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 creative recovery and 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 creative living full of 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. What 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, 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
creativity
retreat?
Creativegarh Retreats is not a training program. It does not teach creativity. But it inspires people to allow themselves to be creative.
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, at the end of the day, I am a practising 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 fun 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 have had a fear of failure and a fear of success and I have been fearless too. I have hit my peak at 30 and have reinvented myself at 48. I’ve been a sulker, and I have been a seeker. Today, I live a life fuelled by creative energy and I am grateful for all these experiences that have made me a more resilient creative person.
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. My journey clubbed with well researched and personally practised successful creative processes and techniques of some of the finest creators and creativity teachers 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 creative purposes, and five days full of joy, happiness, fulfilment, and abundance – a trailer of what our creative 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.
Arun Verma
Founder and Curator
Creativegarh Retreats
OUR TEAM
Mihika Roy
Co-facilitator and Go-to-person
Creativegarh Retreats
All of 27 years, Mihika went through an intense inner journey at a very young age that put her on the path less travelled. Since then, she has been working towards helping people from all walks of life, find their Center.
A graduate of Warwick University in communications, she discovered, rather ironically, that it is the lack of communication with oneself that leads to the disconnect from the very essence of one’s being. What follows, is inevitably a detour from what one’s true path in life is, ultimately leading to a decline in one’s well-being. She found her anchor in meditation, and thereafter has worked towards allowing it to penetrate every part of her life. As part of her more recent pursuits, Mihika has also been working extensively with children, by teaching them how to meditate. She believes that helping them get onto an inner exploratory journey early in their lives through meditation (and by extension, mindfulness), becomes one of the surest ways to arrest the listlessness, anxiety and meaninglessness of the current collective reality, and, in turn facilitate and promote intentional growth and overall well-being of a human being at a very fundamental level.
Mihika’s life purpose is to be a “transformation midwife”, enabling human beings reach their full potential and play to their strengths so they too, can serve their purpose in the world.
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 12 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.