Make it Up!: Spontaneity and Creativity

Make it Up!: Spontaneity and Creativity” is an interdisciplinary creative workshop that highlights practices of improvisation across creative disciplines to help students engage their imaginations in diverse and dynamic ways. Sessions would showcase different case studies of improvisation across artistic forms (i.e., Dadaism in visual art, Devised Theater/Improv, Cut-up/Exquisite Corpse poetry, musical improvisation, etc.), and include exercises that help students to apply the concepts in real time. Exploring this topic will allow students to engage their creativity in a low-stakes, imaginative way. The workshop culminates with each student developing a project that includes a form of improvisation highlighted in one of the case studies that will be shared in a showcase at the end of the workshop.

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Learning Goals:

Public speaking
Topical expertise
Executive function skills
Project management & execution
Writing & communication

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Final Deliverable: The deliverable of this workshop will be an original work of art that incorporates improvisation based on a technique highlighted during that workshop. Examples include a visual art piece that incorporates Dadaist methods, a cut-ups style collaborative poem, a script for a devised performance, etc. Individual works will be developed throughout the latter half of the workshop, and students will have the option to share these during the workshop’s final session. In order to facilitate each student’s development, there will be synchronous mentor feedback and asynchronous materials (i.e., simplified summaries of forms of improvisation) based on each workshop session that students can use to help realize their projects.