Experiri: To try, to test
Illustration by Rebecca Stewart
I have just published a collection of articles about creative process and what it is to live a creative life. Or to try to.
Called Experiri, some of these articles are reworkings of well received blogs, some are unpublished, but all deal with themes to do with ideation, resilience, learning, and agency through the lens of making creative work. Of trying and testing.
To quote from my introduction:
“I am fascinated by practice, and the processes that people follow when they attempt creative work. I am particularly interested in the interplay between conditions imposed by the material world and how this affects our self-confidence, sense of potential, agency, and resilience, and how this in turn affects our relationships to our creative selves and activity. It goes back the other way too: the ways in which we identify as being creative, and how we manifest this in our creative process, feeds back into our sense of being resilient, of having agency, of being capable of learning and adapting within the material world.”
Why have I called this Experiri?
I found this Latin word when I reading up on the etymology of the word ‘experience’; I found that it meant “to try, test.” While there are certainly creative skills or capabilities you can learn – whether that be guitar-playing or collaboration – most of us develop a sense of creative identity and a creative practice by doing: trying, experimenting, practising, failing, succeeding. And I felt that that’s what my collection of articles were: recorded moments or impressions of trying to be creative.
In my practice I do not coach people into ‘success’. I don’t follow templates or preach methodologies. I’m interested in the more nebulous but vital ‘trying’ bit of creativity, and the associated ambiguities and challenges, and the way that affects people’s sense of how creative they are.
The blogs I selected for rewriting into this collection were the ones that brought reactions from readers such as “this really resonated” or “I really needed to read this today.” In making this eZine, I wanted to compile a collection of pieces that act as companions, not prescriptions. As each individual goes about ‘trying’ to manifest their creativity (even in the context of group work) I want to remind readers that they are not alone in this experience of trying.
You can buy Experiri in my online shop now.
