What workshop participants have taught me

This summer was a new experience for me, as it was the first series of community group art workshops ‘Art in the Park’ I’ve hosted. Previously I’ve done one-off workshops, but this year I wanted to build my experience with a series of group art workshops locally in Dunfermline. I had the idea to combine being outside in nature and creating art. As I find nature to be an endless source of inspiration, and the mental health benefits of being outdoors alongside creativity make them perfect partners.

I want to encourage everyone to be more creative by lowering barriers to making art. Art in the Park was designed to facilitate a group of people who have an interest in being creative with activities focused on nature as a source of inspiration. This was my main motivation, to get people together in a relaxing environment to try new creative methods in a group. 

The themes within my workshops are observing from nature, exploring shapes and forms, and using meditative drawing styles. The process of slowing down, noticing what you’re interested in and observing nature improves wellbeing, as well as being fundamental creative skills. To be a good artist you must learn to observe and to explore your own interests. Part of the creative workshops also included creating group art pieces on paper, by working together in small groups each person contributed to the artwork. It made for some interesting results, and more importantly got everyone talking and working together. 

Over the summer my experience leading Art in the Park, I observed some common themes that create successful group art workshops. I took away 5 top tips that you could apply to any creative pursuit. Below are images resulting from the workshops.

1. Permission to play

Often all people need to get into the creative flow is permission to have fun and explore their interests. For the workshops, I created a loose agenda to get people started with making art, but enough room to follow their inspiration. It’s more important to me that the people involved find something that inspires them and get into a mindful flow of creating, rather than sticking to a strict agenda. But I do recognise there’s a balance to be had, enough of a structure so people don’t wonder about aimlessly vs freedom to explore particular interests. So of course if they ‘divert’ off track of the agenda to me this is a good thing. When they've found an aspect that lights them up this is beautiful to observe. It was wonderful to host a small group of people interested in being more creative. I think the most important job was to create the right conditions to give everyone permission to play, work with new ideas and new materials in a beautiful setting. 

2. Indecision kills creativity

I kept my art workshops to a loose agenda, so each person had a starting point to focus on what kind of inspiration and technique to use. Otherwise you risk indecision taking over and fear of the blank page.

I was surprised however, how often people asked me ‘Is this right?’ I had quite a few insightful discussions about how they’d lost creative spark after being told something was wrong or not good enough earlier in life. Sadly these experiences affect people’s confidence as adults in a creative setting. Truth is, you have to make many bad drawings, paintings, etc, before you can make anything close to ‘good’. And good should always be defined by what the artist wants to explore, whether that’s a concept, a style, colour, subject. 

But what I observed was people found getting started the biggest hurdle, once they’d had some time to experiment it began to flow. And given a little encouragement goes a long way to restore confidence and allow people to settle into doing something different.

3. Group art cohesion

It was surprising how many of the group artworks looked like they’d been created by one person. Often the group didn’t specifically discuss colours, style etc, but by working together there was a cohesion to what they produced. I purposefully had people create in a group to encourage them to socialise, and become less precious about the results of the art making. I believe if you can loosen up during the art making process you get much better results. I also noticed people inspiring each other in the group, by observing how others used materials and encouraging each other to experiment and have fun. Each person brought a unique style and interest, and working together it created something special they could not have done on their own. 

4. Time in nature heals the soul

I’ve got to admit I knew this already, but I was surprised how energised each one of us felt after spending creative time in nature. Each person in the group found a spot they enjoyed drawing from, some were drawn to the tropical plants in the glasshouse, others the florals and there’s also historic architecture in Dunfermline Park. Lots of the workshop members commented on all the things they’d never noticed before in the park. It was just a case of getting still and looking to find inspiration in all shapes and forms. The velocity of contemporary life isn’t conducive to making space and time for a longer term, slower practice like art making, you do need to create the right conditions for an art practice and go looking for inspiration.

5. Originality sparked from new experiences

I loved seeing the completed artwork from the group art activities. They used a mix of felt tips, inks and acrylic pens, and each time something new and unique emerged. Giving the group some suggestions for inspiration on the day to explore different themes, such as negative space and silhouettes meant they were pushed slightly out of their comfort zone. I was encouraging everyone to observe what was around them in the park, as even in practising drawing we can go into auto-pilot and stop pushing our imagination. Bringing back these sketchbook drawings into the group art session and using them to inspire the larger group art piece created original artwork. 

A big thank you to Heritage Fund, who are sponsoring wellbeing sessions in Dunfermline, and have wide range activities: https://www.facebook.com/GoDunfermline/ 

Most importantly, I have to thank all the participants who have shown up, were willing to get stuck in and I’ve had a great experience watching what emerges from the artwork and the connections. Honestly, I was quite nervous hosting this series, as it was a new experience for me. But I’ve learned a lot, and the people who showed up really boosted my confidence in leading workshops. 

If you’re local to Dunfermline and are interested in joining Art in the Park Autumn sessions, register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/art-in-the-park-tickets-705373600427?aff=oddtdtcreator

Alternatively, my free online art workshops, Kick Start Art, you can join in from the comfort of your home: https://ruthegon.com/pages/kick-start-art