Playful with not knowing

Steve Chapman, (also known as @stevexoh), is an artist, writer and speaker interested in creativity and the human condition. He works as a consultant and coach with individuals and organisations who are interested in finding  creative and counter-intuitive ways to help free themselves from ever-tightening loops of common-sense where creativity, novelty and change are rather difficult.

Steve regularly give talks on creativity, spontaneity, human culture change, imperfection, stuckness, counter-culture, shame and the inner critic and is a regular guest on various podcasts.  You can watch some of his talks and listen to various interviews and podcast appearances here.

He writes various blogs and articles on creativity, philosophy and what it means to be human both on this website and as an occasional guest blogger for various sites.

Steve spent 20 years in the corporate world in senior culture change/people development roles before moving out to work independently in 2011.  Since then he has worked with over 80 organisations in many sectors, helping them to liberate the creative spirit of the human beings within them.  He has held roles as visiting faculty on a number of MSc programmes at Ashridge Business School, the Metanoia Institute and Roffey Park where he has taught spontaneity, working with uncertainty, facilitation and creative activism both in organisations and society in general.  He holds an MSc with distinction from the Ashridge Masters in Organisational Change (AMOC) programme where he wrote his dissertation on human spontaneity.

He has trained in gestalt psychology, improvisational theatre, coaching, masks and art therapy all of which he combines into an experimental and experiential approach in his work.

As an artist he has exhibited his work alongside the likes of David Shrigley and Pablo Picasso and has sold pieces across all seven continents.  He has painted various murals, was the man behind the lengendary Hungerford Bridge Gallery of Outsider Art and is Artist in Residence at The Good Life Experience.  You can see his art portfolio here or his latest work on Instagram here.   He is the founder of the not-for-profit online Outsider Art gallery The Spongleheim.

Steve also specialises in conceptual art projects designed to provide a counter-point to what society regards as “normal” including the Inexpert 2018 conference which was designed to be the opposite of TED, Sound of Silence, the world’s first silent podcast featuring special guests and the physical viral (Not a) Lost Cat project.

He was the founder of The Lab, a not-for-profit place to experiment and be experimented on in service of enlivening human beings. He also runs a number of experimental open workshops and events, all focussed on nurturing human creativity.   You can read more about these here.

He wrote all of this in the third person to make it seem like somebody else wrote it.  At least he didn’t describe himself as “we.”

He is at his best when he is on the edge of not quite knowing what he is doing.

CONTACT DETAILS

E-mail: stevexoh@gmail.com
Instagram: @stevexoh
Twitter: @stevexoh

Photo credit: Lauren Thompson