ‘Just walking out of a bomb shelter alive gives freedom new meaning.’”
Creative prompt
“… gives freedom new meaning.”
I want you to think about an experience that has given ‘freedom’ or (some other value that gets bandied around as a cliché) new meaning for you.
Choose a formative experience – a brush with death or homelessness, or perhaps something uplifting like a celebration or witnessing someone else’s triumph over adversity. Then create from it – make the qualities or values that underpinned that deeper meaning manifest in your drawing or your writing or your singing or your cooking.
And if you’re scratching your head and trying to think of such an experience, then you might like to look at a work of art that has made you think or feel differently about something. I love this photograph taken by Michael Nash in Warsaw in 1946:
These moments can creep up on you as well. I watched the original Godzilla expecting to chuckle at a rubber dolly stomping on toy buildings and instead found myself watching a serious film inspired by the horrors of war that made me cry when I watched the scene accompanied by this music:
So, let’s use this month’s creative prompt to respond to those moments in life where our potential to respond to life expands and deepens.
Resource of the month
It me!
Recently I made a presentation as part of Digital Innovation Futures Victoria DIFVic2023 festival and you can watch the recording on Youtube:
“How do you build trust among collaborators in the digital age? In this #DIFlive: DIF Lunch'n'Learn session, Meredith Lewis, Facilitator and Creative Coach, explores the avenues of building bridges between co-creators from different fields, platforms, and locations.”
An upcoming event
Phoenixes and Zombies, 28 September, online, 6-7pm AEST, $50. A discussion about failures and ‘failures’ in creative work: how do you decide whether to undertake another iteration or let a project die? Bookings and more information here.