Creative Mornings: Working at Being Playful

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Creative inspiration is not often taught. There is this collective idea that the muse visits you. You get lucky. You may be able to work at the technical aspects of a discipline, but you must simply hope for those invisible “skills” of expression. But what if playfulness— the sort of FREEDOM necessary to having a strong and unique voice in any art—isn’t some magic or special talent only the unique few are born with but something that can be worked at? What if you can use a structured approach to becoming unstructured? In this talk, Liz will explain her own wrestlings with these questions, and how ultimately she realized that her own desire to be good and notions of talent were holding her back in her creative work. And she will talk of her ongoing systematic approach to getting more FREE and thus creating richer and more surprising work across domains.

Liz Melchor runs Curious Monkey, an associação cultural dedicated to playful and communal engagement in the arts, and Storytelling Lisboa, where she and others share personal stories monthly on stage. A lifelong obsession with the creative process has driven her wide interests. Currently, her focus is drawing monkeys… Previously, she spent a lot of time writing both creatively and as a journalist, publishing in The Washington Post, Marie Claire, The Guardian, and New York Magazine’s The Cut among others. She is also a National Geographic photographer—it was only one picture of a pizza and is in one of their kids’ books, but it still counts, right?! She is from San Francisco, California and has graduate degrees in psychology and writing.