Re-designed for 2025, in a world that has become pervasively uncertain, this programme brings the arts to the fore. We invite practitioners to experiment with their personal authority and growth as leaders, change and transformation agents, activists and artists. 

The programme is designed with innovative artistic and critical-creative methods alongside the experiential and applied social science approaches developed by the Tavistock Institute. 

We will also consider concepts and approaches including socio-technical systems; role, power and authority; unconscious processes and social dreaming; foresight and scenario building.

Format

The fully in-person programme is designed to be accessible and agile and to mirror complex organisational spaces. 

There are three seasons followed by an exhibiting season. Participants can choose to attend one, two or all of the seasons as well as a final and fourth exhibition season. 

Deepening Creative Practice

Three field-based seasons;

Four self-directed days in our London studio space

and with our archive at the Wellcome Library;

One final co-created exhibiting season. 

Attend one, two or all of the seasons.

Who is it for?

The programme is for those working with change and transformation who want a space to engage in serious and radical experimentation to develop their own practice. Each iteration will generate a peer group of creative leaders and practitioners, situated in and influencing a powerful ecosystem of organisations.

Certification

Participants who successfully complete all of the three seasons as well as the exhibition season within three years will receive a Certificate of Achievement for artistic action research and organisational change. The programme will be certified by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations.

What might it look like?

We will be considering our leadership and organisational identities alongside activist, artistic and organisational practices. 

Experiments will be underpinned by the latest case studies of the Tavistock Institute and informed by faculty members’ practice as research. Example explorations may include: still life as organisational phenomenon, psychophysical and use of self, human-centred AI through mixed-reality theatre and dance.

Themes

Each seasonal theme will have core Faculty members collaborating with commissioned artists operating across disciplines, which will include dance, visual arts, AI-driven technologies and digital media, archival practice and performance. 

Themes will work at the intersection of seasonal, time-based qualities and artistic form and focus which illuminate different ‘ways of being’ within our organisational contexts.

The following are example themes for 2025: 

Spring, bubbling up, burgeoning, awakening: sculpting, drawing and design-thinking to lead into the exploration of objects, artefacts and the material culture of organisations. 

Summer, growth, flowering, fecundity and power: theatre, role, performance and agency to illuminate different understandings of socio-technical systems including AI.

Autumn, liminality, composting:  scores and choreography, improvisation, and movement in space to harvest and collect thoughts and expressions as we move between worlds. 

Winter, hibernation, transformation: archival exploration to bridge past and future, working with paradox, experimental design, memory and foresight.

The Journey

The vision for Deepening Creative Practice has always been to situate it as a dynamic container for the wider socially oriented arts practices at the Institute. We try to resist the pull to linearity of learning programmes where certain inputs are expected to lead to certain outputs. We tend to approach our own learning as causal when we know this is far from the reality of organisational life.

Rather than outcomes, we might suggest delving into the richness and complexity of all that organisational life offers — some of which will be challenging.

Instead of prescribing what you will get out of the programme, we invite you to imagine what could possibly emerge from each of the seasons, within their societal, global and organisational context. 

You will be the architect of your learning, and we will challenge you in finding a mind of your own in this regard. 

The invitation

Deepening Creative Practice participants will be invited to:

• Challenge oneself and each other to find alternative perspectives and try out new approaches;
• Free oneself from feeling or being stuck and from identities that may no longer be of service;
• Experiment with an aesthetic sensibility to design and change in organisations;
• Explore new modes of expression for the difficult and sometimes intractable problems that relate to organisations and wider society;
• Make space for thinking differently, breaking moulded habits and petrified behaviours;
• Participate in explicit and sensitive crafting of a suitable container for the work to unfold into.

What might emerge?

An increase in your ability to address complex organisational and societal issues inventively, ethically and imaginatively;

A new repertoire and language of creative leadership. This might involve curating/caring; archiving; choreographing; conserving; exhibiting; presencing; embodying your role(s) with intention.

A new relationship with the performative and theatrical side of yourselves to enable you to share your practice in the public domain. 

Why engage with us at the Tavistock Institute and why now?

The Tavistock Institute has worked in a trans-disciplinary way since its inception. As experts in working with the unknown, we are precisely the right people to lead this unique programme and support you in your deep exploration. 

For over 75 years, we have blended cutting-edge research with practical applications to help individuals and organisations navigate complexity, change, and human dynamics. We consider the whole system, applying social science methods to address research questions that are urgent and demand attention. 

The Tavistock Institute has pioneered internationally recognised creative, psychoanalytic and systems approaches to respond to organisational and societal challenges.

Come and play (seriously) with us, and equip yourself for the unfolding and unpredictable challenges of the immediate future.

Next Steps

We welcome expressions of interest and applications for one or more seasons.

I'm interested

Please contact us if you have questions or would like to speak to one of the programme faculty: email Hafija Bibi at h.bibi@tavinstitute.org

We welcome conversations and your ideas, thoughts and dreams about the programme. Discounts and bursaries are available. 

Venue

Programme Director

Programme faculty

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