Creative Flow Open Studio

A weekday online creative practice for showing up, settling in, and entering flow

Thirty minutes. Every weekday. A simple, sustainable rhythm.

Creative Flow Open Studio is a dependable, low-cost, weekday online gathering designed to support a steady creative rhythm.

Each session offers a simple structure as creative container:
we arrive together, ground and settle through a minute of collective mindful movement, set a personal creative intention, and then work quietly alongside one another on our own creative projects, in our own spaces.

There is no teaching, instruction, or expectation to share outcomes.

Creative Flow Open Studio is not therapy or supervision. It is a shared creative practice space.

The focus is on presence, rhythm, and commitment — creating the conditions for creative flow to emerge naturally.

Join Creative Flow

Dr Carla introduces Creative Flow Open Studio

Creating the Space

Creative Medicine

The Grounding

Creative Flow Open Studio is grounded in three major principles:

  • Regular Creative Practice
  • Creative Flow States
  • Body Doubling for Support

Research across wellbeing, creativity, and mental health consistently shows that regular creative engagement:

  • improves emotional balance and wellbeing
  • reduces stress and rumination
  • supports focus, clarity, and sustainable productivity
  • strengthens creativity, learning, and problem-solving

Short, daily practices matter. A consistent 30-minute rhythm lowers the barrier to starting and allows the benefits of creative flow to build over time. “Body-doubling” is the simple idea of working alongside others for support and accountability. It can improve consistency, motivation and focus – especially if you are an ADHDer.

How it works

  • Weekday online sessions  9.30 – 10am Melbourne time (30 minutes)
  • Begin together with two minutes of gentle mindful movement
  • Set your own creative intention
  • Work on your own creative projects, quietly alongside others
  • No facilitation, no instruction, no pressure to perform

The Studio is held by Dr Carla van Laar, artist and creative experiential therapist, who brings relational care and professional presence, holding the space — supporting safety, respect, and creative autonomy without directing the work.

Who it's for

Creative Flow Open Studio is for people who are yearning for a steady creative rhythm — whether you are returning to creativity, protecting it, sustaining it, growing it, reclaiming it, exploring it for the first time, or making space for creativity within a full life.

People who come along are:

  • seeking rhythm, accountability, and creative nourishment

  • balancing demanding or stressful work and wanting restorative creative time

  • studying or working from home and missing shared presence

  • creating, caring, making, or practising in lives that ask a great deal of them

  • thinking and creating in beautifully diverse ways

  • wanting connection without pressure

  • ready to weave creativity into everyday life.

You don’t need to be “good at art.”

You don’t need a studio.

Showing up is enough.

Where are you Flowing in from?

Creative Flow is hosted from Boon Wurrung Country, Inverloch, Victoria, Australia, at the same dependable time every weekday.

We run on Melbourne time here.

Creative Flow runs Monday–Friday, 9.30–10.00am Melbourne, Australia (AEST/AEDT, UTC+10/UTC+11).

Melbourne observes daylight saving time.
Please check your local time zone during seasonal transitions.

Joining from around Australia

Victoria, Tasmania, NSW, ACT
9.30am

Queensland
8.30am (during AEDT) / 9.30am (during AEST)

South Australia
9.00am (year-round)

Northern Territory
8.00am (year-round)

Western Australia
6.30am (during AEDT) / 7.30am (during AEST)

Creative Flow Around the World

Depending on where you live, this rhythm may:

  • begin your morning
  • anchor your lunch break
  • reset your afternoon
  • calmly close your evening

Here’s how our Creative Flow time tends to land across regions:

Australia

Western Australia
Early birds.
A focused beginning before work, research, writing or study.

Queensland
Start your day creatively before moving into work or study.

South Australia & Northern Territory
A slightly earlier creative ignition — a gentle launch into the day.

Victoria, Tasmania, NSW (AEST/AEDT)
Join after your early morning routine.
Ideal for work-from-home rhythms, school drop-off parents, students and self-employed creatives.

Asia–Pacific

New Zealand
Mid-morning flow after your early start.

Singapore / Hong Kong / Malaysia
Late morning to midday reset.

Japan
A pre-lunch creative anchor.

North America

West Coast (LA / Vancouver)
Late afternoon creative reset.

Central (Chicago / Texas)
Early evening grounding.

East Coast (New York / Toronto)
After-work wind-down before the night begins.

Europe

UK / Ireland / Netherlands / Spain
Late evening creative wind-down.

France / Germany / Scandinavia
An intentional close to the day before bed.

How to join

  • $25 per week (daily Mon – Fri)
  • $10 casual session (drop in any weekday)
  • $90 monthly membership ongoing (automatic low fuss)

More details coming soon – we launch in March after the equinox.

I’ll be hosting from my coastal studio… or my garden…


And you can set up your own improv studio – anywhere.

Creativity as daily nourishment. Practised in relationship, with care.

When We Make Space… Creativity Flows

 

During the 2020 lockdowns, artists from around the world shared their work in the online exhibition COVID-19 Lock Down Art.

It became a global container, and a poignant reminder that creativity travels across borders.

Creative Flow carries the spirit forward — a shared, co-created space, joined from wherever you are.

Creative Care. Anywhere.

You can explore the exhibition COVID-19 Lock Down Art within the Art Therapy First Aid page here.

About Dr Carla van Laar 

Hello! I am Dr Carla – a Creative and Experiential Therapist, clinical counsellor, supervisor, educator, researcher, and artist with more than three decades of experience supporting people through creative and experiential practice.

Creative Flow Open Studio emerges from my longstanding belief that creativity is not reserved for the artist — it is a deeply human way of paying attention, making meaning, and caring for ourselves. I create calm, relational spaces where you can engage in your own creative process without pressure, judgement, or expectation.

My work is grounded in trauma-aware, person-centred practice and a commitment to creative mental health that is accessible, sustaining, and woven into everyday life.

Through Creative Flow, I offer a mindfully held space for you to arrive, create, and begin your day with greater connection — to yourself, your own creative nature, and to creativity as a force that is bigger than all of us.

Creative Flow Open Studio begins Monday 23rd March.

If you’d like to be in the loop for launch details and early booking access, visit the homepage and scroll to the bottom to join my newsletter.