We are spending more time indoors and online. But recent studies suggest that nature can help our brains and bodies to stay healthy. I’ve been an avid hiker my whole life. From the time I first strapped on a backpack and headed into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, I was hooked on the experience, loving the way being in nature cleared my mind and helped me to feel more grounded and peaceful. But, even though I’ve always believed that hiking in … [Read more...] about How Nature Can Make You Kinder, Happier, and More Creative
Exploring Creative Culture:
This section of The Riverside Quarterly explores how individuals and communities leverage creativity to transform culture. They consider how we cultivate, express and use creativity to change ourselves and the world around us.
Habits, Hobbies, & How to use Them for a Creative Life
One of the increasingly difficult aspects of living a creative life in the twenty-first century is defining and maintaining a balanced lifestyle. It can be tempting to see creativity as a road impeded by daunting blockades, ones that must be charged through or leapt over with strenuous focus and uninterrupted resolve. Studies show this is not the most effective approach and in my own creative life, I can confirm that this mentality doesn’t yield … [Read more...] about Habits, Hobbies, & How to use Them for a Creative Life
Charlotte Brontë’s “Possession”: What Writers Can Learn from the Author of Jane Eyre
“Charlotte Brontë was essentially a trance writer” (311), so writes Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar in their wildly popular feminist text The Madwoman in the Attic. Brontë’s art form, though well-rehearsed after decades of writing alongside her sisters, is almost as mystical and mythologized as Jane Eyre itself, with strange and morbidly fascinating tales of Charlotte’s peers watching her write at a furious pace, her eyes closed and gripping her … [Read more...] about Charlotte Brontë’s “Possession”: What Writers Can Learn from the Author of Jane Eyre
Gaudí’s Park Güell at 100: Celebrating a Creative Visionary’s Failure
The construction of Antoni Gaudí's Park Güell in Barcelona stuttered to a halt in 1914. In Gaudí’s view, however, the project was hardly finished. He and his sponsor Eusebi Güell had envisioned an elaborate residential development on the outskirts of Barcelona when they began planning the project in 1899, but the residential aspect of this project never caught on with potential buyers. In the end, only two of the envisioned sixty homes were … [Read more...] about Gaudí’s Park Güell at 100: Celebrating a Creative Visionary’s Failure
The Secret to Creativity – According to Science
Whether you get mesmerised by Vincent van Gogh’s painting The Starry Night or Albert Einstein’s theories about spacetime, you’ll probably agree that both pieces of work are products of mindblowing creativity. Imagination is what propels us forward as a species –it expands our worlds and brings us new ideas, inventions and discoveries. But why do we seem to differ so dramatically in our ability to imagine? And can you train yourself to become … [Read more...] about The Secret to Creativity – According to Science
