The art of living the question:
How to creatively respond to change and uncertainty
with Emer Wynne and Dr Louise Austin
July 9th 2024
6.00 pm until 8.30 pm (UK Time)
Fee: £25.00
‘Be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given to you because you have not been able to live them. …live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer.’ (Rainer Maria Rilke)
This taster workshop introduces our Living the Question approach – a collaborative reflective practice for researchers, creatives, leaders, academics, coaches, and clinicians who want to explore new ways of engaging with ‘not knowing’.
In this taster workshop we present our collaborative reflective practice approach and share how it can help people do their best thinking together. We believe that, as the world is changing with such speed and complexity – challenging conventional approaches – our response must be unconventional.
During the session you will experience our creative approach that blends image-making, poetry, and storytelling with rich dialogue. The aim of ‘Living the Question’ is to creatively respond to uncertainty and change through a process of imaginative reflection and collaborative dialogue. Rather than resorting to ingrained habits, fixed mindsets and unhelpful defences when navigating the unknown, we offer ways to access your intuitive wisdom, so you emerge with fresh insights, new perspectives, and empowering possibilities. ‘Living the Question’ is not so much a method, but a practice for creative living through engaging with your intuition, imagination, and the ultimate unknown – the unconscious – to transform your response to the complex world in which we live.
What you will learn:
· An overview of our Living the Question approach
· How to set clear intentions to elevate and sustain your energy
· How to create generative questions
· Creative and imaginative ways to access your intuitive wisdom
· The opportunity for dialogue and reflection with a diverse group
Who is it for:
· Anyone who is feeling stuck, blocked, lost or stale in their practice.
· Creatives, academics, and researchers who are working on or initiating a project.
· Leaders who are navigating change and complexity.
· Clinicians and coaches who want to reflect on their client work.
· Anyone seeking to change old habits and practice creative living.
Emer and Louise have collaborated for 30 years, bringing their distinctive and complementary skills together and, through a deeply collaborative and reflective process, have created the ‘Living the Question’ approach. Our mission is to learn, teach and practise creatively responding to change and uncertainty. If you are interested in being part of an ongoing collaborative reflective practice group, this taster workshop will be followed up by an online 5-week course later in the year.
Dr Louise Austin
I am a senior lecturer/course leader, group facilitator and researcher with a PhD in Psychoanalytic Studies and an MA in Integrative Arts Psychotherapy. I have over 30 years of experience in researching, designing, and delivering adult and professional development programmes within higher education, organisations, and the community. I am currently training group facilitator for the Association of Jungian Analysts and senior lecturer/former course leader at the Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education. I am also a guest lecturer/honorary fellow at the University of Essex, and a senior practitioner for Artgym an award-winning change consultancy. I have researched, designed, and led the first ever accredited one year diploma in Creative Collaboration, delivered in the UK and Shanghai. Stemming from my doctoral research, I have developed a new method for arts-based reflective practice and lead groups for clinicians, leaders, academics, coaches and researchers. I have a keen interest in exploring ways of utilising the unconscious in ways of knowing and meaning making.
Emer Wynne
A psychologist with an MSc in Change, I advise on the People and Organisational aspects of large scale, global business transformations in complex working environments. My organisational development discipline is enhanced by my commitment to my own leadership and personal development. I’m committed to honing my intuition and wisdom through Reiki (a Master Reiki practitioner); walking meditations; angel readings, journaling and working within the teachings of Time to Think. I regularly facilitate experiential strategic leadership development programmes at Windsor Leadership, a charity whose objective is to equip leaders to meet uncertainty with courage, resilience and insight. Here I work with groups in a collaborative reflective space to generate insights and new perspectives on complex leadership challenges. As a coach, and member of the Association for Coaching, I work with those who want to explore the value of setting and revisiting intentions as a way to move towards a desired place, retaining that elevated quality despite the pushes and pulls of life; leveraging the Thinking Environment to help clients access their intuition and ‘let their future in’.
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