Craft Rehab Reading List

During this past year, I’ve spoken with many colleagues in the creative arts who are in a shifting-sand relationship with their arts practices at this time.

Last year I was able to pilot a Craft Rehab six-week intervention online to support flow, address blocks to expression and welcoming new insights into personal arts practice and creative making.

I call it Craft Rehab, because whatever and however we make, it is truly never an outcome-led approach, but a process-rich experience, and that involves our whole selves to be in a safe space to create and express, regardless of creative outcomes; whatever that means for you, be it personal art journaling or products for sale, and the whole spectrum in between.

The reality is that as creative makers, we all need times of reassessment, rest and rehabilitation; rediscovering and inviting expressive strength back into our hands and out of our heads, via our hearts.

To provide some immediate support and access to creative wellbeing, I’ve compiled the reading list I recommended for the whole Craft Rehab programme, suggesting that you select a couple of titles that you feel drawn to and make a start there;

The Courage to Create by Rollo May

Imagination in Action by Shaun McNiff

Conscious Creativity: Look, Connect, Create by Philippa Stanton

On Seeing and Noticing by Alain De Botton

How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain De Botton

The Creative Wound by Mark Pierce

The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard

Poiesis by Stephen Levine

Trust The Process: An Artist’s Guide to Letting Go by Shaun McNiff

Process Not Perfection by Jaime Marich

Art & Fear by David Bayles

Craftfulness by Rosemary Davidson