creative practice is a punishment-free zone

this week’s episodeThis week, we get transgressive about academic and cultural institutions that have built an industry around workshops that are often discipline-and-rigor-focused zones of punishment. We also (tenderly) examine those internalized forms of creative punishment many of us encounter when we start working on a creative project, where imagined audiences watch over us, judging our creativity on its ability to produce a product rather than allowing it to be a process that has value in itself. What does it look like to inhabit a punishment-free creative process? Maybe there’s a clue in the symbiotic relationship between sea anemones and clownfish. Whether its listening to the feedback of our own bodies, or participating in collaborations that act as creative safe havens, we’re curious about how following our creative impulses might blaze the trail for a gentler, more playful and intuitive, kind of creative practice.linksThe Scrap Heap:* essay: creative process is a punishment-free zone: and you are a clownfish in a sea anemone* The Prompt Portal, our first video prompt for creative exploration!about the showAt the end of 2024, Jenn and Sarah decided to design the workshop we needed for our own creative growth. Together, we wanted to build a creative community centered around play and exploration. We called it Joyful Practice for Dark Times.As we continued to lead workshops, we tracked the ideas and values that guided our work and assembled a set of (ever-evolving) principles: the emergent philosophy of Joyful Practice. Those principles are the vertebrae of this podcast.Every week, we’ll discuss one Joyful Practice principle. We’ll start the discussion with a short essay on our newsletter The Scrap Heap, and on Fridays we’ll release an episode of the podcast, as well as a short video with an immersive prompt—we call it the Prompt Portal.We offer this podcast as an antidote to grind culture and digital imperialism. We hope it helps you to reclaim your time, your joy, your rage, and find refuge in creative practice. Thank you for joining us. Tell your friends, and visit us in the comments. Get full access to The Scrap Heap at scrapheap.substack.com/subscribe