In this retreat, you will be invited to enrich and expand your spiritual life by experiencing creative ways of seeing deeply and differently, inspired by approaches from artists and designers past and present.

These ideas will be explored through drawing and collage techniques, allowing time for personal reflection, and culminating in an experimental book-form.

“By default, we are a creative and innovative species” enthuses cognitive neuroscientist, Moshe Bar, but these “awesome capabilities” are squeezed out by “everyday mental junk”. This makes it difficult to take time to look carefully at the world around us and easy to miss the unexpected encounters, insights and connections that might enrich our lives and those of others.

Yet many great spiritual writers talk about paying attention and seeing as central to the spiritual life, and some consider it a form of prayer. Art, too, is essentially concerned with paying attention; as Sir Grayson Perry reminds us, the fundamental job of an artist is “to notice things”. Throughout history, this potential has been used in art as a means of exploring and expressing the spiritual, enabling us to see more deeply and engage differently with the world, others, and ourselves.

Through creative workshops with short introductory talks, this retreat will create space to explore a range of ways of seeing deeply and differently inspired by approaches from artists and designers past and present. Using various drawing and collage techniques, you will explore letterforms, perspective and framing devices, mark-making, and colour concepts which will then be made into an experimental book-form. There will also be time for personal reflection, and weather-permitting, one of the workshops will be held in Cathedral Close.

So, come along and explore your “awesome capabilities” in ways which can enrich and expand your spiritual life.

Financial support
Sources of funding are available for those on low incomes.
Grantmaking Trusts

About the retreat leader
Claire Reed is an artist, researcher, and creative mentor who works in a range of media using the interplay of word and image to explore issues of belief, belonging and identity.

Through her extensive career in the creative industries, she brings a multi-dimensional approach to her artwork, retreats and workshops which aim to appeal to a wide range of people from those who are curious and inexperienced, or maybe interested but apprehensive, or perhaps professional practitioners needing a refresh.

Claire is currently undertaking an art and inter-religious PhD at the University of Winchester-Sarum College.