refloria workshops
A workshop for anyone who wants to feel more creative, led by Lilli Unwin, singer-songwriter and researcher.
Just as ecological rewilding allows nature to heal by removing human interference, rewilding creativity removes the interference of perfectionism, hustle culture and rigid expectations.
Your natural creative voice returns to its instinctive state.
Each session is two hours of guided exercises, conversation and making things in a small, friendly group, drawing on my research and my working life as a singer-songwriter.
A few simple practices to carry creativity into ordinary weeks.
Practical ways to keep going when the inner critic gets loud.
Honest discussion about creativity with people who get it.
Dates, places and tickets are always on the events calendar.
Here's the odd thing about creative jobs. The people paid to have ideas often have the least room to practise having them. Deadlines, briefs and sign-off rounds teach everyone to play it safe, and brainstorms become a game of waiting to see what the boss thinks.
This workshop gives your team two hours away from all of that. They make things, share them before they're polished, and practise the small creative risks that good work depends on. People go back to their desks braver, and it shows in what they produce.
Get in touch and tell me about your team. I'll shape the session around where you are, then come and run it at your office or somewhere greener nearby.
Sessions run as two hours or a half day, for groups of up to 20.
Pricing on application. Tell me your group size and format and I'll send a simple quote.
curious whether it would suit your team?
Start a conversationIf you run a shop, studio or other lovely space, this is an easy way to bring people through your door for something they'll remember. I bring the workshop, the materials and my own community of attendees. You bring the room and your audience.
Attendees buy tickets, so there is no fee to pay. They spend a few hours somewhere new, surrounded by what you do, and they leave with a good feeling attached to your name.
Every space is different, so each one starts with a conversation. Get in touch and we'll talk through dates, your space and anything else.
I'm a singer-songwriter and researcher who's spent years studying how creative people keep going, and why so many of us stop. refloria is where that research meets real rooms full of real people, trying ideas out and building inspiration together.
My sessions are warm, practical and gently structured. Nobody is put on the spot.
Just as ecological rewilding allows nature to heal by removing human interference, rewilding creativity removes the interference of perfectionism, hustle culture and rigid expectations, so your natural creative voice can return to its instinctive state.
In practice it includes ecological alignment and cyclical rhythms, self-compassion, play, process and intrinsic motivation, and a critical awareness of the wider systems we create inside.
No experience is needed and all creative disciplines are welcome. Workshops are built for everyone from complete beginners to working artists, and nobody is put on the spot. Come along, just as you are.
Perfectionism is a multidimensional personality style in which a person seeks to attain unattainably high standards they expect of themselves, or perceive others expect of them (Hewitt, Flett and Mikail, 2017). Research suggests it has been rising across generations since the late 1980s (Curran and Hill, 2019), and it sits behind a lot of creative block.
Self-oriented perfectionism is holding yourself to unattainably high standards. Socially prescribed perfectionism is feeling that other people expect those standards of you, and that their approval depends on meeting them. There is also other-oriented perfectionism, where the unrealistic standards point outwards at other people.
The workshops focus mostly on the first two, because they are the ones that quietly shut creativity down.
Excellencism is the pursuit of excellence (Gaudreau, 2019): aiming high while keeping standards that are actually reachable. The distinction matters because you can care deeply about doing good work without the unattainable standards and harsh self-judgement that come with perfectionism. The workshops are about keeping the care and losing the cruelty.
Yes. The workshops draw on my research into how creative people sustain their practice, alongside published work on perfectionism, self-compassion and motivation, including Hewitt, Flett and Mikail (2017), Gaudreau (2019), Neff and Germer (2013) and Curran (2023). It is research-informed but never a lecture: descriptive, not prescriptive.
Wherever there is a warm room and a few willing people. Dates, places and tickets are always on the events calendar.