Home Short Courses Seeing Deeply and Differently: A Creative and Spiritual Retreat

Seeing Deeply and Differently: A Creative and Spiritual Retreat course

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.

Book Event

Residential retreat #2599 £320

Residential retreat. Begins with evening meal Friday and ends after lunch Sunday. Price includes ensuite B&B as well as all meals and refreshments.

Available Tickets: 4

The Residential retreat #2599 ticket is sold out. You can try another ticket or another date.

In person ticket #2599 £210

Non-residential option for this retreat, which begins with evening meal Friday and ends after lunch Sunday. Price includes two evening meals, two lunches and refreshments.

Available Tickets: 4

The In person ticket #2599 ticket is sold out. You can try another ticket or another date.

Details

Dates & Times

06 - 08 Jun 2025

Begins Friday evening 6pm, ends at 2pm Sunday

Course code

2599

Other Notes

This is a residential retreat held at Sarum College. There is a non-residential option.

Book this course

What our students say

Stimulating and Challenging

What is Successful Ageing? led by James Woodward

I enjoyed the course immensely from beginning to end – the seamless interweaving of knowledge, ideas and research and the linking with belief and faith.

The content was stimulating, challenging, thought provoking and I was greatly appreciative of the contributions and questions from other participants, your considered and sensitive responses and integration with your presentations.

Thank you!

Netflix, Theology and Pastoral Practice

Peter Butchers on his MA in Theology, Imagination and Culture student experience

How do cultural tropes, like those found in Black Mirror, help bridge the gap between what academic theology espouses and what the everyday Christian believes? In his research as a student on the MA in Theology, Imagination and Culture, Peter Butchers explored platonic philosophy, digital theology and eschatology, and pastoral practice around death and dying.

Rewarding Sabbatical Stay

The Revd Greg Syler, is Rector of Ascension & St. George’s, Resurrection Parish in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, DC USA, spent part of his ministry sabbatical at Sarum College in spring 2022.

His account of the experience begins: ‘I loved spending nearly three weeks of my ministry sabbatical at Sarum College earlier this year.

Not only did I rest, and rest well in the comfortable care of the Sarum College staff, I experienced very significant renewal and fresh insights.’

The Road Not Taken

Sarum Graduate Mike Truman

January 2022

Five years ago, I told my Warden of Readers that I would not be renewing my licence when it expired in 2019, as I thought my faith was becoming too unorthodox for a Church of England licensed lay minister. As someone who knew me well, she challenged me to actively explore what I did still believe. Thus started the journey that ended last August with the dissertation completing my MA in Theology Imagination and Culture (MATIC) at Sarum College.

Clergy Study Breaks

The opportunity for clergy to get away occasionally from their own context, to have an overnight stay in the beautiful setting of Sarum College and all that the Salisbury Cathedral Close offers is hugely valuable. All the clergy I have suggested who have spent 24hrs at Sarum College have benefit greatly from the experienced mentoring where they can talk, reflect, think, plan and pray.

The support and encouragement they receive is excellent and has a positive on their on going ministry. This is something the Diocese of Rochester encourages and supports financially in preparation for their clergy preparing for Extended Ministerial Development Leave (Sabbatical).

— Canon Christopher Dench, Diocese of Rochester Director of Formation and Ministry

Retreats and Private Stays

When I arrived, exhausted and sensitive, I was grateful not to be asked by Reception were I came from, whether I had had a good journey etc. That was the kind of hospitality I needed: a non-intrusive welcome that was found in ancient cultures and still survives in some societies today, where the host asks questions about a stranger and his journey only when the visitor has rested and been given food and drink.

— guest on a private stay

Seeing Deeply and Differently: A Creative and Spiritual Retreat