C-RAP is framework for experimenting with Wild Creativity.  It is a systematic process that jumpstarts your innate creativity by initiating a creative task and encouraging reflection and collaboration.

Wild Creativity

Wild Creativity is when art and life are fully integrated. When you realize that there is no specific time and place for art. 

Art is for everyone. You were born to make art, to wear art, to inhabit art, to be art. Art it is the everyday expression of beauty, mystery and wonder.

Most of us turn to the select few who have become professional creatives for all the wonderful art we fill our lives with. It’s easy to admire art made by others and quickly become discouraged by our inability to produce art ourselves.

Now is the time to re-wild your creativity. Wild creativity is the beginning and end game of artistic expression. It is when you reclaim your innate creative spark and recognize the power that you have to transform your life and bring about a society where creativity is valued over consumerism.

We developed C-RAP for ourselves and we are happy to share it with you. Our central focus is encouragement – encouraging you to seek, to experiment, and to create.

CREATIVE 

The first step to connecting with your wild creativity is doing. Start now. Just use what is around you and start creating. Don't judge the results or worry if it is "good' or "bad".  The goal is to turn away from the screen, resist looking for more inspiration and just start. Now!

RESEARCH

Now that you have started with something small to get the creative juices flowing, think about how it made you feel and what you want to do next.

Be more observant. Look closely. Explore nature.  Be curious. Inspiration comes to those who pay attention. Journal your own personal development through sketching and hand writing.

Keep a diary/sketchbook - research journal and carry it with you everywhere. Sketching WILL change your life - the final product doesn't matter - it helps you to see. Poetry can help you do the same thing. Stop and write about what you see.

Keep a Journal with you at all times for sketching and poetry.

The goal is not good work, it is to help you see the world, to be attentive.  You need to slow down and take the time to really look at things so you can express what you see in sketches or words. Recording what you see has to be more physical than taking a picture.  If you want take a picture of your sketch or hand written poem and share in online.

Use a finder - a frame the size of your phone - to isolate details and develop your seeing muscles. Be an everyday explorer

The journal and finder are necessary to help you see everyday life as an adventure where there is something new and interesting to see - in the real world - everyday. 

Practice Brain Tsunamis - quick association of ideas, without judgement to get wild creativity flowing.  Choose a problem that needs to be solved an record all ideas that emerge.  Suspend judgement

ACTION

Begin your next project with the skills and inspiration that you have gathered.  Reach out to others to help you.  Work together.  Don't quit until its done.

PROJECT

Now that you have completed your project share it.  Take it to the streets.  Share your skills and knowledge so that you can spread Wild Creativity around your neighbourhood and beyond.

Hidden Fortunes - Positive messages left in surprising places - shelves, books, stores.

Public dancing - Winter of the Dance - returning to a childlike state. "It was life transforming. You have to force yourself into a situation that is slightly uncomfortable, because when you come out the other side it is the most freeing thing imaginable." - Kerri Smith

Create instant sculptures around your neighbourhood out of found objects. Arrows leading to a treasure.

*you need a sense of childlike wonder, playfulness, love for people and foolishness to do all these things. Not for cool people. Dead people are cool.

Go on an adventure right now. Explore somewhere you have never been. Document it through words and sketching (then share those online) Sleep outside. Be uncomfortable.

LIFE IS AN EXPERIMENT
BE DEADLY SERIOUS ABOUT NOT TAKING YOURSELF TOO SERIOUSLY

Make Stamp Kits - for decorating anything - stuff, clothing, walls, bike, cars. A quick way to add detail.

Make Stencil Kits - a quick way for large scale decoration.

Like all kids we loved forts and secret hideouts. Recently we have been experimenting with urban camping, graffiti living and High Up Huts. We are interested in low impact, artistic shelters in unusual and forgotten urban locations. We like to build whimsical structures out of salvaged materials that stand out against the cold backdrop of concrete, steel and glass that makes up so much of the urban environment.

This is a journey that we have just started upon and are seeking people who have been making the most out of reclaimed materials and at the forefront of creative living strategies.

Dan Price from Oregon is a friend of ours who has been experimenting with extreme simple living since the 1980s. He is one of the most inspiring people that we have ever met. He has lived in tents, teepees, yurts and now lives in a hole in the ground. A really cozy and dry one. He is a master of using scrap material and building magical and artistic living spaces.

C-RAP - BUILD A LIFE-SIZED HUT

CREATIVE
With materials around you build a kids fort for yourself, in your home or close by. Make it small, so that you can't stand up in it. Bring some stuff into it that pre-screen kids would have done in a fort: some books, paper and pens, a tuba from the school band, and spend some time in there. If anyone asks what you're doing tell them your doing a C-RAP.

RESEARCH
Did you build forts as a kid? Did you design your dream forts and homes? Draw out some designs. Go outside and find some branches and other found materials to build a model fort/hut. Make it sturdy enough that you can set it somewhere in your neighbourhood as a small beacon of wild creativity. Go exploring and find an interesting spot to put your hut, for the adventurous to discover.

ACTION
Build the High Up Hut with a little help from your friends. Don't forget to use as much recycled materials as possible and don't make it a box. Curved lines will stand out against the squares and rectangles of modern *godless buildings. *See Hundertwasser.

PROJECT
With a lot of help from your friends move your hut into place. From a hidden spot sit at watch the reactions of those who notice it. Continue to add decorative elements to it over time to give people something new to look out for. If somebody destroys it, forgive them, because forgiving those who don't deserve it is called grace. And grace is what we need a lot more of in this world.

C-RAP - BICYCLE

The bicycle is the ultimate overland vehicle. It is also the best vehicle to customize and decorate because free ones are so readily available and parts are easy to come by. We have been building our own custom bikes for over 20 years now: everything from tall bikes to recumbent arm powered bicycles. Even with all that experience there is so much more that we want to do with the bicycle.

For years we have been dreaming of building the ultimate overland tall bikes: bicycles that are capable of traversing the most rugged terrain and busy city streets while being burly enough to carry camping gear, tools and all the camera gear necessary to document their adventures. Out of necessity these custom bikes will be taller than usual.

CREATIVE
Get on your bike right now and take a route you have never taken before. When you return find things around your house to decorate your bike with, the more colourful the better. When you are done ride it. Wear a motorcycle or hockey helmet when riding your bike with googles and winter gloves.

RESEARCH
Did you make any connections on your ride? Document experiences in journal and through incoherent noises and hand signals. Start to plan and design your next customized bicycle. Collect old bikes and parts for customization and decoration.

ACTION
Enlist others to join your new outlaw bike club.

PROJECT
Take it to the streets! Riding art bikes in a group is the best, so find some friends to ride with. If you don't have any friends, go make some. (See C-RAP video on making friends out of paper mache and old inner tubes). Plan and go on an overnight bike camping trip. Make sure to always stop and talk to strangers and let them try your bike. You want to spread the stoke.

C-RAP - CARS

Everyday driver art cars are rare. Making an art car for a parade or a once-a-year festival in the middle of a desert is one thing, but very few people have the guts to decorate their own car. Whenever we see an art car driving up the street it makes our week and we are inspired by the creator’s commitment to expressing their wild creativity. We have had a few decorated vehicles over the years: cars, vans even an RV. 

It’s a big commitment to begin decorating your vehicle, but you'll find it's impossible to stop once you get started and the rewards of having an art car are priceless. You can't be in a bad mood or flip people off when you are driving an art car because of all the smiles and waves you'll inspire as you're movin' right along.

CREATIVE
If you don't have a car, good for you. They're really bad for the environment, even the electric ones. What do you think the batteries are made of? Grass fed, free range organic tofu? If you have a car, start by adding some personalized decorations to the inside of it. Hang a bunch of stuff from your mirror and get an ornate, fake gold tissue box holder. Find some magnets from the thrift shop and stick them too your car. Just start doing some small, non permanent decorating and customizing.

RESEARCH
Record how you felt driving around in your mildly decorated car in song and dance, or in your journal. Get some toy cars from the thrift shop and with permanent markers or paint decorate them. Leave them in weird, surprising places for unsuspecting people. Maybe someone will take it as a sign from God that they should decorate their car too and then you'll have two art cars driving around the neighbourhood.

ACTION
Decorate your car. Enlist the help of friends. It's a big surface, the more hands the better. Make an art car party of it. Hopefully they will join in the fun and decorate their cars. Make it something that will make people smile. There are a lot of people on the road in bad moods and you can change that. Who knows maybe your art car could save a life!

PROJECT
Driving your art car will change your life.

C-RAP - HOME

We have always been inspired by the builders of single visionary environments. Spaces that are totally transformed by the lifelong work of eccentric builders. These people are rarely professional artists but they are overtaken by an all-consuming desire to build something big. In a world of high rises and mass produced subdivisions they seek to create their own earthly paradise. Some of our early inspirations were Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden and Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers. A primary method that many visionary builders use to decorate their worlds is mosaics.

Mosaics are simple yet time consuming, but their great benefit is that you can use all kinds of broken pottery, dishes, tiles, buttons, toys... really there’s so much that you’ll find around you. Put together, these cast off, broken pieces are an amazing way to transform a space.

C-RAP - VISIONARY HOME DECORATION

CREATIVE
Make a mosaic face. Find a base. Eg: a can lid, either small to big. Find materials around your house that can make up the features of the face. Attach the features to the face permanently using screws, super glue or PL Bond. Make faces happy and goofy. Since that was so easy, make a bunch of them and leave them in surprising places around the streets to scare and encourage the locals.

RESEARCH
Wherever you are start to look around for discarded things that can be used in a mosaic. Old dishes, bottle caps, bicycle parts, shotgun shells, beads, broken tools... You may have to look up from your phone to do this. If you find this difficult lay your phone in some quick drying concrete. Look for a spot around your house to mosaic: steps, a door frame, the garage. If a house is not possible look around for something around your neighbourhood that is set to be demolished or is totally forgotten and do your mosaic there.

ACTION
Get your friends and family to collect materials for you to use in your mosaic. Begin your mosaic project on your own but as you learn the skill teach others so that they can help. The more people involved the bigger of an area you can mosaic.

PROJECT
Continue to get as many people involved in mosaicing as possible. The more skilled mosaicers there are in your town the more quickly you can mosaic everything! Don't use words like mosaicing and mosaicers, they're not real words. 

C-RAP - CUSTOMIZE YOUR CLOTHING

Decorating your clothing is the scariest of all the forms of wild creativity. It is only for the bold self confident.

For many years we have experimented with being more creative with our clothing. We've designed our own logos and screen printed them on our shirts and jackets. We've customized our existing clothing, changing the shape and fit. We've made our own patches and sewn them on our pants, shirts and jackets. We have just begun and there is so much farther to go.

CREATIVE
Create an outfit from clothing and accessories that are as colourful as possible. Don't worry about the colours matching! Go out in a public space with it.

RESEARCH
If you didn't have the courage to do the first step, ask yourself, why? If you did it, record how it felt. Did anybody say anything to you? If so make note of it. Research clothing used in celebrations around the world. Look to the wild colours in nature for inspiration. Just begin to plan your own project.

ACTION
Create a vest, customize a jacket, sunglasses or a hat. Enlist some friends to do it with you. It will be more fun.

PROJECT
Wear your clothes out to school, shopping, for a walk or to work (if it won't get you fired!) Get a group to do it together; it will be a much more powerful experience. Take photos and share with your friends, maybe you can get more people to join you and go bigger with your customized coats experiments.

OUT OF THE ABYSS

Living day-to-day within our consumer culture we can feel hopeless about whether the fire of wild creativity will catch on in a meaningful way. Before sinking into despair we take a journey into the wild to connect with the essence of creativity.

In going into the wild we commit to travelling as lightly as possible. We ride our personally customized adventure tall bikes and carry everything we need with us.

On this journey we immerse ourselves in the wilderness and are reminded of our connection to the earth and everything in it.

Living a life of wild creativity is not about constant activity but grows stronger with solitude and time in nature inspired and invigorated by a deep connection to the inherent creativity of the natural world.

Creative Research Action Project  

Ideas

Keep a diary/sketchbook - research journal and carry it with you everywhere. Sketching WILL change your life - the final product doesn't matter, it helps you to see. Poetry can help you do the same thing. Stop and write about what you see.

Quotes, sayings, sketches, feelings, poems.

Use a finder - the size of your phone - isolate details, develop your seeing muscles, be an everyday explorer.

Banners of many colours, shapes and sizes strung up to cover a ceiling or over a street or alleyway. Learning by Heart pg. 203

Write or draw on things you find. Shells, cans, mattress.

Brainstorm Brain tsunami - record all thoughts - quick association to get the wild creativity flowing. Suspend all judgement just write. Choose a problem record all ideas as they emerge without judging them.

Paint a mural on a piece of thick fabric with rust paint and hang it outside.

Mosaic faces.

Make "friends" get circle stickers or googly eyes and make faces out of inanimate objects.

Banners

Chalk

Hidden Fortunes. Positive messages left in suprising places. eg. shelves, books, stores

Public dancing - winter of the dance - returning to a childlike state. "It was life transforming. You have to force yourself into a situation that is slightly uncomfortable, because when you come out the other side it is the most freeing thing imaginable." - Kerri Smith

Get action figures or dolls from a thrift store and place them in unexpected places.

Create instant sculptures around your neighbourhood out of found objects. Arrows on the ground pointing to a treasure.

LOOK UP signs (make 10 and walk around your streets looking for cool stuff and put the signs up) CHECK THIS OUT.

*you need a sense of childlike wonder, playfulness, love for people, foolishness to do all these things. Not for cool people. Dead people are cool.

Go on an adventure right now. Explore somewhere you have never been. Document it through words and sketching (then share those online) Sleep outside. Be uncomfortable.

Create an eccentrified RV where you can interview people inside of it to learn about their fears of creativity and secret creative dreams. How can we equip you to complete your dream.

LIFE IS AN EXPERIMENT
BE DEADLY SERIOUS ABOUT NOT TAKING YOURSELF TOO SERIOUSLY

The most "successful" people can get to the end of their life and feel like they have failed.

Stamping - for decorating anything - stuff, clothing, walls, bike, cars. a quick way to add detail.
(Need to have quick ways for large scale decoration) - Stencils as well.
Skills:
Stamping
Stencil
Mosaic
Brush Painting
Spray Painting
Carpentry
Bicycle repair
Welding