Communal Art-Making can be Life-Giving!
For more than a decade, I have been offering my students and church leaders a vision. It’s really quite a simple vision: bring people together to make media art in the context of prayer and reflection.
The people in the image above epitomize that vision. They are a group of my fellow parishioners at St. Gertrude Church in Chicago who participated in a six-session adventure in doing and sharing photography together as a spiritual practice. What a joy that group was, and what a gift they were for each other!
Unfortunately, seldom do people have opportunities to share in this way. So many people are, as Sherry Turkle describes them, "alone together." Even though they may be in the same room, they may be separately using their personal devices to connect with others. How might we bring people together, to be really present to one another? How might the churches encourage people to re-connect face-to-face in genuine conversation, to build rich relationships that enrich their lives?
Invite and empower people to engage in communal art-making, to play in the Spirit together!
Paradoxically, people can use those very same digital media devices -- smartphones and tablets, as well as digital cameras -- in a way that potentially can bring them into deep conversation about what has touched them, about what matters in their lives, about the glimpses of grace they have encountered.
How? In small groups of 8 to 12 people they gather intentionally to make media art, individually or together. They learn and teach each other the art of their chosen medium. Over the course of weeks, they improve their media art-making skills. Around a table, participants week-by-week engage in spiritual reflection about their experience of making media art as a contemplative practice. They share their creations within their small groups. Over time, they find they grow in mindfulness and in their poetic capacity to "see" the world with new eyes.
They might eventually share their work more widely within the parish and beyond. The fruits of their creativity might serve as liturgical media art for their community's worship. Or it might provide a medium of meditation for a Bible study group, a parish website, a catechumenal group, or diverse faith formation gatherings.
In the ancient church people would bring their bread and wine, their olives and grapes, their alms, and their other offerings to church for the sake of worship and for those in need. Today’s People of God can learn to offer the Creator the fruits of their creative arts -- their photography, their video, their new media installations, their digital stories, and their other combinations of visual, multimedia, and performance arts.
Click on Prezi presentation for an overview of what communal art-making -- what I refer to as "Communal Co-Creation" -- might involve. In this example, you will see how a small group might do photography as a spiritual practice. Also, see the website I created for a mini-course on Photography as a Spiritual Practice.
The people in the image above epitomize that vision. They are a group of my fellow parishioners at St. Gertrude Church in Chicago who participated in a six-session adventure in doing and sharing photography together as a spiritual practice. What a joy that group was, and what a gift they were for each other!
Unfortunately, seldom do people have opportunities to share in this way. So many people are, as Sherry Turkle describes them, "alone together." Even though they may be in the same room, they may be separately using their personal devices to connect with others. How might we bring people together, to be really present to one another? How might the churches encourage people to re-connect face-to-face in genuine conversation, to build rich relationships that enrich their lives?
Invite and empower people to engage in communal art-making, to play in the Spirit together!
Paradoxically, people can use those very same digital media devices -- smartphones and tablets, as well as digital cameras -- in a way that potentially can bring them into deep conversation about what has touched them, about what matters in their lives, about the glimpses of grace they have encountered.
How? In small groups of 8 to 12 people they gather intentionally to make media art, individually or together. They learn and teach each other the art of their chosen medium. Over the course of weeks, they improve their media art-making skills. Around a table, participants week-by-week engage in spiritual reflection about their experience of making media art as a contemplative practice. They share their creations within their small groups. Over time, they find they grow in mindfulness and in their poetic capacity to "see" the world with new eyes.
They might eventually share their work more widely within the parish and beyond. The fruits of their creativity might serve as liturgical media art for their community's worship. Or it might provide a medium of meditation for a Bible study group, a parish website, a catechumenal group, or diverse faith formation gatherings.
In the ancient church people would bring their bread and wine, their olives and grapes, their alms, and their other offerings to church for the sake of worship and for those in need. Today’s People of God can learn to offer the Creator the fruits of their creative arts -- their photography, their video, their new media installations, their digital stories, and their other combinations of visual, multimedia, and performance arts.
Click on Prezi presentation for an overview of what communal art-making -- what I refer to as "Communal Co-Creation" -- might involve. In this example, you will see how a small group might do photography as a spiritual practice. Also, see the website I created for a mini-course on Photography as a Spiritual Practice.
Communal Co-Creation of liturgical media art -- Through a highly inclusive process that I teach to my graduate students and to church leaders and members, people of all ages can contribute to the development of a new form of liturgical art -- liturgical media art -- and participate in a new form of liturgical ministry. My two books provide the foundational thinking and theology underpinning this group spiritual practice.
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Communal Co-Creation of digital media arts for faith formation -- Small groups can engage in communal art-making for purposes other than worship and in other faith formation contexts. They can use this fundamental process of art-making and theological reflection as the process for a short-term project or as an on-going model for diverse people to create media arts together.
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To learn more about Communal Co-Creation in different contexts for different purposes, click on the tabs below "Communal Art-Making."