Friends,

Happy New Year! Did you hear? February is the new January. Here we go 2022!

In response to requests from individuals for non-organizational, low-cost way, unrecorded ways to engage, I’m trying something new this year: Salons that center joy and togetherness.  

My new series — The Joy of Looking: Collisions with Art and Collective Perspectives — starts this Friday. You should join!

Recently, new research has only continued to validate the Visual Thinking Strategies method and its various applications, especially in medicine. Watching the work grow and being a part of it has been an honor of my career. Yet even though it’s very exciting, just because the serious connections are there, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t just focus on the joy at the center of the engagement itself. In fact, that very joy is the key to expanding possibility among humans and the reach of ideas and curiosities. My goal with this series is to center that same spirit of joy and play that issue that’s so necessary for exploring new territories, in a way you can’t really just can’t tap in a formal class setting. I truly hope it will be energizing for all those applications, as well as nurture the general wellness, togetherness, creativity, and unique discoveries that only come in learning across worlds.

The first Salon is this Friday! Register here for the series, which meets First Fridays of the month from 1-3 ET on Fridays by Zoom. If you are commitment-phobic like I usually am, you can also just register for the first session to try it out, or for single sessions individually.

My hope to gather a group that is as intergenerational as it is international as it is intimate. That is why I’m both providing scholarships, and hosting this program on the platform Interintellect, a global orbit of bold individuals doing all kinds of interesting things on this planet while also being a welcoming community of creatives, writers, artists, and free-thinking nerds. Scholarships are available here for students, COVID-impacted, and anyone who needs it (deadline this Thursday at noon EST). 

Still got questions??  Let me see if I can give them a shot: 

Hang on, two hours – that is a lot of time! I really need to make it count!
Here is a list of ways you can make the time work beautifully nourishing for wonderful you:

• Take a walk, climb aboard your stationary bike and pedal, walk in place, stand and stretch, turn off your screen and participate from downward dog or while doodling on a luscious sketchpad. All forms of physical activity are welcome in our space which encourages a culture of health.
• Sit on the floor, or be wrapped in a cozy blanker. All forms of rest are welcome.
• Make it a date! Couch-buddies are welcome, as long as they stay on topic. Or, sign up with a friend or colleague (we all know that texting your friend throughout a course can make it extra fun). Or, invite that best date of all… your delightful inner child, whose observations of art we are all very curious to hear, and listening to, intently.
• Eat your lunch! Totally fine, we don’t judge, you know what let’s all eat while we’re at it.
• Recognize it as free-think time. Salons often give way to the kind of burst to ideating and working on other things that so powerfully happens when we learn and work (and write, and doodle) in community. Own it, enjoy it.

How can I justify to my boss to allocate my time to this and reimburse me?
My friend. What is the difference between technically proficient VTS that does absolutely nothing, and insuring with 100% reliability that diving into the unknowns of art+people with this method will yield discovery and surprise? I think we both know that it is one thing, and one thing only: playfulness. Have some! 

No, really, how can I justify to my boss to allocate my time to this and reimburse me?
Ok, well if the above won’t click into the grid, I feel you. You probably already know just the right way to make your case, being the brilliant badass you are. But here are a few ideas, in case you’re tired:

• “These sessions will be just the right balance of a break from work that supports my wellness, with the structure in place to catalyze + catch the bigger-picture insights that will advance my projects and ideas.”
• “This is applicable to my job and approach to teaching and learning in only about a hundred ways.”
• “This is a unique space that will give me access to a network that’s both different from the typical spaces of health humanities, and driven by totally shared interests.”

If that doesn’t work — maybe don’t justify it, just come for fun and play.

Wait, Alexa…. for real, why are you really doing this Salon Series?
Why does anyone do anything? For totally selfish reasons. First, my own burnout prevention. While I adore my work with medical and corporate audiences, I crave exploring themes that have held my interest for many years outside of those spaces. Interests like: the artists who make work when no one is watching. Or what on earth we can hear from the murmerings of Frida Kahlo’s work if we get real quiet and focused and listen very deeply? What does it really means and takes when one form becomes another, and how the concept of re-creation can activate us right now? And others. What better way to explore them than in playful salons that are un-recorded, un-assessed, free from job titles, and most refreshingly, free from the Good-Girl culture that so insidiously grips learning in medicine and museums, and inhibits possibility?

I want to work on my VTS teaching, is this a good place for that?
The best place for that is in a formal VTS training, of which this is not. However, experiments in teaching will be supported in a few ways. Participants can suggest works of art to experiment with, and we may also do a bit of round robin in the teaching depending on the group. Finally, there will be time in each Salon for deconstructing the experience and identifying applications.

It’s with a mix of curiosity and excitement that I look forward to Friday’s kickoff. Look forward to seeing you and your arts-curious friend there!

Love,

Alexa

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS :

PUBLICATION: Healthcare and Journalism are Facing the Same Crisis – and people are dying as a result. Slate, 12/17/21. Co-authored with Jacob Nelson.

SALON SERIES: The Joy of Looking: Collisions with Art and Collective Perspectives. First Fridays 1-3pm EST, February through July 2022, on Interintellect. Register here. 

LECTURE AND WORKSHOP SERIES, Netter School of Medicine, Quinnipiac University, Spring Semester, 2022. 

Collective Understanding: A Workshop for Research Teams. University of California San Francisco Pre-term Birth Initiative. January, 2022.

Converting Clinical Transactions to Microcosms of Learning Culture: A Workshop for Health Humanities Faculty. Health Humanities Consortium, March 22-25, 2022.


And a very exciting announcement coming soon….