On the 9th and 10th of July Jackie Wills (poet) and I experimented with our first workshops on the Farm. We have been collaborating on our own work and in workshops with Fabrica Gallery <www.fabrica.org.uk> for some time now and felt that we had got to the point of wanting to initiate more of our own experiments. We have found that there are many similarities in the ways that we approach our work as well as similarities in the knotty problems in creating new work. We have now begun designing workshops that look at ways that writing can facilitate the drawing process, in how you observe, expand ideas and appraise. We found that the participants used the simple structures we set out in interesting ways using text in the drawings, under the drawings, and as notation, the atmosphere was trance like in the concentration. We looked at the editing process a writer uses when working with raw material and found it gave insights into how to get past 'the frontier' as Jackie put it, the point when a drawing appears to have ended it's journey but infact is often still only at the beginning.

We are now planning an autumn programme of drawing/writing events using the landscape, the human body and what we are tentatively calling 'The many rooms' ideas generator or mental purge workshop for those that feel the need for a shake up in their work.

Now that we have begun we will keep posting information on the workshops on this site. If you are interested in joining in please email me jfordham@creative-process.com and I'll keep you informed of the programme. Jane Fordham