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Writers Workshop in Florence, Italy offered by supplier M14423 (read about supplier) Key Information: Class Size: 12 - 30 people Destination: Italy   Category: Writers Workshops Specialty: Autobiography/memoir, Journalism, Travel   Season: July Courses Per Year: 1 Course Level: All levels Min Price: 1400 US Dollar (USD) per person Max Price: 2350 US Dollar (USD) per person

M14423 was established in 1993 by Shelley Berc and Alejandro Fogel who have developed a unique and eclectic methodology to help individuals believe in and develop their creative process through using creative writing, art, memoir, storytelling, drama, journaling and map making exercises intended to become the tools for a lifetime. People from all different disciplines, interests and levels of experience, come together to explore their imaginations. The M14423 is dedicated to teaching people about their creativity and how to use it in all aspects of life, work, and creative expression.

In a non-competitive, nurturing atmosphere, the M14423 course helps participants develop creative skills, expanded sense perception, concept innovation and problem solving, increased inspiration and brainstorming, and new ways of looking at life as exciting and transformative. Our creativity workshops in New York City and our summer creativity workshops in Europe are a perfect retreat for teachers, business people, writers, scientists, artists and anyone curious about the creative process.

Tour Itinerary:

Florence – city of Renaissance splendor. Home of Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and Botticelli. Florence is also the setting of Bruneleschi’s Duomo which revolutionized architecture and the Uffizi Gallery which contains masterpieces of Renaissance masters and is the legacy of the Medici family.

Each day the M14423 in Florence will meet for 3 1/2 hours. We will explore ways to expand our creativity through a series of exercises including guided visualization technique, automatic drawing and writing, map making, memoir, and storytelling. Throughout the workshop, the
exercises and talks by the instructors will focus on ways to:
- Believe in your creativity
- Stimulate your perceptive abilities
- Find inspiration in the world around you
- Discover and use images from the unconscious
- Get over creative blocks and the fear of failure
- Engage your curiosity
- Recognize and use your creative instincts
- Give yourself the time, permission, and nourishment to do creative work
- Develop a daily practice to accomplish these goals
- Work collaboratively
- Use your memories to engage the imagination.

Notes: Order and kinds of exercises and instructors' talks may vary. Some exercises are done individually while others are collaborative.

Tour Itinerary:

We will meet 3 1/2 hours per day.

Day 1, Arrival. Free day. Time for you to settle in and relax.

Day 2, Wednesday, July 25: First day of workshop. Introduction to the hows and whys of the M14423. Exercises in relaxation technique and guided visualization. Visualization: writing and drawing using the myth of the hero’s journey as our framework. Automatic Drawing exercise: Finding our hidden imagery. Exercise in ‘show and tell’ as a means of honing our natural storytelling styles and retrieving childhood memories to spark ideas. Instructor talks about famous writers, scientists, artists and their sources of inspiration, and how we can use some of those same sources.

Day 3, Thursday, July 26: Relaxation exercise followed by a visualization using map making. Map making as a way to find, chart, and tell fictional stories and true life experiences. Exercise in Automatic Writing. How automatic writing allows you to brainstorm and create in new and surprising ways. How we can use automatic writing to get over creative blocks and discover new ways of developing and editing work, while avoiding self-censorship. Why alternating between writing and drawing aids us in developing creative flexibility. The Interview: Listening and experiencing a life outside our own. How listening is as important as doing in creative work.

Day 4, Friday, July 27: Today's visualization exercise uses letter writing as a way to explore voice in writing. Miniature Theatre: an exercise in storytelling with found objects. Automatic Writing continues with Writing in Groups. How writing and/or drawing with others can stimulate our imaginations and expand our points of view. Topics of instructors' talks may include: the importance of play and the need to value the creative process over product. Enforced Cafe-Sitting: the art of relaxed observation. How to carve out time for creativity in a busy schedule. How to do on-going creative work in a short modules of time? How we can use luck and coincidence to jump start creative projects. Creative freedom requires discipline: Developing daily practice.

Day 5, Saturday, July 28: Today's visualization is The Myth of the Other: imagining ourselves living a parallel life. The imagination's magic phrase: What If. The Graphic Novel: Hw a team can recognize and use their creative instincts together. Doors and Windows: exploring how to focus on the details of your environment using photography, writing and drawing. Importance of detail in making creative work come alive. Finding inspiration in the world around us. Topics of instructors talks may include: honoring our innate creativity; how to rekindle fearless imagination.

Day 8, Sunday, July 29: Visualization exercise using maps and legends to tell our stories. Automatic drawing and writing exercises continue. How to be our own trickster and transform ourselves and our creative ventures. Exercise using postcards. Cafe exercise: Writing, drawing or photography to search for characters. Exercise in stimulating our perceptive abilities and discover and use images from the unconscious. The Lesson of the Sand mandala: How process can also be product.

Instructor talk: How to get over creative blocks and the fear of failure. Making our home and work environments inspiring for the imagination. Life after the Workshop: Ways to keep using these techniques to keep our imaginations alive and flourishing. How to give yourselves the daily time, permission and nourishment to do creative work.

Note: There are no classes on the final day of the workshop. This day is free for participants to put to active use the various techniques learned in the workshop and to explore the cultural, historical and natural riches of each location and its people. It is suggested you make your sightseeing plans during your stay and not before you come to allow for flexibility in your itinerary. Most excursions are available with very little time in advance. Excursions are not included.

Day 9, Free Day: Monday, July 30: Trip to Tuscan hill towns, including San Gimignano and Cortona. Trip to Siena or Fiesole.

Day 10, Tuesday, July 31: Departure.

Faculty Information:
The M14423 is based in New York City and is taught around the world. It was established in 1993 by writer Shelley Berc and multimedia artist Alejandro Fogel to provide an alternative to traditional forms of education and thinking. The organization is dedicated to teaching individuals and groups about their creative processes.

- Shelley Berc is a novelist and playwright. Her awards include two year Pew/TCG National Theater Artists Residency grant for 100,000 USD, two Lila Wallace/Readers Digest awards, a TCG Artists Residency travel grant, McKnight Fellowship, National Jewish Culture Play writing award, Rockefeller/Bellagio Fellowship, NEA Opera/Music librettist fellowship, and an Outer Critics Circle nomination for best off-Broadway play. Her plays and dance texts have been performed in such venues as the American Repertory Theatre, Yale Rep, CSC, Portland Stage, Walker Arts Center, Tanglewood, Festival d'Avignon and the Edinburgh Festival.

Her plays include a Girls Guide to the Divine Comedy, Dual Heads, Burn Out, Shooting Shiva, and to Dance the Memory of Angels. Rameau's Nephew, based on Diderot's work, was jointly written with director Andrei Belgrader and performed in 1990 at CSC Rep which also premiered their version of Scapin starring Stanley Tucci. It was nominated for best play of the year in 1990 by the Outer Critics Circle Award. The American Repertory Theater produced her adaptations of Lulu,The Imaginary Invalid, and Servant of Two Masters and commissioned her to write a radical new musical, Ubu Rock based on Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi.

Berc’s novel, the Shape of Wilderness, was published by Coffee House Press in 1995. The New York Times called it "a vividly imagined parable, a strange and potent book, a fantastical world of unusual sensuality and invention". She has a new novella Dante/a Girl's Own Guide to the Divine Comedy which is serialized in Exquisite Corpse, a journal edited by Andrei Codrescu.

Berc also has her own regular column at the Corpse, Postcards from Shelley, which is an ongoing account of her travels all over the world. Her plays and essays have been published by Performing Arts Journal, Johns Hopkins Press, TCG Press, Yale Theater Magazine. Her fiction and poetry have also been published in BOMB, LitKit, among other publications and presses. Berc was Professor of the International Writing Program and the Iowa Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa from 1985-2000.

Alejandro Fogel is a multimedia artist working in painting, writing, installations, video, travel-performance, and digital art. He has exhibited his work in galleries and museums in Argentina, Bulgaria, Cuba, France, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, United States and Germany. Since he had his first experience of the Andes, Mr. Fogel became deeply involved with the history and art of Pre-Columbian cultures and subsequently the roots of individuals in culture and the legacy of heritage. Since 1995 he has been creating art works that follow the footsteps of his father's journey from a Hassidic youth in Transylvania through the years of the Holocaust in labor camps and in hiding and his subsequent emigration to Argentina where Fogel was born.

- Alejandro Fogel has received many awards and honors. He was a Fellow and a 2 year artist-in-residence of the Institute of Current World Affairs. He was an artist in residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy. He was selected by The Rolex Award for Enterprise in Geneva, Switzerland, which included the publication of his project The Inkas Road. His awards are numerous; they include, the Arche Biennal Award in Painting, the National Endowment for the Arts of Argentina First Prize in Painting, The Pio Collivadino Award at the Argentine National Gallery of Art, and the Richard Wagner International Association Award in Painting.

Alejandro Fogel worked with the Argentine Commission of Visual Arts helping to develop a native folk artists archive. He also established and taught a series of visual arts workshops for indigenous cultures living in remote areas of the Andes and Patagonia. Alejandro Fogel's works are in museums and public and private collections in Argentina, United States, France, Brazil, Uruguay, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia and Canada.

Other Activities:
- Trip to Tuscan hill towns, including San Gimignano and Cortona
- Trip to Siena or Fiesole.

Facility Information:
Meeting room at Hotel Anglo American, Florence, Italy.

Notes:
Prices:
- Tuition only: 1400
- Standard sharing: 2100 USD
- Standard private: 2300 USD.

Also see Vacation Schools in:
Writers Workshops   Europe   Italy  

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