If you've never participated in an Art "Round Robin" project before, you must give it a try. In a round robin, an item is passed around among the participants, each participant adding an artistic element before passing it to the next person. This could be: A series of art journals, with each participant contributing a spread or two before sending it on One piece of clothing that is passed around to all participating artists, then given as a gift to a lucky recipient A series of incomplete art dolls, with each person making a small contribution to each doll before sending it on and receiving a new doll A series of quilts that are passed around and worked on by each individual before returning "home" to the originating artist A single altered book passed back and forth between two people, alternating between page spreads The possibilities are endless! Click the photo above to see a few "in progress" shots of some dolls made out of Altoid tins in an art doll round robin in which I'm currently participating. It's so much fun to see these little creatures develop as each artist adds his or her contribution! Look for upcoming round robins announced in Artella!

Just as you can do a round robin art project, you can also create "round robin writing" with two or more people. This is a great way to challenge yourself with some new writing guidelines, or just to have fun with fellow writers. What are the rules? Whatever you want them to be! Each person can add a word at a time, a line at a time, a sentence at a time. Set it up so that the participants can see all of the contributions that come before theirs. Or, alternatively, create a game where none of the participants see any of the the contributions that come before theirs, and then just merge it all together at the end to see how the Muse of Serendipity has played her sly game…she always seems to come out during these types of things! I've done these kinds of games with poetry quite a bit on Artella teleworkshops and the results can yield some spectacular poetry. Here's an example of a poem that was created by several wonderful folks in a teleworkshop I gave called "WordJazz Poetry". We moved around the circle, person by person, and each person contributed a single line. We moved very quickly, so there was no time to "think" from an intellectual point of view. Rather, everyone just moved with the intuitive, creative flow. Here is the result: I remember time it felt like butter melting on corn on the cob on a hot summer day I remember that it sounded like whispers on the sunset and I knew that someday soon I would get to be there but not until the hands of the clocks had gone around many times and so I sat to think a minute of the preciousness of the moment that had been given to me and what I could soak in and hold in my heart for eternity and before I knew it the clock struck one and I knew that time was an imperfect beacon protecting me and challenging me to go on