Focusing Attention: making marks, making meaning. In Body and Mind: a Creative Health Micro-Festival at Central Saint Martins.
21-23 May 2024
I connected with colleagues to hear about their amazing practices and research around creative health during an informal micro-sharing event, part of Creativity & Wellbeing Week’s “In Body and Mind: a Creative Health Micro-Festival” at Central Saint Martins, University of The Arts London.
My presentation Sketching Potential, outlined the development of my practice over the last three years following the journey I took from facilitating my long-standing Thinking Through Drawing workshop to the collaboration with my sister Andra and Sisters Hope (2022), to the Hope Booths (2022-23) and recent workshops explorations in nature and on focusing attention. Yes, connecting the pen, hand, and thoughts with paper does create focus, holds attention and brings magic…my research into my practice continues.
A big thank you to Kate Keara Pelen, Creative Producer, CSM Culture and Community and Tireni Adeniji for organising and hosting the festival. “This was a peer-led series of drop-ins and sharing opportunities offering all members of the UAL community (and beyond!) a chance to connect around practices of arts and and health, in a spirit of radical inclusivity and care, facilitated by a growing network of students and staff keen to build a community of practice around creative health at UAL.”
Focusing Attention: making marks, making meaning with Ilga Leimanis
"Sometimes the best way to glimpse meaning is to start small, to pay attention to detail, and give your deliberate attention to what is in front of you. To try and notice what happens. To make time. To choose to look." Julia Bell, Radical Attention (2020) London: Peninsula Press, p117.
In an age of distraction, let’s 'start small' by looking, noticing, and putting pen to paper; making time with small acts of close attention. The deliberate act of drawing - sketching or diagramming - will create a line of focus between the tip of your pen and your thoughts. What are you making time for now? What are you noticing? What does attention look and feel like?
23 May | 12.30-14.30 | LVMH Lecture Theatre & Zoom Micro-sharing (PechaKucha) & facilitated networking
Whether you are an undergraduate or postgraduate student, a researcher, lecturer or practitioner, or simply interested in finding out what creativity and wellbeing have to do with each other, the In Mind and Body Micro-Festival is for you. To mark Creativity & Wellbeing Week, this peer-led series of drop-ins and sharing opportunities offers all members of the UAL community (and beyond!) a chance to connect around practices of arts and and health, in a spirit of radical inclusivity and care, facilitated by a growing network of students and staff keen to build a community of practice around creative health at University of the Arts London. Part of Creativity & Wellbeing Week, connect with students, practitioners and researchers engaged with Arts & Health
