Cocreating Our Way to Freedom

10 Practices To Help You Cocreate Art, Poetry, Music, And More!

This is an introduction to the life-changing path of cocreation. It’s a guide for friends, families and collectives that explains the basic theory and provides a list of powerful and extremely fun cocreation “games” that you can take away into your lives. Welcome to the cocreation revolution!

We begin some three years ago.

It’s autumn in a not-so-obscure European city.

There’s a table on the street outside a cafe.

At the table: two cups of coffee, two notebooks, and two friends. Each of them is silently writing in one of the notebooks.

After a minute or so, the notebooks are swapped, and they continue writing.

Another minute, and they swap again.

The books go back and forth until one friend proclaims “we’re done”.

Two minutes, and two poems later, each read aloud in turn, and their worlds are changed forever.

Changed not only by the content of those weird, wacky and bewitching poems, but by the process that created them.

The game is as simple as this: write a line, swap, write a line, swap.

But the results are as deep, complex, and amusing as the two individual people now engaged in the process of artistic co-creation.

The simple game of write-and-swap brought poetry to life again, when for so long it had been a dead thing, a serious thing, the possession of old dead men mouldering away in books.

And now here it was, poetry, living and breathing there on the street, seething with energy and colour, ricocheting around universes of image and symbol, lurching into mystery and absurdity, structure and chaos, humour and tragedy.

That game helped those two friends see that poetry can be pure play, and that each line of a poem can be a play in itself, awaiting a return serve.

Those two friends were Julyan and I, and we originally started this publication Phoenix Collective as an outlet for our poetry-fuelled philosophing rampages through Europe. It’s not that we suddenly thought of ourselves as poets or good at poetry or even as producing ‘poetry’ — we were just messing around, but found ourselves regularly stunned at the words and phrases emerging through our collaborative mind-melding. And I guarantee this will happen for you, too, if you do the experiment. (We are still messing around, and it’s a powerful remedy to the view of poetry as dry academia).

Cocreation brought us insights and experiences that opened the doorway onto the ideas that life itself can be seen as art, that everything we do, say and create can become a play in the infinite game of life that we are continually co-creating.

This article is about cocreation “games” or “practices” that help us move into this deeply liberating way of navigating reality, and, indeed, a way of actually creating, recreating and cocreating new realities with the people around us.

Part of the reason I value these practices so highly is that they are a very accessible (i.e. fun!) method for re-activating our inner child and reclaiming our identities, which want to be reclaimed, of being the artists, poets, musicians, and creative servants of life.

They can help us see that everyone is an artist, everyone is creative, and that creating together is our birthright. Or, if you prefer, everyone has these as unlocked potentials.

We begin life with incredible and inexhaustible creativity. Just watch how children effortlessly reel off stories, drawings, songs and poems. But we grow up in a system that systematically robs us of these dimensions of our being until they lie sleeping and dormant, and for most people, forgotten, often forever. This is a deep tragedy, a crime against the world of beauty that could be.

But this world can be, if we decide to reclaim it and cocreate it. If we decide, one by one, two by two, three by three, and as an entire society, to reclaim our place as the joyous cocreators of life and reality.

Possibly: “Evil Mouse House” — London 2020. You can SEE the inner children coming out to play…

Releasing the Artist Within

I consider it part of my life’s mission to challenge this artificial (read: bullshit) divide between the “artists” and the non-artists, between “creative” and “uncreative” people. It perpetuates an “art-world” that doesn’t really care about art at all, just money and fame, and it keeps the average Joe thinking he’s got zero talent and is “shit at art”, and could certainly never think of himself as an “artist”.

The problem is that, after a certain age, Joe’s artistic and creative gifts and inclinations were never cultivated or encouraged. On the contrary — they were aggressively stamped out of him by the school system. So we are, for the most part, artistically blocked. But we don’t have to be!

I highly recommend The Artist’s Way, basically The Bible of how to liberate your personal creativity. But while this classic book focuses on the individual’s journey, it’s the journey of collective artmaking that I am totally fascinated by.

Goofing around with a mate and a handful of coloured pencils doesn’t seem like a big deal, at first. But it’s doing something very important: loosening us up. Unblocking and unravelling all our false beliefs about what we can and can’t do, what we are and aren’t “good at”. And starting to cultivate new ones! Like: I enjoy drawing, I enjoy poetry. That’s a big deal! It paves the way for a lifetime of further exploration.

(Note: You cannot be bad at art, just like you cannot be bad at play. It’s about your enjoyment of the process, how much it speaks to you and moves you and inspires you— not the finished product. You may or may not like the finished product, may or may not consider it “good”, but that is another matter! These cocreation processes are beautiful art in themselves).

I think a key strength of these practices is that they kill our very deep fear of the blank canvas. It’s so common to hear people say “I don’t know what to draw / write about”. But cocreating gets something on the page very quickly. I genuinely think that this is about 80% of the battle against our artistic blockages won, instantly. Because it’s that something that provides us with a “seed” that can be evolved and messed around with during the following cocreation process. It’s far easier — or less intimidating — to play with something than nothing. Tip: if in doubt, just scribble / write random words / make random noises. Far easier to add chaos first and work it into order later, than to freeze, worrying about how I can bring order and beauty to an empty nothingness.

London, Summer 2020

Cocreating One Another

Cosmic musicians and magicians, all of us. If we want to be. And I believe we do. I believe we all do.

We all want to bring beauty into the world. We all want to share our gifts, to appreciate others’, and to form intimate connections with others. We all want an experience of life that is full of colour, diversity, novelty and richness.

Engaging in games and processes of collaborative co-creation heals our illusions of separation, disconnection and individuality. It liberates our innate creativity through injections of novelty and can add life-changing dimensions of beauty and play to our friendships and relationships. They are incredibly fun, addictive, and they reliably produce explosions of laughter and/or awe at the unveiling of the cocreated piece.

And it goes even deeper…

Cocreation gives us opportunities to cocreate and recreate one another. By making “plays” in these cocreation games — a line of poetry about memory, a drawing of an ox at sunrise — we can throw one another images and motifs from deep parts of our psychologies, allowing them to rub against one another, and in the process to merge, mutate and give birth to new forms. (Yes, it’s like having art sex. You’re welcome). These plays can be as intentional or unintentional as we like — I could draw a child trapped in a box, and see what that evokes in you, or just throw you a random scribble.

The point is that we begin to see that these shared images are catalysing our psychological growth, our perceptions of beauty and aesthetics in the world, and our artistic identities.

“The language of art is image and symbol”, and so by cocreating art, our deep psyches are given a chance to connect at this deep level — the realms of archetypes and images and myths. Myths are the stories which are written in these shared languages of image and symbol.

All this means that co-creation allows us to develop shared languages that speak to deeper parts of ourselves than verbal languages — the usual, conversational level of relating.

And to add to the beauty of this, when these shared imaginal languages are generated through co-creation, they are ceaselessly and refreshingly new, spontaneous, and emergent. We see that we are generating novelty and originality through play. And, crucially we see that it is all mutually generated. We look at these super wacky, original, and beautiful poems or drawings and think “I could never make anything like that on my own”. And we couldn’t — only the collective could.

Yorkshire, Autumn 2020

Seeds of A Revolution

Could there be anything more revolutionary, in a dystopia of serious business, to play with other humans, and in doing so, to feel free, whole again, to rekindle your love of life, art, beauty — and yourself? To forget all your anxious worries for hours on end because you were engrossed in communal creative flow — without even noticing? This stuff is ego-dissolving.

In a self-destructing system that operates on the basis of our consumption habits, creative production is rebellion par excellence. It’s a direct antidote and challenge to a culture that wants us to be consumption slaves who produce only one thing: money. And collective art production is jet fuel for that creative rebellion. And it brings us together, like never before, in an age of loneliness and separation (not least because of lockdown). It fills our lives, and the neoliberal imagination desert, with art and beauty. It brings meaning and awe back into our lives.

This is far more than rebellion, it’s healing. It’s self-preservation and self-love. It’s an opportunity to live the lives we really want to live — passionate, creative, connected — and to start exploring our deepest desires and highest potentials. And because these games work to liberate our repressed artist, we actually find ourselves becoming far more confident and creative when alone, too.

So what we have here is a doorway to a life of artistic freedom and joyous communal art-making. And this brings me to a very big question, perhaps one of the biggest in life: how do we want to spend our time together? Do we want to waste our incredibly precious time together merely consuming and working, or do we want to enter into the shared ecstasy, awe and belonging of cocreation?

May “drawing and chill?” be the death of Netflix!

Do not underestimate the transformative power of these practices. They have completely transformed my life and the life of the community I live in.

Everybody and anybody can initiate and participate in them. So — enjoy, and let us know how you get on!

Guidelines for Cocreation Games

• Cocreated Drawing / Visual art. Draw something, (anything) on a piece of paper. hand it to person 2 who adds to the drawing. pass back and forth until both agree the drawing is complete. in a group, you can have multiple drawings on the go, passing around until the drawing you started returns to you. do a second, third, even fourth round. especially good for anyone who says/thinks “I can’t draw / I’m not creative” upon being handed paper and a pen! Top tip: regularly rotate the paper (up/down/sideways), so you end up drawing at all different angles. And don’t worry about drawing things, and especially don’t worry about drawing things well. No-one is judging you. Add coloured pencils, crayons, pastels, paints, sharpies…
• Comics. Similar to the above but you divide the piece of paper into a grid. person 1 fills in the first box with a drawing. person 2 fills in the next one. take turns until the comic strip is complete!
• Poems. Write a line (or two, or as many as you like) on a piece of paper. Pass to person 2 who adds the next line of the emergent poem. Pass back and forth until someone decrees the poem complete / you run out of paper. You can play this with or without the option whether to conceal all of the poem except the last line before passing it on. I personally prefer being able to see it. You could also choose a title (together, or separately) before starting to write. This can also be done in a group with multiple poems on the go at once, passing each one round the whole group. after 1,2,3,.. rounds of passing, stop and conceal the poems. then, one by one, each person reads their poem to the group. Doing this as a regular practice with a particular friend or family member can really open up a lot — try it!
• Vocal jamming (introduced to me and Julyan as IGO, “improvisational groove orchestra” in the candlelit backroom of a Berlin cafe. Long story, and a good one, ask us sometime). The only rule here is that you should always be able to hear everyone in the group. Warmup: someone makes a tone, e.g. “ahhhhhh” everyone joins in the same tone for 10–15 seconds. Next person in the group makes a different tone and everyone joins in again. go around a few times. Main jam: someone starts a loop of music/song/scatting/bopping. anything! they may want to play around with some noises until they find a loop they like. then they make a click sound, signalling everyone else to join in. So now everyone is singing this same loop. repeat that loop for about a minute, let the group find resonance and confidence. after about a minute, everyone becomes free to start adding or changing the loop. If you hear someone adding something you like, maybe support and copy them. Drop your own bits in. Very soon it’ll be clear that the piece is evolving without any leader. Tap the tables, click yer fingers, clap, beatbox, stand up if you wanna dance… let the piece evolve and end naturally. closed eyes recommended for max auditory absorption and killing self-conscious mental resistance. This really requires zero skill or musical knowledge, simply a willingness to make some noise and enjoy jamming with others. Best done with at least 4 or 5 people, but there’s really no upper limit, can be done with 100–200 people if held well. Truly beautiful — can open us up to a world of reconnection when we realise this is what humans have been doing together for tens of thousands of years. We were born to sing round fires. Welcome home.
• Music jams. The vocal jam really paves the way for inclusive jamming. As soon as instruments come along, there’s often this divide of “the musicians” and the “non-musicians”. The vocal jam dissolves that very effectively. We’re just monkeys making sounds! If we can maintain that mindset with instruments. Drumming is a very good place to start, because it’s so simple and puts everyone on an equal level. When instruments are introduced, make sure the more skilled players don’t drown out the less-skilled. And regularly rotate instruments so everyone gets a feel for what they enjoy the most.
• Improv. There’s so many ways to do this — cocreation is kind of the essence of improv. By launching out in a scenario where you’re both embodying characters, every move of your being becomes a contribution to the cocreation of the “piece”. List of improv collaboration games here. This revolutionary stuff; it’s where the boundary between “life” and “art” can really begin to blur and dissolve.
• Play and scriptwriting. Same as the poetry games but with the script and directions for a play. I’ve recently discovered that this can be done over distance and time using a shared google doc! Serious fun.
• Writing. Same as above, but with fiction stories (long or short), and non-fiction articles. And it’s easier than ever to use shared online docs to co-edit put all your art in a cocreated zine — awesome if you’re doing these games regularly as a group and want to share them with the world.
• Film. To make it co-created and improvised you can do things like: the person holding the camera narrates a story that the actor(s) proceed to act out. Or film improv exercises and make them into a film. Or cocreate a script before acting it out. You can obviously do the editing together. Get creative!
• Bohmian Dialogue / Collective meditation. On the surface this is very, very simple: a conversation without a plan, just a few guidelines that slow everything down. But it rapidly becomes very deep and complex. Because people are complex, and their dynamics are complex. You can even get into shared altered states, kind of like a trance, where egos dissolve. You can find yourself in a circle of people who are together hitting right up against the mystery of existence and the question of what the fuck are we doing here sitting in a circle trying to work out the mystery of existence. I seriously recommend trying this with your friends — it will blow your minds. It is as good as psychedelic drugs. It is a beautiful, beautiful practice which is by turns hilarious, confusing, moving, and deeply connecting. Read the guidelines and give it a go! And then imagine navigating every interaction in this way — how much deeper and more interesting would things get? The door is wide open.
• Co-Development practices. This is the realm of relational practices similar to the Bohmian dialogue, in which we enter into deconstructing and then cocreating reality, and one another, through our interactions. It’s very broad area so I’m just going to give an example followed by some resources. Julyan has pioneered a workshop in our collective called “soul coaching”, in which the group takes turns to inquire into the deep dreams, visions and aspirations of an individual. Their “soul desires”. And the group offers the individual support in expressing and manifesting these desires. This is cocreative because it offers us a chance to influence one another in deep and meaningful ways — for example, I could help you explore through your desire to record an album of your songs, and unpack the blockages to you actually making this happen. The crux of all this is slowing down and listening to what’s happening in our moment-to-moment experience… all the subtle feelings, images, desires, emotions, bodily sensations and thought patterns that are usually so quick and habitual that we don’t notice them. But by slowing down and trying to notice these phenomena, we can use them as a rich source of data for our (collective) evolution. (And the very fact that Julyan offered us a workshop was cocreative; it was making a play into the “game” of community life). Resources: Talk on Soulmaking dyad practices (paired meditation), Intro to the Diamond Approach, Article on Holding Space for Generative Conversations, Video on Circling for Collective Intelligence. I’m also gonna point you to Julyan’s most recent article on transformational cultures which fleshes out the rationale for doing this kind of thing (hint: it’s crucial, now more than ever).

FLUX — April 2020

Cocreation Principles

To make all of the above games run more smoothly — more conducive to free and joyous cocreation, there are some Cocreation Principles you can apply in each game:

• ROTATE! Rotate the page, rotate the instruments, rotate notebooks. You get the idea.
• Equal participation. Keep an eye on the group and make sure everyones equally involved and nobody’s getting left out or squeezed out by dominating figures.
• This is about playing. There are no rules! Just guidelines for ensuring the best possible play.
• There is no good or bad, no right or wrong. You cannot fuck up, and you cannot fuck the artwork up.
• There is no aim or purpose to these games. You are not doing them to achieve or attain anything. It’s about enjoying the cocreative process, moment-to-moment with other human beings.
• Embrace chaos! This is super super helpful for shaking things up and getting over our fear of the blank canvas. Make a load of noise, scribble on the page, get some nonsense out. And click! “Oh yeah, we’re just playing! We’re just monkeys messing around!”
• No judgement. First of all, it’s really worth noting that everyone is too busy worrying about their own contribution to pass judgement on what you are doing. Second of all, even if they were judging you, this is their problem and their blockage — something that is actually depriving them of connection and immersion in the process of life and cocreation. It’s nothing to do with you, but at the same time, can you see it compassionately? Can you start acting in ways which draw this person out and loosen them up? They are probably feeling embarrassed and scared. When you realise these things and step into your vulnerabilities then you’re all on a level playing field and you can just jam out together without care of judgement. It’s a beautiful way of being together and can teach us a lot about how “everyday life” social situations might be different.
• Listen to and appreciate everyone’s contributions and your own.
• No need to plan! Be spontaneous and get comfortable improvising.
• Whatever emerges is perfect as it is. But if you see a way to make it better (more beautiful), go for it!
• Mess with one another! Scribble over people’s scribbles, copy their melody in weird way. Nothing is sacred.
• Unpack and integrate! It can be really worthwhile having a little “how was that for you?” group checkin at the end of a jam, to see what blockages people noticed and worked through, and what they found beautiful/enjoyable/inspiring.
• Draw one another out. In these games you can make plays that guide, provoke, challenge one another. But the best play make others rise into their creativity and flow state.

A last word. The insecure ego can really freak out during these games (usually due to our previous experiences in school).

“I’m not a musician/artist/poet! I can’t do this. I’m fucking it up. I don’t wanna play. These people are annoying. This isn’t for me.”.

Particularly interesting are the social narratives: “Everyone is judging me for my contribution. They’re all great at this but I’m sticking out like a sore thumb. This is embarrassing, I’m gonna sit back”.

All bullshit, naturally, but it’s bullshit we carry around with us all the time, which prevents us from creative self-expression and connection with others. So if you experience these kinds of voices — awesome! Watch them come and go and take note of them. You gotta go through them to unwork them. Unpack them and discuss them with your co-creators — chances are everything is experiencing similar things. Be patient, keep playing, and you will find yourself, to your astonishment, becoming looser, freer, more joyous, and wait — what? — better at creating beautiful art? You betcha, and it’s because the beautiful art comes when you are in flow, playing. You’ve forgotten yourself and are immersed, dissolved, in the creative process.

Committing to the Path

Done over many weeks, months, or years, these practices can and will transform the life of a community, friendship or family. So if we really want to walk the path of cocreation all the way to freedom, it does require some long-term commitment. Experiment with that. You could commit to doing a poem a day with a friend (it will change your lives forever), a drawing a week with your Mum (or someone you’ve just met!), or organise a weekly music jam with your friends/family/workmates.

When I’m visiting home, my Dad and I now have a great habit of doing a drawing together every dinnertime — and get this, I was nervous about bringing this, but he picked up the pen first, and I didn’t have to say anything, we just started drawing.

I have this dream of setting up cocreation factories, free and open to anyone, that are constantly full of people jamming, writing, painting, acting, dancing and all of these jams are overlapping and cross-pollinating and the whole thing is channelled into mindblowingly original films and magazines and stories and albums…

Fuck art museums where all you do is stand there — give the people pens and paper! Watch this space.

That’s all — now I send you away with your pencils and notepads! And please send across anything you cocreate and want to share, we would love to see it!

Happy cocreating, rascals!

Much love.

Check out this doc you want to read the poems of Sophie — the Berlin-born dividual poet and artiste of whom Julyan and I are mere puppets. (Beyond the myth of the individual is the equally beautiful myth of the dividual — the transpersonal self who spans multiple bodies and minds, but very clearly is endowed with as much (if not more) consciousness, agency, and creativity as our individual selves. This sounds like pseudoscience, but note — it’s not something to be proved or disproved, but a way of seeing that opens us up into deeper connection and awe. Death to the individual!)