Institute Intensive | The Creative Myth
A four-week invitation to rediscover your creativity.
Creativity is not reserved for artists. It is part of what makes us human: the ability to imagine what is not yet here, to see possibility where others see limitation, to make connections, to play, to experiment, and to bring something new into the world.
And yet, somewhere along the way, many of us lose touch with it.
Work gets busy. Responsibilities accumulate. Creativity becomes something we associate with artists, musicians, writers, or people who have the luxury of making things “just for fun.” Or, for those who once created regularly, creativity can become entangled with performance, productivity, commerce, and the pressure to make something good.
This four-week experience is an invitation to step out of those assumptions.
Led by Mason Ingram, you’ll explore creativity not as a talent you either have or don’t have, but as a capacity that can be awakened, practiced, and strengthened. The goal is not to turn you into an artist, but to help you become more alive to the creative capacity already within you.
The Experience
This program will run as two separate cohorts, one in the fall and one in the winter. Both explore creativity through four weeks of guided practice, experimentation, and reflection, but the cohorts begin from different places:
Cohort 1 (October 2026)
For those looking to discover or unearth their creativity.
Cohort 2 (February 2027)
For creatives looking to reconnect with a creative life that has become stuck, sidelined, or overly shaped by productivity and commerce.
Each cohort meets weekly over 4 weeks for a guided session with Mason, combining conversation, teaching, creative exercises, experimentation, and reflection. You’ll also be invited to practice between sessions, but this isn’t homework in the traditional sense. The practices are intentionally manageable, designed to create a rhythm that makes room for something you may have been missing.
All are welcome to participate in both cohorts, or you may find greater resonance with one over the other.
Two Cohorts, Two Different Invitations
COHORT 1: For the person who might not think of themselves as creative
You may have spent years telling yourself, “I’m just not a creative person.” Maybe creativity feels like something other people possess but not you, or maybe you simply haven’t made space for it in a long time. This cohort begins by challenging that myth.
Over four weeks, we’ll explore how you are already creative, why creativity is vital to every human, and how to cultivate a personal creative practice without making it another demanding project on your list.
You’ll experiment with different forms of creativity through simple exercises that are designed to be accessible, enjoyable, and immediately useful. We’ll move from discovering your creative capacity, to practicing it, to taking the small but courageous step of sharing what you’ve made with others.
This cohort is primarily for:
- Professionals who want to access more imagination in their work and life
- People who feel creatively curious but don’t know where to begin
- Those who want a creative practice without taking on another major commitment
- Anyone who wants to recover a sense of play, experimentation, and possibility
Exercises may include
- Collage drawing
- Kinesthetic building exercises
- The 30 Uses exercise for lateral thinking
- Problem solving with the SCAMPER method
- Paratactic prose and stream-of-consciousness writing
- Quick and easy music creation
What you’ll walk away with: A practical guide to creative habit formation without years of lessons, new equipment, and hours of YouTube tutorials. Just simple practices for making room for creativity in the midst of an already full life.
COHORT 2: For the creative who feels stuck
You know you’re creative. You may have made things for years. You may have built a career around creativity. Or you may simply remember a version of yourself who felt freer, more playful, and more alive in the act of making. But somewhere along the way, that part of you became harder to access. Maybe creativity became your job, maybe you became responsible for managing other people’s creativity. Maybe the pressures of work, family, and life gradually crowded out the practices that once gave you energy. Or maybe the voice of self-criticism simply got louder.
This cohort is an invitation to reconnect with that creative part of yourself, not by trying harder but by approaching creativity differently.
Together, we’ll explore how to separate creativity from the obligation to produce, perform, or make money. We’ll experiment with different creative practices, pay attention to what awakens a sense of flow, and gently examine the self-criticism that can make creating feel risky.
The aim is not to recover some idealized version of who you used to be, but to discover what creativity might look like in the season of life you’re actually living now.
This cohort is primarily for:
- People who used to create regularly but have lost the practice
- Creative professionals experiencing burnout or creative fatigue
- People whose creative work has become primarily commercial
- Leaders and managers who spend their days facilitating other people’s creativity
- Anyone who senses that a more playful, generative part of themselves has been set aside
Exercises may include
- Purpose mapping
- Inner-critic / self-compassion letter
- The 30 Uses exercise for lateral thinking
- Problem solving with the SCAMPER method
- Paratactic prose and stream-of-consciousness writing
- Perspective writing
What you’ll walk away with: A guide to connecting with a part of you that felt more free in your creativity. You’ll leave with practices for reconnecting with creativity, loosening the grip of self-criticism, and making space for creative work that isn’t immediately beholden to productivity or commerce. The hope isn’t simply that you make more things, it’s that you recover some of the aliveness that made creating matter in the first place.
Dates & Registration
Cohort 1 – October 5, 12, 19, 26 (2026) – For those looking to discover or unearth their creativity.
Monday evenings, 7:30-9p ET via Zoom
Cohort 2 – February 1, 8, 22 and March 1 (2027) – For creatives looking to reconnect with a creative life that has become stuck, sidelined, or overly shaped by productivity and commerce.
Monday evenings, 7:30-9p ET via Zoom
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Cost: Choose your Tier – A Pricing Model Rooted in Generosity & Relationship
At Goldenwood, we believe in a gift economy—where our work and giving is not transactional but part of a relational and generative system. Like a root network, where some trees bear more fruit in one season and others in another, this pricing approach allows for a shared ecosystem of flourishing—some contribute more so that others may receive, and all are sustained together.
Our tiered pricing model reflects this, allowing participants to contribute at a level that aligns with their capacity while supporting the mission to see work revived by love. We invite you to participate in a way that reflects your own season and capacity.
1. Full Value (Sustainable Tier) – $200 per 4-week Cohort
Reflects the true value while balancing affordability, including the unseen work that makes this a meaningful and transformative experience. Includes all virtual sessions, exercises, and access to your coach.
2. Covering Costs (Supported Tier) – $150 per 4-week Cohort
Covers only the essentials, ensuring the program is financially viable. Includes all virtual sessions, exercises, and access to your coach.
3. Generative Giving – $250+ per 4-week Cohort
Goes beyond covering costs, helping make our programs accessible to others and investing in the long-term flourishing of this work. Includes all virtual sessions, exercises, and access to your coach.
Meet Your Guide
Mason Ingram has spent his working life inside the creative process, learning what makes it move and what makes it stall. Those years brought him to a place where he wants to guide others in discovering their own creative ability and process. His approach comes from working across different creative forms in the music industry, where he learned that creativity is rarely about waiting for inspiration. It’s about building the habits, attention, and technical footing that let inspiration show up.
That belief comes directly from his career as a drummer, composer, and producer, one that has taken him from recording studios and Broadway stages to composing wellness-focused ambient music, and that has meant constantly translating between structure and openness: the discipline of keeping time and the freedom of letting a piece breathe.
Why This Matters
We often treat creativity as a specialized skill. But creativity is woven into ordinary human life. We use it when we solve a problem no one has solved before, when we imagine a different future, when we make something beautiful, when we find a new way to communicate, when we respond to a difficult situation with wisdom rather than habit.
To cultivate creativity, then, is not simply to become better at making things. It is to become more attentive to possibility.
Goldenwood’s work begins from the conviction that work at its best is creative, relational, and redemptive. The practices we cultivate shape how we perceive the world and how we participate in it. This experience creates a small, intentional space to practice that kind of attention.
You don’t need to arrive with a portfolio, call yourself a creative, or know what you’re doing. You simply need some curiosity and a willingness to try.