What exactly are the tomato workshops about?

The workshops are a way of immersing yourself suddenly and intensely into the process and conversation that goes on within tomato. Several members of tomato are there to initiate the conversation, but the workshop really happens through the interaction of everyone there. A wide range of people from around the world with diverse backgrounds come together to create work. You not only learn a great deal from everyone around you but everyone learns from you as well. They are about creativity, art, process, life, philosophy, design, and the interconnectedness of all of these things. But of course I now have to ask if these things ever were separate from each other anyway?

I had the opportunity to attend several of the workshops and there is no doubt that the experience has had a profound impact on me and my work. I quickly realized that the end of the workshops are really just the beginning, when the real work is to be done. That is, applying and integrating into the 'real world' some of the powerful lessons and discoveries of the workshops.

In this section of the site I will be relating my personal experience and thoughts on the workshops I attended along side others who have attended. If you have attended one of the workshops and would like to share your thoughts before, during and after the workshop please send them to me. Like in tomato, this site can be a space where we each present the maps of our individual journeys and see what happens when they intersect and overlap with one another.

what I was told to expect from the workshops:

"The courses will be a series of structured dialogues. Initially there will be a day of talks and introductions to tomato, the way we work and some of the work we produce. Concepts and ideas that surround the course will be discussed and groups will be decided upon. We expect to have course sizes of a maximum of 15 people.

A series of projects and themed courses will be set throughout the ten days and the work created will be regularly reviewed and discussed both on a one to one basis and in a group environment. There will be a group seminar in the middle of the course and a seminar at the end that will join all the groups together.

For those who are interested there will also be a series of discussions about the business side of tomato and the general concepts behind the financial side of creative work.

Expect to be made to think and asked to produce work both as a group and individually. In addition to having an overview of the course, members of tomato will also be producing work alongside and with you. Expect to teach as well as learn. Expect to be challenged, excited and stimulated."