Secret Art Powers: How Creative Thinking Can Achieve Radical Change

Description

What is the mysterious power of art to excite, confound, challenge and transform us? While artists themselves often struggle to articulate the value of their work, this volume describes artistic thinking as a mindset, a collection of secret powers that we all have access to.

Identifying six areas of creative expertise - lies, multiplicity, fluidity, failure, live body, and imagination - Secret Art Powers shows how thinking like an artist can increase personal resilience, unleash innovation, dissolve unhealthy power relationships, and help us describe and navigate the complex situations we find ourselves in.

Author Jo Randerson weaves together observations, inspirations, reflections and examples from their upbringing in the Anglican church and their experiences as a celebrated writer, playwright, director, performer, comedian, and public speaker.

Reviews

"Secret Art Powers is a wonderful gift: it feels like exactly what we all need right now and probably forever. It's joyful and generous and affirming, by which I mean it makes you feel more real, which is such a relief. No one but Jo could do it."- Freya Daly Sadgrove

"Inspiring, funny, profound, timely, challenging, nourishing... I loved it!... The technocentric world is closing in around us. The future is creativity. The future is in this book. Read it!"- Bret Mckenzie, Flight of the Conchords

Author description

Jo Randerson ONZM (they/them) is an Arts Foundation New Generation Laureate, and the founder and artistic director of Barbarian Productions. They are an award-winning playwright and author and a graduate of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University . Jo has published four volumes of short fiction and poetry and a number of play. As a writer they have been twice-nominated for the IIML prize, received the Bruce Mason award, completed a Burns Fellowship at Otago University, and won the NZIFF Patron's Choice Award for their first short screenplay Hey Brainy Man! Jo is the creator of Barbarian's twenty-five year catalogue of works, from their seminal solo performance Banging Cymbal, Clanging Gong (2001) to large-scale outdoor immersive experiences U R Here (2023) & U R Back (2024). Jo completed their Masters in Theatre Arts (Directing) at Toi Whakaari: The NZ Drama School in 2012. Their theatre work has also attracted many accolades, including Absolutely Positively Most Original Production and Best Director - Wellington Theatre Awards 2019 and the 'Unf**k the World' award - Auckland Fringe Awards 2021 for Cook Thinks Again, and Winner: Excellence For Overall Production, Auckland Theatre Awards 2019 for Sing it to My Face. In 2023 they received the Topp Prize for Comedy.