Spring Craft Camp - Centre for Craft Creativity and Consciousness

Focus activities: 

bead making with Shalome Lateef - willow charcoal making and automatic drawing with Bianca Patetl-Flowers

Focus topic: plants

• working with the hands is a way of accessing wisdom, memory and insight
• repetitive craftwork is deeply calming to the mind and provides relief from anxiety, stress and mental fatigue
• crafting in nature brings us into relationship with plants, animals, people and place

The Centre for Craft, Creativity and Consciousness' biannual craft camps have a focus on synthesising body and soul through the work of crafting in the bush. Over three days you will have the opportunity to work intensively on a single project, allowing you to sink into deeply meditative states, and for your body to relax into its environment - both human and natural. 

The pace of the camp is adjusted to the needs of attendees and you are encouraged to find your own natural rhythms of waking and sleeping, resting and working, eating and playing, allowing the body's wisdom to come to the fore.

Daytime activities will be focussed on crafting / working with the hands, as well as occasional optional workshops or intensives in family constellations, plant connection, and other modalities depending on who is attending. We welcome contributions for workshops and one-on-one sessions in the healing space as an add on for other attendees.

As you need you can take time out from crafting for rest and rejuvenation, swimming, kayaking, eating, and so forth.

Early morning and nighttime are reserved for fireside discussions, drumming, forest bathing, sunrise viewing, walks in the lakebed and so forth.

Breakfasts and lunches and two dinners are provided. The first night we will have a 'cook and bring' or 'pot luck dinner'. On the last night there will be a celebratory feast which you are invited to help prepare. If you have specific dietary requirements, please let us know in advance.

Focus activity - Bead making

Beads are the oldest art-form known to mankind. Beads have been found in the fossil record as far back as the pleistocene. Over thousands of years beads have been used for barter / trade, as markers of status and wealth, as body ornamentation, and for prayer, ritual and ceremony. Bead making as an art teaches us things about unity and separation, about working together harmoniously, and about individuation and community. For this camp, you are invited to bring materials that are significant or special to you to fashion into beads, or to use the materials provided to make your own set of beads for ornamentation, ritual, or barter!

Focus activity - Willow charcoal making and automatic drawing

Willow charcoal is a highly prized drawing material, that has been used for centuries by masters and amaeteurs alike to create sketches, preliminary drawings, and studies. The beauty of willow charcoal is in the immediacy of the image, it enables the artist to capture their subject in a few brief strokes, bringing even the most stagnant and still scenes to life. It is extremely versatile, able to create hard black lines and endless grades of shadow, and when paired with an eraser can also give life to beautiful highlights. Charcoal making involves working intimately with the willow canes, stripping, cutting to size, and then firing them to produce a fine art material. 

Automatic drawing is a drawing technique aimed at bringing forth the body's wisdom onto the page so that it can be observed and integrated. It is a partnership between your body, the earth, the willow and the page that can bring forth incredible insights and deep wisdom.

About the practitioners

Shalome Lateef is an eighth generation Australian woman of European and UK descent. She is a botanical bead maker, horticulturalist, and ritual skills teacher. She lives on the lands of the Wadawurrung in Ballarat, was born on the lands of the Wurrundjeri, and grew up on Dja Dja Wurrung country in Central Victoria, all territories of the Kulin nation. She has travelled extensively in Australia and overseas and speaks Arabic and English. Her beads have been on display in 2023 at a solo exhibition in Unicorn Lane, Ballarat, and she was a demonstrating practitioner at Craft Lab 24.

Bianca Patetl-Flowers is highly accomplished artist, naturopath, and soul guide. She blends creativity, spiritual wisdom, plant healing and vibrational medicine, assisting people to shine the joy of their soul light in the world. Bianca is a dynamic workshop facilitator, exuding joy, energy and compassion, and bringing her depth of insight and expert space holding skills to bear in her teaching. She has been making willow charcoal since her years in art school, and finds joy in enabling and initiating people into the process of turning raw materials into a fine art product.

About the organisers

Shalome Lateef and Bianca Patetl-Flowers have a shared vision for assisting people to enter into mind states - what Tyson Yunkaporta calls 'ancestral mind' - through repetitive craft work and land-based relationships that enable deep insights, feelings of connection and integration, and a deep sense of peace and wholeness. They are strongly eco-spiritual, eco-feminist, and pro-grass roots initiatives. Their work is characterised by a strong sense of relational responsibility and ethical relationships to land, water, people, work and life.

About the venue

The Mallee Bush Retreat is a volunteer run, community initiative, established and run by the Hopetoun community. The venue offers camping around the circumference of the lake, with three toilet and ammenities blocks, two camp kitchens, various huts for accommodation and a function room. We will congregate for all craft activities and meals in the function room and its surrounding lawns and firepit. 

The Mallee landscape is pared back and radiates its own distinct semi-arid beauty. You are invited and encouraged to connect deeply with the land and the waters, by way of an opening walk in the lake Coroong lake bed, and various other activities over the weekend.

Contact us

Shalome 0422910740 shalome.knoll@gmail.com

Bianca bianca@biancaflowers.com.au