Creative Zoom: Who Holds The Torch

 December 2. Zoom. ECHO artists.

To further develop creative ideas we embarked on a creative inspiration exercise. This maybe would have worked better in person, as opposed to over zoom, but was still helpful in expanding the horizon of possibilities for pieces.

Claire led an introspective mental sojourn down different memories relating to the Who Holds The Torch and Light in the Darkness themes. I found myself thinking of my mother, but the useful part of the exercise was that we were encouraged not to narrow things down to identifying one sole light, but instead focussing on the 'light' qualities of those people in our lives who hold the torch. Then, still with our eyes closed, we continued to do collective recalls of the words and feelings that were coming to us, all at random. This was actually very effective in building a patchwork of inspiration for creative practice, and helped to try and find the universal qualities that everyone can relate to in a very individual way - almost paradoxically!

My own mental meditations were somewhat compromised as I was ever worried about the imminent meetings for uni I had to attend, but the value of the exercise was still clear.

Skimstone is a very collaborative organisation, so it was useful to bounce ideas around and develop on other people's ideas. I developed on Magpie's ideas for example, where he talked about his background growing up, and the importance of kind figures outside of the family to help.

We had all already prepared some research into emotive stories from the Holocaust, and other genocides, and we also looked into how we could apply this to this theme as well. The more important thing though, I felt, was that we were coming up with creative responses - instead of source-based history!