Liza Barley
Liza Barley’s work is driven by her belief that the arts are a powerful medium through which to connect people from all walks of life, empower communities, and charge individuals to think creatively. Liza works as a freelance musician and multimedia artist, creative practitioner, and teaching artist. A graduate of Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music (BM) and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London (MM), Liza has lived and worked extensively in the U.S., East Africa (Tanzania), and Europe (UK and Portugal).
Her work includes Umoja Arts Project, a community arts initiative that she founded in Arusha, Tanzania, East Africa in 2005; workshops, installation and performance for Guildhall School of Music & Drama and Barbican Centre Creative Learning Department in London and at GNRation in Braga, Portugal; a number of cross-cultural performances/exchanges throughout Africa, South America and the Middle East; and countless educational workshops for students and teachers all over the world. More of her work can be seen at www.lizabarley.com. She currently lives in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, with her husband, Gil Teixeira, and their two children.
The Craft of Writing is a series of conversations with musician, teaching artist, and creative thinker Liza Barley, in which our group explores the writing process through the lens of creativity, defines artistic elements in our work, and cultivates tools for evaluation and reflection that are rooted in artistic research and practice.
Perspective Shifting in the Writing Process
This four-part series is about the importance of viewing, experiencing and evaluating our writing from a variety of vantage points in order to develop each work to its fullest potential. The first two sessions focus on the written object itself while the latter two are more about the writing process.
- Session 1: Narrowing – Musical Elements in Writing: Defining, Finding, and Incorporating
- Session 2: Broadening – Literary Elements in Music: Leitmotif and Idee Fixe, the Narrative Thread to Cure Abstraction
- Session 3: Self-Reflection – Finding Growth in the Folds of the Spiral
- Session 4: Group Reflection – Navigating the Spiral Together
