Critical Response Process
Devised by Liz Lerman in 1990, Critical Response Process is a method for giving and getting feedback on creative work in progress, designed to leave the maker eager and motivated to get back to work.
About Critical Response Process
Through the supportive structure of its four core steps, Critical Response Process combines the power of questions with the focus and challenge of informed dialogue. The Process offers makers an active role in the critique of their own work. It gives makers a way to rehearse the connections they seek when art meets it audience or a product meets its purpose.
Critical Response Process instills ways of thinking, communicating and being that enhance all kinds of human interactions, from coaching to community dialogue, from artistic collaboration to family conversations.
In use for over 25 years, Critical Response Process has been embraced by art makers, educators, scientists, and theater companies, dance departments, orchestras, laboratories, conservatories, museums, universities, corporations, and kindergartens.
Role 1: Artist/Maker
The maker offers a work-in-progress for review and feels prepared to question that work in a dialogue with other people.
Role 2: Responder
Responders engage in dialogue with the artist, with a commitment to the artist’s intent to make excellent work.
Role 3: Facilitator
Facilitators initiate each step, keep the process on track, and help artist and responders use the process to frame useful questions and responses.
Step 1. Statements of Meaning
Step 2. Artist as Questioner
Step 3. Neutral Questions
Responders ask neutral questions about the work, and the artist responds. Questions are neutral when they do not have an opinion couched in them.
Step 4. Opinion Time
Responders state opinions, subject to permission from the artist. The usual form is “I have an opinion about _____, would you like to hear it?” The artist has the option to say no.
More actions
What's your next step?
After Step Four, artists can choose to talk about the next steps they are planning based on information gained through the Process.
Subject-matter discussion
Working the work
Sometimes a CRP session can move directly into “labbing” aspects of the work, with the participation of some or all of those participating in the Process
“I found the clarity and deceptive simplicity of the process incredibly helpful… I have been able to start using it already, and can see it having a real impact on my personal as well as professional life, and on the way I work through concerns about my own work. Thank you so much for conceiving (Critical Response Process), and for communicating it to us with such care.”
-Matthew Poxon, The National Theatre, London
Books on Critical Response Process
We have published two books on Critical Response Process, available for purchase. Our first is a concise primer, where authors Liz Lerman and John Borstel give a detailed introduction to the Process. The second is an in-depth study of CRP, which includes essays from a wide range of contributors on the applications and variations of the process in art, education, and community life.
Book a workshop
Liz Lerman and coauthor/collaborator John Borstel lead a team of skilled Critical Response Process practitioners who can visit your institution to introduce the fundamentals of CRP in an interactive, hands-on training.
With a focus on actual works in progress – a dance, a script, a lecture, visual art work, even a cake – your training will highlight participation, conversation, and the flexibility of the Process. You will reflect on experiences of feedback, consider that factors that enhance it, and leave with a firm grasp of procedures and tools to apply in your professional and daily life.
Training programs are customized to suit the needs of our hosts and may last from two hours to four days. The Critical Response Process team has trained arts faculty, orchestra members, museum docents, acting companies, social science researchers, and nonprofit boards, as well as students and makers in almost every artistic discipline.
Throughout North America, Europe, and Australia we have led trainings at a multitude of diverse institutions such as Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Puppet Animation, Yale School of Drama, ICON (Innovative Conservatoire Network), the NYC Department of Education arts-faculty and many, many more.
“In supporting the creation of new work, we have found Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process to be the best tool we’ve ever encountered in assisting individual artists at the most vulnerable stages of creation. The Process empowers artists and invests responders with real responsibility as audience members.”
–James C. Nicola, Artistic Director, New York Theatre Workshop
Critical Response Process Certification
In 2019 we launched the annual Critical Response Process Certification program, with cohorts running annually. Graduating practitioners are deeply invested in the practice and possibilities of CRP, and you can work with them directly as facilitators for your needs.
Aimed at practitioners who already have strong working knowledge of CRP, the Certification program provides ten months of high-level mentoring, peer-to-peer learning, and intensive practice in the foundations, principles, and applications of Critical Response Process.
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