Isles of Curiosity and Wonder (Digital) Midsummer Creative Retreat: 2025 Edition

Starts June 20th! A seasonal series of creative midsummer prompts and reflection.

The main cabin that we hang out at during our creative retreat. Papercut, 2023, Anna Brones. Available as a print and cards too!

Hello friends,

I am coming at you mid-week with an announcement:

The third annual Isles and Curiosity and Wonder (Digital) Midsummer Creative Retreat starts on June 20th.

It feels like a weird time to announce a creative retreat, but if I know one thing about committing to a life filled with creativity it’s that it helps you to see connections. Staying creative allows us to stay active and engaged, to dream, to think outside of the boxes we are told can’t be changed. Making, planning, and even thinking about art allows us to feel, to see differently, to be sensitive to the struggles around us.

I think we need all of that and more right now, so I am hoping that this annual summer retreat of mine helps you to find a landing place for a few days, and fuels you to continue to participate in your communities.

Now for the Isles of Curiosity and Wonder backstory…

Two years ago I started hosting a creative retreat on an imaginary island.

Yes, an imaginary island.

The Isles of Curiosity and Wonder is a longstanding project of mine. An archipelago of imaginary islands that showed up in my sketchbook during the summer of 2020. That was a summer that required a lot of dreaming, a lot of escaping to imaginary worlds.

Here’s the map that I originally drew.

and yes there’s a spelling error, because CREATIVE PROCESS!

The Isles of Curiosity and Wonder offer a physical geography to hold creative ideas. It is a place that helps to map creativity in a way that makes the process feel a little less elusive. It is a guide, a landing place.

The beaches are rocky, craggy, and covered in barnacles. Salt permeates the air. Cold water plunges are encouraged, and the tide pools are excellent.

“If I could wish something good for someone, I would wish for them an island with no address.”

- Tove Jansson

A couple of years ago, I wanted to do some kind of a summer version of my digital Advent calendar called 24 Days of Making, Doing, and Being. Well what’s more magical and summery and inspiring than imaginary islands?? The Isles and Curiosity and Wonder (Digital) Midsummer Creative Retreat was born.

What does a creative retreat on an imaginary island look like?

Consider this retreat more like a journey. A chance to explore a new place and learn things along the way. You are welcomed onto the island, planted into an imaginary place. Every installment of the retreat is kind of like turning the page in an atlas. You’ll learn about the assorted geographies of the Isles and be encouraged to use them to reflect on your own creative process.

I like to think of this retreat as a kind of seasonal recalibration. Mark the seasonal shift and consider what your own creative work and process will look like during the summer season.

The retreat is not a “point A to point B” exercise. This is an exercise in being in process, seeing what appears.

I know that saying “just trust me” is a little bit of a cop out, because it means that I haven’t done my job to correctly explain exactly what this is, but… just trust me.

For those of you who are new to the retreat, I like to think of it as the creative inspiration you feel when you travel to a new place. And for those of you who have already been to the Isles of Curiosity and Wonder, I want it to feel like returning to a place that you know well.

Just like with any place that we know intimately, there is always more to discover.

The third edition of Isles of Curiosity and Wonder (Digital) Midsummer Creative Retreat will run June 20-24, 2025 and goes out to paid subscribers.

A SPECIAL MUSICAL GUEST

This year, I am adding an additional component: music! Each day you’ll have a new piece of music to listen to, made for us by

Fog Chaser

.

This is yet another way to bring you into the magical place that is the Isles of Curiosity and Wonder. I’m always trying to think of how to make digital experiences a little more textured and sensorial and this is one of them.

DIGITAL MIDSUMMER RETREAT BASICS

• This creative retreat is all about slowing down, creating some pockets of space, and cultivating a little more magic through your own creative process.

• Consider this a self-imposed creative retreat/residency. I send you prompts and reflections, and you figure out how to put them in place.

• The retreat takes place over 5 days, starting on June 20th. Every day for five days a newsletter will land in your inbox.

• There is so specific project to complete (unless you want to). This is encouragement to allow ourselves to be in process.

HOW DO I SIGN UP?

This retreat is available to paid subscribers, so all you have to do is ensure that you have a paid subscription.

These retreats are more fun if you do it together with someone, so why not sign up a friend?

In the last two years of doing this retreat, I have been reminded of the importance of imagination. Of being able to dream and think outside of what is right in front of us. I think we all might be in need of a little bit of that right now.

I hope that you will consider joining us in the Isles of Curiosity and Wonder and seeing what transpires.

-Anna

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