Michelle's Profile

Nature Shows us How to Create: Generative Questions to Engage the Process

Nature shows us how the creative process works...with the right conditions and nurturing our seed ideas and impulses can bear juicy fruit. Now more than ever, we need to seed life-giving ideas - not fear-based ones - for a more... Continue reading

Posted May 27, 2020 at The Fertile Unknown

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Whole-Brain Creative Practice: Abstract to Concrete

Abstract to concrete. This is a painting I did on a large mirror a few years ago. The focus was goals for the new year. I first painted the painting (abstract “right brain”) then starting writing out the goals (concrete... Continue reading

Posted May 24, 2020 at The Fertile Unknown

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Creative Cultivation: Authentic Language in Business Offerings

Business buzz words can inhibit the creative process. Getting under the word into story and meaning liberates it. This came up again this morning in a coaching session around marketing with one of my prolific clients who is a coach... Continue reading

Posted May 19, 2020 at The Fertile Unknown

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Creativity: Being Present to the Moment

Posted Apr 29, 2020 at The Fertile Unknown

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Thoughts on Creating What's Next while in the Unknown

I run a group on Facebook Applied Creativity Network (open to anyone if you'd like to join) where someone asked, "What's next? How is the world going to be with this coronavirus? How are the remaining people going to relate... Continue reading

Posted Apr 22, 2020 at The Fertile Unknown

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Considerations for a World Disrupted: Engaging Your Creative Self

I hope you are staying safe, and taking the precautions you need for yourselves, your families, and your community to stay safe, healthy, and functioning. We're all in an unprecedented unknown together - a high-stakes global improv scene. People are... Continue reading

Posted Mar 26, 2020 at The Fertile Unknown

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Creating Generative Work in a Chaotic World: Doing What's Ours to Do to Move from Helplessness to Helpfulness

Picture from last Sunday's hike at Bearfence Rock Scramble in the Blue Ridge Mountains Trying to take on the healing of the world is a daunting task, which can leave people feeling hopeless. Focusing instead on on what’s ours to... Continue reading

Posted Mar 3, 2020 at The Fertile Unknown

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Taking Back our Creative Power

Taking back our creative power starts with owning the choices we make…not waiting for other people’s choices or situations to give us permission to move forward…and not using other people or situations as an excuse to not follow our own... Continue reading

Posted Feb 18, 2020 at The Fertile Unknown

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Story-hopping: Meaning Making is a Creative Act

Making meaning is a creative act. It takes us out of the static, binary thinking of good-bad/right-wrong/pass-fail and brings us into an upward dynamic growth spiral of more possibilities. It allows us to break old patterns and create new ones.... Continue reading

Posted Feb 1, 2020 at The Fertile Unknown

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Staying True to What's Yours to Do

Posted Jan 29, 2020 at The Fertile Unknown

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Facilitating Creative Process: Preparing Yourself before the Workshop

Athletes warm up.Improv/theater/dance/performance groups warm up. Warm-ups clear your head and get you out of habitual thinking, bring you into the present - where you can access more novel thinking, be more responcive and adaptive, and get people more genuinely... Continue reading

Posted Jan 16, 2020 at The Fertile Unknown

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NEW Creative Emergence Coaching Packages for 2020!

Holistically Generative Work is at the core of all of our coaching. It's our integrative framework for work that is generative in 4 ways:  • Creatively - expresses who you are in your unique way and in ways that are... Continue reading

Posted Jan 10, 2020 at The Fertile Unknown

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Emergence Space in the Creative Process

#newideas #newchoices #newcreations #creativeemergencecoaching #mylatestposter ©Michelle James Continue reading

Posted Dec 18, 2019 at The Fertile Unknown

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Boundaries in Creative Process

In a creative emergence process, following the creative YES means also discovering the NOs that need to be released or transformed. Whenever we say YES to what's emerging, we often are being called to expand into being more of what... Continue reading

Posted Dec 5, 2019 at The Fertile Unknown

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Creativity Comes to Life Where the Known Meets the Unknown

No matter what challenges we face, or what our current circumstances, we can meet them with discovery and empathy (and kindness for self and others), and become more empowered as creators. By acknowledging our feelings and fears, and opening up... Continue reading

Posted Nov 19, 2019 at The Fertile Unknown

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Yes-And is How Nature Creates

I love Improv's Yes-And principle because it's how nature organically creates...one thing building on another to create something new. It's nature's creative emergence. We just need to unlearn everything that got in the way of us being easy improvisational creators... Continue reading

Posted Nov 19, 2019 at The Fertile Unknown

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Storytelling for a more Meaningful Past and Generative Future

Telling our stories, instead of only listing out events, changes how we view and experience our past (giving more meaning and understanding), and how we create what's next (giving us more possibilities). In addition to doing vision boards, writing out... Continue reading

Posted Nov 14, 2019 at The Fertile Unknown

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Creativity is Messy

So often in our emergence process, what emerges does not fit neatly into our pre-conceived expectations. That's because the creative unconscious - the which is below the surface - contains more wisdom and information and creativity than that which is... Continue reading

Posted Nov 11, 2019 at The Fertile Unknown

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Calling in the Future

As the new within us is emerging, the old sometimes fights back to maintain its status quo. It can become a battle between the habituated, outdated familiar and the emergent, life-giving unfamiliar. During the transition, being neither here nor there... Continue reading

Posted Oct 22, 2019 at The Fertile Unknown

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Beyond Problems with Creative Aliveness

At the core Creative Emergence is about Aliveness. It is about feeling alive, tapping into our creative selves to do and be what is most alive in us, and to use creativity to access that aliveness. When we are fully... Continue reading

Posted Oct 22, 2019 at The Fertile Unknown

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Creative Discoveries for Inner Authority

Often in an emergence process, people come to a point where they fear they have nothing of real value to share. So they retreat and stay in or re-box the familiar, or they create sudden distractions, or they copy and... Continue reading

Posted Oct 13, 2019 at The Fertile Unknown

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Yes And is a Doorway to Creative New Worlds

The improv principle, Yes And, is a doorway to creative new worlds. Yes And is generative, divergent, expansive, and opening. It’s accepting the reality that’s presented AND adding something new. Newness upon newness creates unimagined new worlds, ideas, visions, possibilities,... Continue reading

Posted Oct 11, 2019 at The Fertile Unknown

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The Transformative Power of Applied Improvisation

Improvisational theater changed my life. I truly believe it should be taught in every school - from elementary to higher education. The transformation I have experienced in my life and work, as well as seeing it with countless others over... Continue reading

Posted Sep 5, 2019 at The Fertile Unknown

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Applied Improv: Integration of the Contraries

Posted Aug 26, 2019 at The Fertile Unknown

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New Ways of Being for Creative New Results

In the quest for new results, I think we have to go directly inward into new ways of being. My take - although not necessarily linear - I see it more as interdependent and interactive: Not to mention being more... Continue reading

Posted Aug 14, 2019 at The Fertile Unknown

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