“Madame,
[…]
When one is endowed with imagination, as you are, one possesses all the landscapes one has loved, and this is the inalienable treasure of the heart.”
Marcel Proust
Translated by Lydia Davis
Welcome to Methods and Madness,
I hope that the year has started well for you. And, if not, I hope that it improves.
This month’s creative prompt.
For this month’s creative prompt, I have been inspired by the theme of interaction between memory, imagination, and place.
This month’s prompt comes to you courtesy of Tanya Shadrick, author of The Cure for Sleep and convenor of its associated storytelling community.
Tanya created an activity that she calls Concentrates of Place, whereby she collects things from a certain place and puts them in a tin (or it could be a jar).
In this interview, the practice is described as “curating tangible reminders of people and places that are important to her, which she archives in old tobacco and sweet tins.” Tanya says of these little distillations that “they are just delicious things to open up for the colours, textures and smells they hold: heather, moss, sand, slate…”
A teacher wrote of her experience of using Concentrates of Place as the basis for a project she assigned her students; read her article to see how she did this and for some examples of how this creative prompt can be interpreted. And if you’re on Twitter, check out the #ConcentratesOfPlace hashtag to see what other people have done.
And then, why don’t you do it yourself?
Find a small receptacle – a tin, jar, or box – and take it the next time you go to a special place. Create a sensory archive, an “inalienable treasure of the heart.”
Resource of the month
While we are talking about place, and about putting things in things in order to connect to place, I thought I’d share an idea I found on the toolbox webpage of Placemaking Europe: The Suitcase. Have a read about how placemakers have adapted and used suitcases of evocative and informative stuff to engage stakeholders in creatively envisioning places.
The images featured in this months Substack come from the wonderful Public Domain Review. You can read and see more of Albertus Sebus’ collections here.
Upcoming event
I have an event coming up in February. It is free for paid subscribers and discounted for free subscribers so come along!
Relate:
How do you relate to your own creative self?
And how do you relate, or communicate, the story of that to others?
Join me for a one-hour workshop to develop a narrative about your creative identity.
9am-10am, 22 February 2023, AEDT or
8pm-9pm, 22 February 2023, AEDT.
Online via Zoom.
Bookings HERE.
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