ART MATTERS
CREATION AS INITIATION – YEAR LONG ARTS MENTORSHIP WITH ALICE NIGHT
Art matters is a uniquely intimate experience of creative liberation. The bonds that form between participants are a hallmark of this course space.
The cohort is deliberately kept small to ensure that all voices are heard as often as possible. So much wisdom is shared through cross-pollination as students share their art, their processes and where they’re at in their intimate lives.
What happens over a year together is that we get to watch each other evolve and change. We are together long enough to intimately identify our own and each other’s struggles and to witness genuine transformation take place over weeks, and months.
Art Matters is a life-changing experience if you let it be. It’s a portal in which we deeply choose to be the artists we know we are.
The structure is set up to be a weekly pulse point to choose art making again and again. This is the heart-beat that will guide you in your year as you a) create a body of work b) share it with the world c) experience the personal growth inherent in this commitment.
Your whole self is welcome in this container, the parts of you that have been in the closet, the parts you may have lost touch with entirely, laughter, tears, boldness, subtlety, and everything in between.
This is a space to admit the truth of your life, who you know yourself to be at the level of soul, spirit, and what you’re here to be. In Art Matters we practice and embody the deep art of honesty and freedom, as human beings and as artists.
Manifesto
To live a life activated, deepened and softened by creativity.
Art is a place to recall and work with your creative instincts.
Art is a hearth to enter and grow as an artist and as a human being. The courses, art and books offered by ANSoA inspire deep living, deep feeling, connection and transformation through art making. To be human is to be creative. We welcome all art forms and emerging forms.
Art is one big permission slip for creative exploration for all people. What you write, sing or make is up to you and your spirit.
We work with principles of aliveness, honesty, alchemy, intimacy and courageous creativity.
Art is a pathway to creative rehabilitation. You don’t have to be ‘good’ in fact, we remove that word from our vocabulary. We invite much more beautiful words and questions into our inquiries for creation.
Here we celebrate realness, beauty, depth and freedom, whilst also seeing that initiation is likely to include some stripping away of old ideas, grudges and assumptions too.
I see art as part of life rather than reflections on life. In this way creation as initiation is the guiding principle. Art is a vehicle for positive change, catharsis, healing and visioning.
Part of my mission is to restore what has been deliberately stolen from people: confidence, singing, sounding, play, sovereign artistry, spirited creativity and the knowledge that you are more than enough.
Art is a pathway to imagination, expression, emotional honesty and connection. I see that all human beings can choose to live creative, expressive lives and that this serves the individual, the community and culture.
Together we explore:
– poetic intimacy – singing and sounding – confidence – creative initiations – willingness to be weird – wildness – meeting your edge – authentic expression – making beauty – the alchemical potential of art – the art of vulnerability – embodying your voice – honing creative instinct – creative devotion – visions – dreams – storytelling – approaches to performance – possibilities in art and life