Co-creating multisensory contemplative experiences and guided meditations; as performances, online streams and products.

Wisdom traditions as well as contemporary science teach us that meditation can have a deep and positive influence on people's lives, especially when facing stress and other types of difficulty. While meditation can be beneficial for all, it is still not accepted as a practice in many contexts. This is partly due to the “new age aesthetics” that dominates guided (audiovisual) meditation (just type in “meditation” in YouTube, to understand what we mean). As a community of creative practitioners, with deep roots in the arts, we want to reclaim meditation as a participatory artwork, including contributions by renown (performing) artists, writers and experience designers.

By experimenting with different (multisensory) languages and aesthetics to create artful meditative experiences. We co-create these experiences together in the hosting community and offer them as:

• Co-present experiences: guided meditations in workshops, retreats, festivals, and as stand-alone events
• Recorded experiences:
  • online database of guided meditations as sound and video files
  • physical package: including a physical carrier of AV programmes (CD/DVD, USB-sticks, or a card with a URL on it), scents, fabrics, lighting… to create a DIY meditative experience

(Aspiring) meditators, facilitators, arts and cultural venues and festivals, companies…

What does the practice/activity need from the hosting community?

• Collaboration and co-creation
• Funding opportunities (joint application?)
• Testing ground

Why is this practice/activity relevant for the hosting community? What learning will it bring?

• Materials to use in workshops and retreats
• Broadening the community by involving artists
• Reclaiming contemplation away from the new age context
• Support for individual contemplation practice of the members