#Create
“Here’s the deal. The human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed — to be seen, heard and companioned exactly as it is.”
- Parker Palmer -
As we engage with our creativity, we rediscover who we are
If there has been one key insight during my career, it is that the most creative and transformational intervention we can make in life is to simply ‘see’ and ‘witness’ each other in the world.
When we develop the curiosity and capacity to genuinely see, to be seen and to see ourselves, our perception and relationship to the wider world begins to shift. Our consciousness and consideration for wider systems grows and we begin to live in ways which are more healthily integrated, relational and ecological.
Any approach that invites us to work more closely with our raw, unprocessed, felt experience of the world, before we interpret and explain it, helps us engage creatively. Some of us sing or dance, some work with crafts, some make music. My way to exploring my creativity is through photography and film, and through the writing that visual methods unlock.
My camera slows me down, helping me to gently focus my attention and live in the present moment. As I open myself to the world around me, the camera helps me to frame beauty and wonder in the everyday patterns and relationships that surround us.
This work with imagery, photography and video, has been carefully built on my own fascination, practice and process over many years. It is both ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ work: using images helps us inquire into our perception of world around us. Not only what we see, but also how we see. It’s something that has engaged me since my early days as a rookie photographer studying the technique of the ‘greats,’ during my time as a fighter pilot when I found that the quality of the shared air ‘picture’ made a dramatic difference to my capability, and now as I work with images of change and organisation alongside corporate clients, doctoral candidates and 1:1 inquiry partners.
The Photo-Dialogues are on-going ‘action research’ project where I am document people who 'see differently' as they go about their work and lives.
Developing a deeper sense of engagement and teamworking between 'production' staff and 'front office' functions.
A social media-based photo-inquiry into Compassion during the Covid-19 pandemic.
What does it take for groups to stand up for their core beliefs? A visual workshop discovering the nature of courage in organisations.
How do we genuinely 'see' each other and release the potential of vibrant, diverse, exciting teams?
An unfolding photo-inquiry within #1000Steps of my back door.
A short film about what it is to work without the answers in a doctoral programme examining organisational change.
Images from the social experiment framed as a conference into ‘un-knowing.’
A curated gallery of images appearing in the book, "Organisational Development: A bold explorer's guide."
An 'organisational reportage' project catalysing 'creative moments' and developing the organisational dynamics that underpin great design and rapid product development.