Widening Field

This is a handbook for working in the creative arts, with an emphasis on imagination and receptivity: to our bodies, surroundings, materials, and to what we create. It puts particular emphasis upon the sensing, feeling, moving body as a basis for any imaginative activity. It describes sources and strategies for working in and between various forms of expression, including: moving, making things with materials and writing. It stresses the importance of intuitive, instinctive ways of knowing, perceiving and creating. It is a useful resource for anyone studying or teaching in the arts, or working creatively with others: therapeutically, educationally, or in a community context. It is written to inspire rather than to instruct, to be used in small amounts to stimulate a working process, rather than to be read through from cover to cover. The authors' previous book, 'Body Space Image', was about improvised movement, experimental performance and creating performance settings. This book turns to the question of imagination in our lives and how this is awakened and nourished through attention to the present, feeling world of the body and to whatever appears as we make. In this way we enter into the poetics of our experience.