On Inspiration

Inspiration:
1. the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative
2. the drawing in of breath; inhalation
In this creative conversation, we three artist-researchers at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland ponder inspiration in education and in our own creative practices from a range of perspectives. Each of us offers a provocation on “inspiration” from our own field of practice-research, to each other, to our colleagues, and to our community. This document presents the conversation that ensues.
Drawing on our collective experiences of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, doctoral supervision across a range of performing arts and interdisciplinary fields, teaching body-centred practices such as yoga and pranayama, peer-to-peer mentoring of both academic and practice-based research, practice research methodologies, and our own arts practices (which between the three of us include music, dance, creative and non-fiction writing, theatre, visual arts, and durational performance), we discuss the ways that “inspiration”, both literal and metaphorical, permeates our work. We suggest that literal inspiration (breathing) and metaphorical inspiration (influence, insight, passion) are in fact deeply intertwined. Connection with our living, breathing, inspiring selves enables us to access artistic inspiration, while connection with artistic inspiration enables us to more fully inhabit our living, beathing, inspiring bodies.
Through conversation around embodied creative and artistic research practices, interdisciplinary collaborative explorations, and making with the more-than-human, this paper reflects on how we bring our creative selves and curious mind-bodies to both our practices and our roles within higher education.