The Story of Creative Sandbox Solutions™

“What do people get out of your retreats?”

So asked a colleague one day over lunch, when I was glowing after just coming back from leading my 5th annual 5-day Creative Sandbox Retreat.

His question was so clarifying. It made me realize that the reason people keep coming back to my retreats year after year—and what I answered—was this:

They become more authentically themselves.

This is what engaging with our creativity does for us, because creativity is at the core of our humanity.

At the time of this lunchtime conversation, I’d spent about eight years building a mostly online business as a creativity instigator, helping individuals get creatively unstuck.

From those who claimed “I’m not creative,” to blocked artists, to burned out creative pros, my superpower is inspiring people to pick up a pen (or guitar, or whatever), and do what they had believed was impossible.

I got started in this unlikely job because I spent decades of my own life believing I was a “non-creative person.”

Then I rediscovered the joy of making things, and stumbled into a career as a professional artist and calligrapher.

Only to become completely mired by perfectionist paralysis.

When I finally figured out how to let go of perfectionism and play again, I quickly discovered that the tools that worked for me worked for other people as well.

I published a blog, I hosted a podcast, I ran an online community for creatives, I wrote a book.

But of all the things I created with my business, the retreats were my favorite.

A couple of things were becoming clear to me at the same time:

1. My strength is in leading and facilitating groups, through the medium of play.
2. The corporate world could really benefit from creative unleashing. Especially tech companies that have grown past the “move fast and break things” stage, and stability has come at a cost to their innovative edge.

I already saw that too many humans consider themselves to be “noncreative,” and suffer under the false belief that creativity is the exclusive realm of the marketing and design departments.

I was already on a mission to instigate, enable and unleash creativity.

Clearly it was time to combine all of the above in a blender!

With Creative Sandbox Solutions™, I’m taking my mission into companies.

Let’s get all levels of your organization firing on all cylinders!

Heck, I’ll bet I can even get you to pick up a pen with enthusiasm.