A life transformation program for those who would sign up right now.
Also for those who just keep procrastinating.
our purpose
Our back story
Creativegarh Retreats is not just a healing and life transformation program but a manifestation of a personal life purpose of bringing joy and abundance to the world through transformation and creativity. It’s a mission to make lives full of meaning and purpose.
Our Creativegarh journey started in the year 2000. What was initially a discussion forum on Yahoogroups, over time became one of the most vibrant and engaged creative communities not only in India but across the world. Over the years we helped hundreds of creators in networking, unblocking, upskilling, exploring, collaborating, and expressing through us. Started as an online community replete with lively and thought provoking discussions, Creativegarh also took an ahead-of-its-time leap and created a vibrant offline platform (the first-of-its-kind in the country) exclusively for the members of the community to showcase and sell their art, craft and other creations. Creativegarh Lifestyle was a lifestyle store in Delhi with store-in-store tie-ups in Mumbai, Goa and Chandigarh representing almost 150 creative people at its peak.
Over time, the intent of Creativegarh has crystallised. The plan never was to be a business but a community of creatives, a labour of love and passion, not bottom lines and toplines. A few years ago, Creativegarh took a rather welcome sabbatical to recalibrate its own purpose. Even during the time-off, Creativegarh has been working as an informal yet efficient network with members, helping each other and their extended connections with jobs, projects, guidance, skills, healing, mentorship, and a sacred safe circle for creativity to bloom.
Creativegarh Retreats in its refreshed new avatar is a powerful idea that has been forged by fire after a long arduous journey and connecting every single dot over the last two decades.
What makes
Creativegarh
unlike
any other
life transformation
program?
Creativity and spirituality are dance partners. In fact, they are in such an intimate dance with each other that you can’t separate one from another. While creativity allows you to go deep inside yourself, it also allows you to create a new reality in the world outside, bring into existence a more joyful, fulfilling and purposeful life and become one with the universe. At the intersection of this divine foxtrot between creativity and spirituality sits Creativegarh with a handful of front row seats reserved for seekers like you.
As the founder of this program, here is my story.
I have been a ‘serial’ creative for as long as I can remember. I identify with being a copywriter, a sculptor, an adman, a communication specialist, a creative director, an artist, a design entrepreneur, a SaaS tech entrepreneur, a lighting-accessories-furniture-interior designer, a creativity coach and now also a knitter. The most satisfying part of which is, I am a practicing creative every single moment of my life.
In all my years of feeding my creative spirit with explorations, experiments and experiences, I have been through everything that you may be feeling right now, and it is all a part of the journey.
I have had moments of not having a creative purpose or a purpose of being everything but creative. I have had months of being burnt out followed by years of the proverbial fire in the belly. I have spent time building my life block by block and then being blocked for weeks. I have had decades of feeling lost and then having found myself. I’ve had breakdowns and from those have come my breakthroughs. I have been in deep s**t in life and then have found a deeper meaning to it as well. I have lost my creative confidence and have regained it. I have felt unfulfilled and then have been embraced by joy. I have created from ego and I have created from the soul. I have had joyful moments with the universe and playdates with my inner demons. I’ve had friends who’ve killed my creativity and I’ve had strangers who’ve resurrected it. I’ve had a fear of failure and a fear of success and I have been fearless too. I’ve hit my creative peak at 32 and have reinvented myself at 48. I’ve been a victim, and I have been a seeker. I have lived on auto pilot and now in a state of deep awareness. I have acted from my deep childhood wounds and trauma and I’ve seen myself as the witness too. I’ve created from a space of control and from a space of surrender. I have been fake and I have been authentic. I have worn the cloak of invincibility through my personality and I have bared my soul. I have created from fear and I have created from love. I have been overly protective and I have chosen to be vulnerable. Today, I live a life fuelled by creative energy and I am grateful for all these experiences that have led me to this moment.
I feel I have been called by the universe to share the learnings of this three-decade journey with you and help you overcome your own beliefs that may be limiting you from being an unstoppable, fearless creator of your own destiny. My journey where I dig in my personal experience, clubbed with some radical models that have come to me as a part of my own spiritual practice, and well researched and personally practised processes and techniques from some of the finest teachers and healers across the world, makes this a very powerful transformation program.
We’ll have a lot of storytelling, many reflective exercises, some detective exercises, sharing and regaling of life journeys, meditations, visualisations, a safe space to talk about our fears and vulnerabilities, inner journeys, hundreds of ideas, many real-world projects, powerful life purposes, and five days full of happiness, fulfilment, abundance and joy – a trailer of what our lives will be after this retreat.
I invite you to be a part of this transformation. Yours, mine, and through us, of the worlds we touch.
Come, let’s dance with creativity and spirituality.
Arun Verma
Founder and Facilitator
Creativegarh Retreats
OUR TEAM
Deanne Fernandes
Creative Director
Creativegarh Retreats
From designing the retreat brand to creating the end-to-end participant experience, Deanne brings to Creativegarh, the best of her 14 years’ experience as a pure play, multi-hyphenated design professional. Deanne also heads the creative department of AVDS, the internationally-acclaimed creative transformation company and the creator of the Creativegarh Retreats.
Over the years, Deanne has created stories, branding, packaging, graphics, communication and experience design solutions for some of the finest brands in the world. Deanne is an MBA from Symbiosis and an alumna of the prestigious St. Stephens College. Her unique combination of creative and strategic thinking not only allows her to deliver beyond the brief but also provide her clients with perspectives away from the tried and tested. Deanne brings to the fore a unique talent of seeing design, not as an aesthetic solution but a problem solver of real-life issues.
Deanne’s first love lies in illustration, digital art, hand-lettering and calligraphy, and nowadays she is bringing all these skills and talents together and experimenting with mixed media to create fascinating and unique art.
Praneet Kaur
Communities & Experiences
Creativegarh Retreats
Praneet is an artist not only who expresses herself through art but through her beingness. She brings a unique blend of being an empath and a trouble-shooter and a magic maker and a realist, all of which is so imperative for a retreat to fulfil its purpose.
At Creativegarh, she is the go-to-person managing the experiences before, through and post the program. Right from managing the pre retreat engagement to post retreat events, Praneet ensures that the entire experience is seamless.
A graduate in Mass Communication and Journalism, her calling has always been towards creation and creativity. Having lived and travelled across the country, as an army child, Praneet understands people and cultures at a deep level which allows her to pour her artistic gifts into the world to help people meet their authentic selves.