If you are doing creative work, you are experiencing feedback: invited or unsolicited, formal or casual, in dialogue with others or in your own head. Handling and applying feedback can be decisive in how we value our work, how we grow, and how we sustain a sense of community in artistic contexts. The Critical Response Process (CRP) devised by choreographer Liz Lerman in 1990, is a four-step process and toolkit of principles for guiding actionable feedback on creative works in progress. CRP emphasizes the power of questions and the potential of informed dialogue between an artist and a group of responders. It offers principles to animate generative conversations between creative collaborators and peers.

Participants in this workshop will learn CRP as a structured feedback method that leaves the maker eagerly motivated to get back to work. We’ll explore CRP’s principles of meaning, inquiry, and engaged/suspended judgment, and experience applications to enhance personal and collective learning, support peer dialogue and artistic conversations, and bring clarity and abundance to the creative process. While this workshop centers craft and visual artwork, it welcomes people from all creative disciplines.