Living through imagination
This is a creative sentence going here, about this long
I’ve written six books about creativity Looking At Art (With Your Eyes Closed), Being Creative, How To Have Creative Ideas in 24 Steps - Better Magic, Everyone Is Creative, 12 Rules Of Creativity and How To Be An Artist, covering the areas of process, individual practice, generating ideas and group dynamics.
I've also developed and designed five products: Divergent Procedures an online system, OMETHR and ESPELIDES both iPhone apps, UWRMA a Twitter bot and 210CARDS a two-pack card system (the latter with Miles Hanson). These systems encourage the user to step beyond the frame of expectation and take a more innovative approach to the working environment.
I offer coaching, workshops, 1-2-1s and group facilitation in a variety of contexts. See the Kiosk Publishing site for more details of my Therapy For Business module.
Plus teaching in museums and public spaces.
For 8 years I was a faculty member at The School of Life, London (Summer School, New Year Intensive, TSOL Business, Creativity MOT programme). 2014-16 I ran three courses at Tate, as part of their Public Programmes (Experimental Making – Creating From Everyday, The Creative Act, Creative Process). Plus for the past 7 years I have been teaching on the Masters Programme at PhotoEspana, Madrid (Annual Workshops, Participant Tutorials, PHe Business).
I work with the unconscious (that hidden resource), drawing on the methods of psychology in order to access the intuitive in a project. My motives are experimental, exploratory. This releases many moments of connection that clients can then integrate into the practical day-to-day running of a business or enterprise.
I draw on the group's energy, using the live moment to transform products or to formulate unexpected ideas.
I employ a transpersonal model and add to this Jungian blueprint elements of constellation work, REBT, shamanism, Zen Buddhism, process work, creative play, and self-compassion (all through my own training).
I integrate these play methods, generating new ways of thinking; moving beyond existing brainstorming techniques. My book Better Magic gives a useful repository of these tips – exercises, group tasks, games – and represents a blueprint for my current form of working.
Key areas: Working with creative blocks, innovation, brainstorming.
Clients include Photo España, Portland Green Cultural Projects, The School of Life, Tate Public Programme. Workshops / presentations include Collaboration Company, Duckie, FlexEarn, Ikea Paris, Janders Dean, Market Insight Forum, Market Research Society, Marketing Society of Ireland, Mayo Ideas Week, Not On The High Street, Vanessa O'Brien, Ogilvy PR, OpenTable, PlaceMakers, PDP London, Saltwater Capital, Upstream Recruitment, You Can Now.
Divergent Procedures
Michael Atavar
2023
Divergent Procedures is an online system offering a series of daily interventions (for surprise and reflection).
One single item is uploaded to the website every day.
Some statements are instructional; some are poetic; some invite a response from the viewer; some are inexplicable dream material.
The content is often what's available, written in my notepad that day.
The piece is inspired by my long-term interest in card systems and process interventions (metabolising action) – influences include Water Yam/George Brecht, I–Ching, Silence/John Cage, Fluxus, Tarot, Oblique Strategies/Brian Eno & Peter Schmidt, Concrete Poetry.
Only about 30% of my work ever reaches public output (70% is unpublished projects). Divergent Procedures is an attempt to bring some of this process material into visibility.
Divergent Procedures moves me firmly back to being an artist and represents a shift in my thinking: from functional tools towards the space of the unconscious in all its uncertainty. OMETHR (2020) pointed the way with its several colours representing 'irrational', 'feelings' and 'unconscious' but Divergent Procedures takes this further, placing the viewer at times inside pure colour, digital form.
Divination, C.G. Jung, Chinese systems, card sets, aleatoric composition.
ATTC-12: Michael Atavar for Psopo Bubble
Website: Original logo, decal design, UI by Richard Scarborough. Programming by Flat Earth
FREE
Walk Towards The Big Sun
Michael Atavar
2022
In this project I realise my long-held ambition to write a self-assembling novel. J.G. Ballard fantasised about writing a book in three days; I reduce the process and complete my novel in twenty-four hours.
I crunch through a dataset of 54,267 words, randomising the text (the original content is taken from my own dream diaries). I start on Twitter at midnight CET on 8/4/22 and release a post every three minutes of up to 280 characters (approximately 46 words).
Over 24 hours this potentially amounts to 46 x 20 x 24 = 22,080 words.
As well as Ballard, I am thinking about Burroughs' dream diary My Education, Warhol's novel a, A Novel and Kerouac's Book of Dreams.
Machine intelligence, robotics, self-assembly, 24 hours.
ATTC-7: Michael Atavar for Psopo Bubble
App: additional aleatory programming by Joe Webber using the UWRMA protocol, with original logo and decal design by Richard Scarborough
FREE
OMETHR
Michael Atavar
2020
OMETHR is a 500+ card system, divided up into ten subsidiary colours (each colour represents a quality). Shuffle the whole pack or focus on different configurations of the OMETHR colour spectrum.
ATTC-3: Michael Atavar for Psopo Bubble
App: Programming by Piers Aitman, with design and UI by Richard Scarborough
BUY
UWRMA
Michael Atavar
2020
UWRMA (Unconscious Writing Machine U-WR-MA) is a Twitter bot that delivers a new message every 24 hours at midnight CET.
UWRMA generates random sentences – a springboard for new approaches or prompts that the user can fold back into experimental writing.
ATTC-2: Michael Atavar for Psopo Bubble
Bot: Aleatory programming by Joe Webber, with original logo and decal design by Richard Scarborough
FREE
Looking At Art (With Your Eyes Closed)
Michael Atavar
2019
The book helps you to build a relationship with contemporary art, using the gallery as a conduit to feeling – and includes 52 exercises (with plenty of tips to assist you) for your next visit to the modern art museum.
It contains Michael Atavar's teaching from his three courses at Tate.
A guide for anyone who has ever been to an art gallery.
Take it with you...
January 2020's Book of the Month at Tate.
ISBN-13: 978-0953107353
Paperback: 128 pages
BUY
ESPELIDES
Michael Atavar
2018
An app that rearranges your text in new, unseen ways. Write or paste your words into the ESPELIDES window then click on one of the buttons to manipulate the sentences.
ESPELIDES is useful for product ideas, names, titles, exercises in writing. Try it as part of your individual practice or within your creative agency.
ATTC-1: Michael Atavar for Psopo Bubble
App: Programming by Piers Aitman, with design and UI by Richard Scarborough
BUY
Being Creative
Michael Atavar
2018
We often treat creativity as if it was something separate from us - in fact it is, as this book demonstrates, incredibly simple: creativity is nothing other than the very core of 'you'.
Publisher: Aurum/Quarto
ISBN-13: 978-1781317181
Hardback: 160 pages
BUY
How To Have Creative Ideas In 24 Steps – Better Magic
Michael Atavar
2016
Uses your unique creativity to deliver new and inspiring ideas.
This is a book that offers you some techniques for generating ideas. However, rather than describing brainstorming processes that already exist, I look to the unconscious as a source of inspiration.
ISBN-13: 978-0953107346
Paperback: 256 pages
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210CARDS
Michael Atavar and Miles Hanson
2013
A two-pack system, issued in a limited
edition of 210 signed copies.
In the set, the orange cards are used for
sparking ideas, whilst the other deck, the
grey cards, are designed for building on
those initial concepts. Use both in a
sequence, orange first and then grey, to
generate and complete an idea.
The box is ideal for ideas generating or
group process sessions
BUY
Everyone Is Creative
Michael Atavar
2013
Focuses on the power of creativity and
how it can transform your life.
What do we need to be creative? Actually
we already have the tools within us; we
carry them with us every day – our eyes.
All thatʻs required is that we see, use our
vision and accurately record the world
around us.
ISBN-13: 978-0953107339
Paperback: 256 pages
BUY
12 Rules Of Creativity
Michael Atavar
2011
Contains twelve practical steps that help
to stimulate your creativity.
I guide you through the basic principles of
the creative process – how to begin,
developing an original voice and working
with creative blocks. From beginner to
famous artist, everyone at some time in
their career will become stuck. These
twelve rules will help you to navigate the
stages of impasse, freeing up the log-jam
of ideas.
ISBN-13: 978-0953107322
Paperback: 272 pages
BUY
How To Be An Artist
Michael Atavar
2009
Develops your creativity and grows the
potential of your own artist.
I believe that you can grow your artist in a
nurturing and supportive way, giving it the
time and resources to develop and
blossom. This is a book that takes the
inner artist seriously – the playful, the
complicated, the difficult part – leading it
on a journey that includes starting,
building a practice
ISBN-13: 978-0953107315
Paperback: 256 pages
BUY
After working with many leading creativity tutors as the Head of Programmes for The School of Life there is no doubt in my mind that Michael Atavar's abilities to elicit deep and sustained creative thought in others is world-class.
The general public are sometimes moved to tears after experiencing his methods firsthand and professional clients no less vitalised by his teaching.
Michael has been a mentor and a huge inspiration to me in my career for a number of years now. The sessions with him are always hugely insightful and he's taught me a lot about leadership and creative confidence. This has been invaluable to both my work and my own personal development.
Michael has the ability see your potential before you see it yourself. When I started working with him he quickly pointed out that I needed to develop my own brand and encouraged me to step up at work and take on a leadership role. Iʼve been amazed at the transformation over the years - from feeling stuck and lacking confidence, to reaching my goal of becoming a senior art director, and now to launching my own brand.
Itʼs an honour to work with Michael, and Iʼm so grateful to have had the opportunity to be coached by him over the years.
Working with Michael is always an amazing and incredibly productive experience. He combines his own artistic talents and business insights to bring fresh and exciting ways for people and teams to rediscover their own creativity.
His practical approach is a fantastically accessible way of stimulating creative confidence which can empower people to more easily turn their ideas into reality.
He is also challenging, stimulating and great fun.
Michael is a breath of fresh air that can bring a real shift in thinking and behaviours to business, leaders and teams.