On the 9th of November I taught my first ever Creative Workshop for 24 lovely ladies!
Beautiful women from a variety of places, all with different stories (and in my opinion - ALL meant to be there that day). I teamed up with the RED Collective (@redcollectiveco), to create the most beautiful and unique workshop, which you can read more about below. Thanks to the RED Collective for writing up the magic of the day into a blog...
A warm hug, beautiful space and delicious treats greeted each woman as they walked in the door. With lots of beautiful women working behind the scenes to make this workshop memorable. A huge thank you to Lauren (@thefaithfulflorist) for generously bringing her art to the workshop and filling the space with amazing floral arrangements, Sally (@healthynourishedtreats) for delicious treats, Rochelle (@villalane) for sharing your bespoke wall hangings with us and special thanks to Kristan and Cheryelle (@muskhairco) for making us feel extra special and doing our hair the morning of the workshop - what a way to start such a beautiful day! Women supporting women - our favourite way of doing life.
The RED Collective is based on an acronym. RED stands for Rest, Express and Delight. Part of the RED Collectives heart is that the women who come to our creative workshops have moments to REST without distraction, EXPRESS themselves and DELIGHT in what lights them up! We started our workshop with a moment of mindfulness. We know how easy it is for our minds to wander into worry and places elsewhere, so we reminded our ladies that they didn’t need to be anywhere except for right here, in this moment, for a few hours 100% responsibility free!
Next up was the expression part. Hannah was our creative teacher and guide and led us on the most brilliant journey. She shared her heart with us, why she started working with clay, why she loves it and gave us all such beautiful insight into her soulful creative journey. During the clay workshop the ladies were taught two clay hand building methods. I won’t go into all the fun things we learnt but here’s a good little snapshot of the two techniques.
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PINCH TECHNIQUE: Initially inspired by Hans pinch bowls, we rolled our portion of clay into a ball and then proceeded to use our fingers and thumbs to pinch outwards creating a curved vessel shape. Even though we all started with the same lump of clay and used the same technique - our pinch pots all looked completely different (which I loved).
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COILING TECHNIQUE: This method taught us how rolling long rolls (or coils) out of clay, then placing them on top of each other could create different shaped vessels. We created coil planters, perfect size pot for a house plant.
We had moments of calm, pinching and smoothing mindfully and also moments of LOUD whacking and slapping our big clay lumps (this was both scary and hilarious haha).
This workshop had a unique messages that we hoped would shine through in our words, in our actions and ultimately reflect in our lives. This special note was handwritten by me, Brooke (@brookeartstudio), which said “There is beauty in the imperfections - may we have eyes to see the beauty in all”. In the lead up to this workshop Han and I had spoken a lot about how perfectionism can be so counter productive to creativity and authentic expression. We realised that our journeys had taught us to accept and embrace all parts of life - including the imperfections, and by embracing those less than perfect aspects of ourselves and life we were actually way more empowered to live a life not controlled by fear.
That was our heart for the women who came to our Clay Workshop, that they would have a moment to practice enjoying the journey - even if imperfections pop up along the way, that they would have a moment to Rest, a moment to explore Expression in a new creative way, and that they would have a moment to Delight in their senses - tasting delicious treats, seeing beautiful spaces, feeling the clay as something artful emerged, listening to other women and chill tunes.
To all the women who came, we treasure you and are so thankful that you would invest in this experience, invest in yourself and say yes to growing your creativity in a safe space with Hannah and the RED Collective.