Natalie McDonagh

"'Kindly let me help you or you will drown,' said the monkey putting the fish safely up a tree." Alan Watts. My experimental creative arts practice (based in Australia) is dedicated to expanding the ways we see, think about and understand ourselves, others and the world and our actions in it, and on it. Over the past decade I have evolved and refined a highly effective art-based methodology of thinking called Creative Contemplation® that is applied to personal and professional development in organisations. This approach to cultivating other modes of mind has shown itself to be accessible to people who have done no creative arts since kindergarten and it has proven to be especially beneficial to those concerned with the massively complex issue of sustainability - cultivating sustainable ways of relating to ourselves, to others and to the world. This art-based thinking is also embodied in the design of my thinking tools that can be explored at http://www.mcdonaghdesign.com where you can also find peer reviewed papers documenting some case studies of my work with environmental scientists and teachers. This year (2009) I expect to complete my PhD research into these creative practices in a project called In/sight: The Art of Creating Self-Reflexive Spaces and establish a web based thinking environment called 'adaptive mind' to share my knowledge and methods with the many others who share my belief we need new ways of thinking to generate the new ways of doing that can enable us to meet the enormous changes and challenges we all face. I would love to hear from others working in this field - cultivating new modes of mind to equip us to usefully meet the complexity and uncertainty of our future.