Wild Ideas Creative Retreat
Friday, February 7 – Sunday, February 9, 2025

Your chance to escape to the magic creative energy of Spillian for a weekend to work on that wild idea that has been burning a hole in your brain. Join us for a gentle convivium and chance for solo time to imagine deeply.

Grab a corner, a table in the tavern, a seat by the fire, or a chair in your room and have lots of time and space to work and explore and bring your wild idea to life. Maybe it’s a book, or a set of poems, drawing, or a digital design…quiet projects that you can go deep into as everyone here goes deep into theirs.

We’ll provide sustenance throughout the weekend – a light dinner on Friday; breakfast, lunch and a bigger feast on Saturday; and breakfast on Sunday. And of course coffee, tea (including our own magical herbal offering, Cat’s Love Tea, with spearmint, rose petals, elderberries, sumac, and more), and adult libations will be at the ready.

And we’ll have Spillian Permission Slips for you. You can grant yourself permission to hole up in your room and come down from your garret and grasp your vittles in your ink-stained hands and disappear back upstairs; or claim a corner in the library; or even just nap your way into dreaming your wild idea forward. We’ll gather for meals (unless you want to hide), with a special invitation on Saturday night to share the feasting table with your fellow dreamers and share a bit of what’s inspiring or stymieing you. Spillian co-founder Leigh Melander will lead the charge on sharing our wild ideas at dinner.

This is free-flow, a reveling in ideas and the quiet that births them retreat. You’re welcome to come and stay for the weekend, or come to take advantage of Spillian’s space and sustenance and lay your creative head elsewhere.

We are excited to finally be offering weekends like this! We’ve been hearing desire for this from many of our extended Spillian family over the years, so we’re offering both this one in February as well as one in January. Spillian has been such a well-spring of creativity for people since the Fleischmanns created their retreat space, and we are looking forward to sharing it with you in this special way.

About Leigh Melander, Ph.D.

Leigh has an eclectic background in the arts as well as consulting in strategic planning, outreach and marketing, and event planning for over 20 years. She has performed, and taught and facilitated explorations of imagination and creativity internationally, working with individuals and groups to help them find their way to bringing their wild ideas to life. In 2025, her first book, about the power of frivolity as a way into imagination, Psyche’s Choice, is being re-released, along with her second book, Just This Side of Crazy: Quest After Your Wild Idea.

Her undergraduate degree is in performance, literature, and history from Penn State, and she studied writing by invitation with Nobel Poet Laureate Derek Walcott at Boston University. She has a doctorate in cultural mythology and psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and wrote her dissertation on frivolity as an entry into imagination. She has has appeared at various conferences and on media outlets, including the History Channel, as a mythology expert, and has published articles in Spring Journal, The Routledge International Handbook of Jungian Film Studies, The Mythology CD-ROM. She hosted Myth America®, a weekly radio show about  how myth shapes our sense of identity on an NPR affiliate for three years and is transitioning to a podcast, and served as the Vice President of the Joseph Campbell Foundation and the editor of their MythBlast series for four years.

Pricing

Workshop Registration Fee:
$175 per person until December 31, 2024
$235 per person after that date.

Spillian is proud to underwrite some of the costs on this workshop, hoping to keep the experience accessible to as many creatives as possible. 

• Includes four chef-made meals, snacks, and coffee and tea service. Cash bar, tax, and gratuities not included.
• Attendees are welcome to arrive any time Friday afternoon after 3 PM. We’ll have food out at around 6 PM.
• Commuters welcome for the workshop registration fee.

Spillian Lodging $235 per room for the weekend.

Spillian offers eight delightful rooms. You can learn more about them HERE and make your choice on the registration page. All rooms are available on a first-come, first-served basis. The Jules Verne Room has two double sized beds, and is appropriate for sharing with a roommate. If you are coming with a friend and would like to share that room, one guest should reserve the room. Fees for all of the rooms are the same for single or double occupancy for the weekend, and are in addition to the workshop fee.

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