Creative practices help us process uncertainty, build community, and find new perspectives on challenges. In this series, we’ll be engaging in various community building activities and creative exercises (e.g., collaging, origami, and more). We’ll meet in person in the East Reading Room (Library, 2nd Floor) on select Mondays from 12:30pm to 1:30pm. Register here.
While we hope to build a core community that grows together over the four sessions, we welcome faculty to join us for any individual session that speaks to their current needs or interests. Each gathering is designed to be meaningful whether you’re attending for the first time or the fourth.
Eligible part-time faculty who participate qualify for a $75 stipend per session (up to 4 sessions, or $300, per participant).
Session 1: Grounding Ourselves with Touchstones
- Monday, August 31, 12:30pm–1:30pm
We open the series by creating small, tangible anchors to carry us through the semester ahead. Using acrylic markers, we’ll paint flat stones with images, words, or symbols that represent what keeps us grounded. These small objects, easily tucked into a pocket or placed on a desk, become touchstones we can return to when the semester gets overwhelming.
Session 2: Cutting and Pasting
- Monday, September 28, 12:30pm–1:30pm
Using images and text from old issues of the Chronicle of Higher Education and other publications, we cut, arrange, and paste our way into conversation about the current landscape of higher ed. The physical act of selecting and composing becomes a way of making sense of a field in flux.
Session 3: Making Monsters
- Monday October 26, 12:30pm–1:30pm
Using found objects, odds and ends, and a healthy dose of playfulness, we build small creatures that give shape to whatever needs shaping (frustrations, fears, other feelings). Through playful creation, we transform our challenges into something tangible we can form, remake, and ultimately release. (This session is part of this year’s Fall Forum.)
Session 4: Folding with Reflection and Intention
- Monday, December 7, 12:30pm–1:30pm
In our final gathering, we engage in meditative creation, folding our semester experiences into something beautiful we can mindfully set aside, making space for rest and renewal. Before folding, we’ll write brief responses to a few prompts, tucking words of release, gratitude, and hope into the paper, hidden but held within the finished piece. The act of careful, deliberate folding becomes its own kind of closure.
