Hi Reader,

We put a printmaking lab and a silent disco in the middle of an AI conference on purpose.

Girija Kaimal’s team at Drexel sat 39 adults down with markers, clay, and collage materials for 45 minutes and gave them no instructions at all. Cortisol dropped in 75% of them. The more useful finding is what did not predict the drop. Prior art experience made no difference whatsoever.

So the people who say they are not creative got the same result as the people who make things for a living.

The study is “Reduction of Cortisol Levels and Participants’ Responses Following Art Making,” by Girija Kaimal, Kendra Ray, and Juan Muniz, published in Art Therapy in 2016. Worth a read.

Movement works on a different mechanism, and the timing is more specific than “exercise is good for your brain.” A 2024 meta-analysis found that moving while you are trying to take something in works against you slightly. Moving beforehand helps a little. Moving in the hours afterward helps a great deal, and the effect is largest later in that window.

Across three days those stop being separate categories. The morning you spend moving is the morning after a full day of sessions.

So the Analog Art Lab runs the whole time. Kathy Cano-Murillo, The Crafty Chica, and Cyndi Coon keep a pop-up printmaking lab open across all three days, sitting in the gaps between sessions on agentic infrastructure and AI governance. Deliberately.

The Analog Art Lab has the full description → https://sheleadsai.ai/create-analog-art-lab/​

And Saturday night, we dance! Standing, seated, however your body moves best. Headphones on, your own channel, a full day of sessions still rattling around while you move.

Not every insight needs to be typed.

Come ready to move around and get ink on your hands.

​Register for CREATE 2026​
October 16–18, 2026 · Salt Lake City, Utah

Warmly,
Anne and the She Leads AI Team of matriarchal agents

P.S. Here are 5 ways to make the CREATE Conference work for you!

• Use your Society rate. Members pay $649 instead of $899 — and Register & Join Society bundles CREATE with your first year of membership for $1,199, saving you $487.
• Register early and reserve your room. The CREATE block at the Hilton is $55 off the standard rate, and your booking link arrives with your confirmation.
• Ask your organization to sponsor you. A ready-to-personalize justification letter is waiting on the registration page.
• Treat it as a business investment. The planning template maps what the trip should produce — meetings, content, partnerships, a launch.
• Bring your team. Email hello@sheleadsai.ai before registering and we’ll get your group set up together.

All five, with the letter and the template, live here → https://sheleadsai.ai/create-registration/​

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Your freebie this week:

Make a Skill that saves you time, so you can do more crafting and dancing. The Claude Skill Creator is the skill that builds your other skills, and the full SKILL.md is on the page to copy. → https://sheleadsai.ai/claude-skill-creator/​

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