Last Saturday, the 22nd of February, the community center “Vazrodena Iskra – 2000” in Kazanlak welcomed the event “Shoot up your creativity”. It was a workshop organized by the volunteer of Mutual Aid Organization Ivona Pokorna, under the program European Solidarity Corps. It was an event opened to all people, as Ivona said, not only for artists but for everybody who wanted to open their minds to new possibilities, solutions or ideas. And so that’s what we did during the four hours that lasted the workshop: we tried to go out of our comfort zone.

Although it was in English, the event counted with people from different nationalities: German, Portuguese, Latvian, Spanish, and of course, Bulgarian. After the presentations, we started with the activities. First of all, we made a discussion about what creativity means. Then, Ivona proposed us to divide ourselves into different groups: those who felt more related to visual arts, those who felt more comfortable with writing and those who considered themselves pragmatic and to present an object, in this case, a birdhouse. So the visual artists had to draw it, the pragmatic ones had to design it, and the writers had to create a story about it. This activity was very useful to train our brains and start to act in a creative mood.

After that, we participated in different dynamics, such as playing with the Dixit cards, listening to music while imagining a situation, talking about our fears and trying to find solutions to that or doing a brainstorming.

Finally, we also did meditation and we had a coffee break in which we talked with each other and shared our impressions about the workshop. Because, and that’s what we learned too, in every creative process, to avoid blockage, sometimes we need to take our time, to relax and to focus on another thing. That way, the inspiration will come by herself.

Marta Valverde