Creative arts retreats
“There is great alchemy in the connection between our moving experience and the painting process”
Coming Home
Movement & Painting retreat in Nature
6-8th September 2024, Friston Place, East Dean, BN20 OAL
Max 8 Participants
£210 including on-site camping or room in the house, art materials, swimming pool, evening meals, snacks and beverages
with Maya Cockburn
In our increasingly busy world we sometimes give little time and attention to nourishing our body, heart and soul. We may feel disconnected from our authentic self or perhaps simply don’t give ourselves enough ME time! We may even have a sense of not feeling fully at home in our body.
Coming Home is a creative arts retreat offering space and time for you to move and paint your embodied experiences within this beautiful, large garden.
Through movement practice we become aware of our sensing body as we connect to the ground, feel the air on our skin, hear the sound of bird song. We breathe, stretch and begin to find our own way of moving, inviting the flow of our natural dance to unfold in response to our moment to moment experiencing in nature.
Exploring the garden through movement awakens the body, emotions and imagination. Your attention may shift between your inner world and outer landscape, enabling personal stories, myths and archetypes to come to light. Sometimes we move on our own, sometimes with others, yet always being mindful of and trusting in our own process.
Movement experiences are expressed directly and spontaneously through painting, creating an intimate, interactive dialogue between movement and imagery. Your imagery then becomes the grounding and inspiration for further explorations in movement.
This process offers potential for personal insights, feeling more embodied, embracing a sense of freedom, creativity and vitalisation, all held within a supportive, contained environment. There is no right or wrong way to do this and you do not need previous experience in movement and painting. It is the process itself that is most valuable.
The weekend is primarily an outdoor experience unless it’s raining when we will use the barn. There is a spaciousness and simplicity in our time together as we create a community of creative explorers, living alongside and with each other. Facilities include on-site camping or a room in the house, swimming pool, use of the barn if it rains and sitting by the fire in the evening. Participants provide their own food which can be stored in the barn. We arrive Friday evening to settle in and enjoy an evening meal together. A hot meal is also provided Saturday evening, which we eat by the fire if the weather is dry. If you enjoy walking there is a track leading from the garden to Friston Forest and many walks across the Downs and towards the coast.
Please contact me for more information, booking or enquires.
If you would like a place on the retreat a £50 non-returnable deposit is required.
Many thanks. email here
About retreats
My creative arts retreats take place in a beautiful expansive garden in East Sussex where you can enjoy deep immersion in the stillness and beauty of nature, expressing your responses through movement, painting and mindful presence.
This is an invitation to listen deeply to what is happening in your body, feelings and imagination through tuning into physical sensations, and following the thread of your emerging movement from moment to moment in relation to each other and the environment.
Taking the movement experience directly into the process of spontaneous painting encourages us to freely express from our embodied self. This is a direct response to the movement experience yet has it’s own life and message too. The process of painting, is in a way, another dance, but one that can be seen and touched, reflected upon, and shared with others in a different way than can be done through movement.
These retreats are available to everyone. No experience in either movement or painting is necessary. I create a warm, accessible environment for exploration around a given theme, making clear there is no way to get this wrong. It is simply an exploratory process for you to connect to self in your own natural, creative, embodied way.
