Creating as a Relational Practice
Creativity is often understood as an individual ability associated with imagination, inspiration, or talent. This course offers a different perspective: understanding creativity as a relational practice that emerges from the way we attend to, explore, and respond to the possibilities offered by our environment.
Drawing on philosophy, ecological psychology, and contemporary artistic practice, the course approaches creativity as a situated and distributed process that emerges through the relationship between people, materials, and environments. Through theoretical reflection, case study analysis, and hands-on experimentation, participants will develop tools to cultivate more open, sensitive, and responsive ways of creating that arise through interaction with the world.
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To understand creativity as a relational practice and develop tools for perceiving, exploring, and responding to the possibilities for action that emerge through interaction with the environment.
Ignasi Aballí, visual artist working within conceptual practices.
Paula Bruna, environmental scientist and artist.
Ada Castells, writer and journalist.
Claudia Claremí, visual artist and filmmaker.
Pilar Cortada, creativity researcher and Director of Eina Obra.
Antía Iglesias, artist and researcher.
Estampa, an artistic collective of programmers, filmmakers, and researchers.
Angélique Lebert, researcher at the intersection of Experimental Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience.
Laura Vilar, dancer, educator, creator, and researcher in dance and movement across educational, artistic, and performative contexts.
Eulàlia Rovira, artist, educator, and researcher.
The course consists of nine three-hour sessions held over a three-month period. Each session combines theoretical reflection, the analysis of key references, and practical experimentation to explore, through direct experience, how attention, perception, and the relationship between people and their environment shape creative processes. Artistic practice functions as a laboratory for exploring new ways of attending to, perceiving, and responding to the world around us.
The course follows a modular and progressive structure, allowing participants to develop the content gradually through an alternation of concepts, exercises, and collective discussion. Between sessions, participants will carry out observation, exploration, and experimentation exercises designed to integrate the concepts explored into their own research, creative practice, and professional contexts
This course is aimed at researchers, artists, designers, educators, and professionals working in culture, science, innovation, or related fields who wish to broaden their understanding of creativity from an ecosystemic perspective.
Capsule 1 · Ecological Creativity: Situated, Distributed, and Relational
Date: October 27
Faculty: Pilar Cortada and Antía Iglesias
The first capsule introduces the conceptual framework of the course through the key theories underpinning ecosystemic creativity. Rather than viewing creativity as something located solely in the human mind and its cognitive processes, participants will explore it as a situated, distributed, and ecological process emerging through the relationship between people and their environment. This opening session examines how attention, perception, and context actively shape creative processes.
Capsule 2 · Resonating
Date: November 3
Faculty: Pilar Cortada and Laura Vilar
This capsule explores the role of sensory, affective, and intellectual attention in the emergence of creativity. Participants will investigate how the ways we attend to, perceive, and allow ourselves to be affected by the world influence our capacity to discover new possibilities for action. Through perception exercises and practical experimentation, they will develop more open and sensitive ways of relating to their surroundings.
Capsule 3 · Coexisting
Date: November 10
Faculty: Pilar Cortada and Paula Bruna
Coexisting means existing alongside other people, materials, and environments. This session examines how creativity emerges from the dynamic relationship between individuals and their surroundings, highlighting the active role of context in shaping creative processes and the possibilities for action it offers. Through experimentation with different materials, situations, and environments, participants will expand their ability to perceive, explore, and activate new creative possibilities.
Capsule 4 · Contaminating and Being Contaminated
Date: November 17
Faculty: Pilar Cortada and Eulàlia Rovira
Creative processes do not unfold in a linear way; they are continually transformed through relationships, encounters, and interferences. Inspired by Anna Tsing, this capsule understands "contamination" as a constitutive condition of creation, where every encounter reshapes the way we think, perceive, and act.
Capsule 5 · Unlearning
Date: November 24
Faculty: Pilar Cortada and Angélique Lebert
We perceive the world through categories, habits, and modes of attention that determine what we recognise as meaningful. This capsule examines how these perceptual structures shape our Umwelt, or meaningful environment, and therefore our creative possibilities. Through a series of practical exercises, participants will suspend habitual ways of thinking in order to open space for new ways of perceiving, thinking, and creating.
Capsule 6 · Problematizing
Date: December 1
Faculty: Pilar Cortada and Marc Padró (Estampa Studio)
Problematizing means questioning what we take for granted and transforming seemingly resolved situations into new research and creative questions. This capsule develops an investigative attitude that embraces uncertainty, nuance, and ambiguity while exploring strategies for redefining problems and opening new possibilities for thought and action.
Capsule 7 · Exploring
Date: December 9
Faculty: Pilar Cortada and Ignasi Aballí
Exploration involves actively directing attention towards the environment to discover relationships, patterns, and possibilities that previously went unnoticed. Rather than serving as a means to achieve predetermined goals, exploration is presented as a perceptual practice that expands our capacity to learn, create, and respond to complexity.
Capsule 8 · Attending Aesthetically
Date: December 15
Faculty: Pilar Cortada and Claudia Claremí
This capsule approaches aesthetic attention as a perceptual disposition that enhances our ability to attune ourselves to the environment and recognise new possibilities for action. Through observation and experimentation, participants will cultivate a state of openness that encourages more receptive and sensitive ways of relating to a more-than-human world.
Capsule 9 · Articulating
Date: December 22
Faculty: Pilar Cortada and Ada Castells
The final capsule starts from the idea that articulation is itself a creative act. Putting ideas into words, images, or gestures does not simply communicate them—it transforms them and gives them new form. Articulation therefore has a dual function: outwardly, by enabling communication and exchange with others, and inwardly, by clarifying, refining, and expanding one's own thinking. Through experimentation with oral, written, visual, and performative forms of articulation, participants will explore how these modes not only communicate ideas but also generate new possibilities for understanding and creation.
The course fee is €702 (10% discount for the Eina community).