Anyone passing the South Korean Embassy in Tokyo's Moto Azabu in recent months may well have wondered about the flag reading "RBR -- New Center for Creative Arts" flying from the building opposite. Also the steady flow of visitors -- every age, color, race and creed.
It is early Thursday morning and Creative Director Kristin Newton (an American of French-Icelandic descent), Director of Marketing Mayumi Murata, Filipino-Thai Administrative Director Lia Howe and Administrative Assistant Kae Okachi are holding down the fort.
Two years ago, Kristin was teaching art-based workshops for adults and children out of a studio in Azabu Juban. Using techniques based on right-brain research, she was proving that anyone and everyone can draw by employing exercises that instruct the brain's logical left lobe (overdeveloped in Western-style education) to shut up, allowing the creative right side full rein. "It was working well," she explains, "but I was alone, run ragged with exhaustion. Synchronicity showed the way."