The Importance of Artist Communities in Times of Covid:
Why I chose to spend the last 5 years in an Artist Community, and advocate this lifestyle in 2021 more than ever.
By Therese Lowton
As a child I was always captivated by the Circus. They were able to make the impossible possible. Circus performers were masters of the human experience. They mastered how to work with each other to emphasise each individual’s unique gifts.
It sparked a deep curiosity, and that somehow felt like the seed of all creation.
In 2015 I finally took the plunge to quit my stable job as an Interior Designer in an upcoming firm in Sydney. Despite having the type of lifestyle urban hipsters go gaga about, there was just something that didn’t sit well. At school I majored in sustainable design & architecture. I geeked out on passive systems and biomimicry. I designed in symbiosis with nature and with the public wellbeing. Here in the “real world” I was creating spaces to make people feel more comfortable so that they could either; 1. Spend more money; or 2. Spend more time working to maximise capital for large corporations that were perpetuating the system. This just didn’t align with the world I wanted to create for myself, or future generations.
When I looked at the amount of energy I had for creating each day, and where I was spending it, I realised that it wasn’t on creating my dream world. My sacred life force was getting used up creating a world within a system that didn’t serve my visions of a life lived to its fullest. The model of working hard for someone else to raise enough money to support the life I wanted was not going to work. I was only working to strengthen the machine that was destroying our home planet. Something had to change.
That’s when I literally ran away with the circus. Or, more specifically, ran away and co-created a community inspired by circus.
As an avid yogi, passionate greenie and hobby aerialist, I scouted out a place in the world I could unplug to meditate, train my body, find new skills, build with cobb, learn about permaculture, connect in community and ultimately reboot my reality. This mission took me to Ometepe Island in Nicaragua. A country I had never heard of throughout my 27 years on Earth. Here, I found true community. I reignited my passion. I realigned my purpose.
It wasn’t long before I started attracting a new Artist Community to my field. I am an avid believer in the Law of Attraction and my single best advice to receive what your soul needs is to just make space for it. Sounds simple, but it can be extremely challenging if you have a busy mind! I literally had to take myself away from all stimuli and to start over. But once you start emitting your own true frequency, things will open up, the synchronicities will come and you will be a rockstar manifestor.
This community was all about radical self reliance, learning through play, experimentation, teamwork, self expression, trust, connection, integrity and non-hierarchy. Here everyone has something unique to offer the collective. That’s to say that the individual is prized on their own unique essence, and it is that diversity which makes the community strong.
I truly believe that this is where the world is going. Communities are sprouting all around the world as more and more people step outside of the system. Technology is opening up new economic potential, whether it to be working remotely, or structuring a lifestyle around cryptocurrency investment, it is more possible now than ever to live in that remote jungle community doing the things that you love daily and co-create financial structures so that the whole community can thrive.
Why art? An expression of art is an expression of the soul and this is the seed from which the new world is created. Those Circus Artists I saw as a child sparked something in me. And that was a new way of existing. That was a world of co-creation, manifestation, magic, mastery of the body, a world of play. It was a world created based on community and the human potential, rather than a world designed around economy
As the world goes through this huge transition it is important that we keep the arts alive. This is a window to the infinite and when the world witnesses this window, they witness themselves, in their divinity. A seed is planted, and then it grows. This is how I envision that artist communities can co-create the new world.
Where would you choose to spend your quarantine at the start of 2021? If being on a cacao sanctuary, upleveling mind, body and spirit with fellow creative nomads, inspired artists and embodied movers sounds like your type of community in quarantine…JOIN US!
Weekly schedule includes progressive classes in meditation, yoga, conditioning, dance, aerials, fire, acro, clown & visual arts.
The Digital Nomad space hosts talks on cryptocurrency investment, brand development, how to teach your art and book & e-book publishing.
Monthly ceremonies, rituals, community building activities, authentic relating, ecstatic dance, performances and events. This is the ultimate plant based community living within a cacao sanctuary on the sacred island of Ometepe.
See you there.
