A space where ideas can be translated into creative art.

I’m an Australian writer who had writer’s block while I was doing my PhD in creative arts, and I was flailing around so wildly that I turned to neuroscience for help. Later I turned this crisis and the results of my research into book, The Cleaning Lady’s Secret: A Writer Looks at Creativity and Neuroscience. Since then, I have continued to research neuroscience to see what it has to say about enhancing creativity.

Little did I think that my passion would lead to the creation of an international “creative bar”.

I began using my research to teach creative writing, which is traditionally taught without any neuroscience at all, first at the University of Sydney, then at the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art at the invitation of the school’s director, Stephen Sewell, a playwright himself. , who realized that neuroscience gives us a useful way to think about creativity. When a group of neuroscientists spent a year studying the effectiveness of our course using a battery of 22 objective before-and-after tests and a subjective test, I was delighted, and even more so with the result. Our teaching turned out to be improved flexibility of students’ ideas by 34 percent and their originality by 65 percent.

I did not imagine that I would teach anyone other than writers, but as a result of this research, Kim Kunio, who headed the School of Music in Australian National Universitysuggested that I teach my composers to be more creative. I was reluctant at first, but I have long recognized that despite the differences in our results, we practitioners, regardless of our disciplines, use a common language when we talk about the work of daily creativity.

So, for three exciting years I taught composers. It was Covidso the lessons were on Zoom, but the students were often too musiciansinvariably subsequently wrote enthusiastic reports that for me confirmed the results of the study. Kunio said: “Composers are so fragile when they acquire their skills that often the most difficult task is keeping the inner songbird alive as it grows – this project was an important part of that process.”

The composers were eager to share what the creative process was like for them, which resonated with my practice, so I felt like I had found my tribe with them. To keep in touch with them, I decided to create a “creativity bar”, so called because by that time they were often playing concerts in bars, and I set it up once a month. As musicians became busier, I began inviting poets, novelists, artists, directors, and screenwriters whom I came across in the course of my research.

I knew from the beginning that we wouldn’t talk about ideas that would emerge in subsequent work, because when they are very recently formed, they are vague and often just felt. Artists understand that if they are put into words too soon, they will disappear. For many of us, ideas only become apparent at the end. The work must grow in the artist in its time.

Instead, we are talking about the sensory experience of associative thinking, so different from linear, logical, analytical – in Heidegger’s word, “calculative” – ​​thinking. We examine the insistence of associative thinking in stopping all other modes of thinking, so that it evaporates if this rule is broken; his dependence on meditation, that is, often starting out not knowing anything, but simply feeling knowledge (like Kenneth Bowers et al. wrote); his unexpected leaps; the uninvited emotions it evokes; this is a combination of seemingly unrelated, often absurd things; it conjures up stunningly realistic images and even voices. After all, it occurs in a completely different brain network than analytical thinking, which, based on experience, seems to have a different modality.

As the streak of creativity continues, I, as a practitioner, have discovered what a joy and relief it is to share the common experiences of this strange thinking – for example, when work seems dull and boring and the most outlandish thing we have ever attempted, and yet we feel a strange need to stay with it. I’ve learned that this compulsion is always a sign that the work is articulating something important to us and perhaps will ultimately resonate with others. At this point, we all agree, it’s tempting to give up, but then there’s a rush of relief when the work suddenly comes alive and starts responding. These conversations about the process bring the same relief that anyone can feel when groaning and cheering with colleagues over Friday night drinks.

Visual artist Patricia Townsend said: “I was wondering if the findings of my research with visual artists also applies to poets, novelists, composers and representatives of other art forms. Then Sue Wolf contacted me and I had the opportunity to find out. The creativity panel provided a precious space for me to meet creative people from other disciplines and to share the highs and lows of what it’s like to be in the throes of creating new work.”

Since the key to the bar is that everyone is often in the early stages of the work, I knew these revelations needed to be protected, so I decided not to invite critics or academic observers, no matter how well-intentioned. Everyone had to be equally vulnerable.

When I book an artist, I ensure that they agree that what we talk about is never shared. For this reason I do not record sessions, although I recently broke this practice when I invited Portuguese potter and PhD candidate Paulo Thiago Sebec to speak with us and he needed a recording of a session for his candidacy. I received so many apologies from the group that I offered to share the post, but gave everyone 24 hours notice so they could object.

I always propose topics that in practice can deviate anywhere; often I invite an exhibitor who has just opened an exhibition, published a book, or written a piece to talk about what it’s like to have an “audience”—that old-fashioned word we find so useful—and sometimes I invite a speaker.

Composer Wendy Suiter said of the bar: “I want others to be deeply interested in my own ideas, gained from years of work in the abstract, intangible medium of music, and the joy of having our stumbling words taken seriously by other practicing artists when we struggle to find being able to put such inner processes and feelings into words, while candidly sharing our thoughts, creative struggles and processes, and sometimes our products, is a very valuable experience.”

As research continues to inform our discussions, I am using the University of Sydney’s Zoom site. The creativity scale is now halfway through its third year and seems stronger than ever. Every year I check to see if the artists want to continue, and every year they do.

Does talking about doing our jobs improve the final job? Not directly, but when a work of art seems artless, fellow artists know that behind it lies not only years of study in their discipline (the average is 10 years, but I would say a lifetime), but also the acquisition of the skills required by associative thinking . thinking and patiently putting them into practice, never losing heart. I’d like to think that the bar will help us achieve stubbornness.

It was only recently that I realized the truth of one artist’s words: Where else in the world is there another place where we practitioners can share our problems without judgment or embarrassment? And if this is true – why?

Sue Wolf is an Honorary Research Fellow in English Language and Writing at the University of Sydney. She is the author of five works of fiction, including Leaning towards infinity (Ligature E-Books), which in its first year of publication won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and the Commonwealth Prize for the Pacific, and was runner-up in awards such as the Commonwealth Prize and the US Tiptree Prize for Speculative Fiction.

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