Dear reader,
Once again, I am sharing some questions that I often use while providing mentoring in creative identity and practice. I hope you find them to be reflective and helpful.
Where are you at right now, and what can that tell us about your creative self?
Part of the trick with developing, sustaining, and nurturing a creative practice comes from having awareness of what you need at this stage in your life and then managing your expectations accordingly. Our society has many attitudes and ideas about creativity which, in my opinion, are odd or even unhealthy. Many individuals carry unhelpful baggage about the very idea of being creative.
For example:
Did you grow up in a household where there was not much enjoyment of art?
Were you the nerdy kid at school who got beaten up or teased for reading too much or doing ballet?
Maybe, when you were a little kid, you were one of the ones who did the teasing?
Do you now work in a workplace where the processes are stale and technocratic, where there is no meaningful investment of time or other resources in innovation?
Do you read a newspaper where the columnists sometimes rail against arts funding as being a waste of taxpayers’ money?
All the above might seem quite mundane and, to some people reading this, might be just a part of normal life. (Not a healthy normal, though, if you’re that kid getting beaten up). But all these things speak to a slyly toxic attitude that parts of our society have towards creativity, and it is the normalisation of this that is the problem. If you have absorbed these attitudes with your mother’s milk, then they are going to quietly inhibit – even poison – your attitude towards being creative. Use the questions below to check in on this baggage and make sure that you’re not carrying around stuff that will dampen your confidence of - and connection to - a human quality that is embedded within you and which you deserve to enjoy.
And if you are reading this and you are an artist, and using these notes to help you to reflect on an already established creative practice? It might be still worth looking through the questions below and seeing if any of them spark some ideas. Artists hear so much negative talk about their vocation that it can be possible to internalise it without realising that you’re doing it.
So, consider these questions in light of your sense of your own creative identity:
How do you define the word creativity, and what does that say about you and your relationship to your creativity?
Does the word ‘creativity’ suggest to you:
a process
a state of mind
a set of activities or habits
or all of these?
(It doesn’t matter which you choose: they are all valid. This question is just to give you some insight into the ways in which you identify as creative.)
When you think of a creative person, what kind of a stereotype springs to mind?
A raving mad artist living in a garret?
A serious-minded writer working on their novel?
A hippy?
A ballet dancer?
An entrepreneur?
A potter dreamily shaping clay?
An architect designing a building?
Some silly wanker getting stoned?
A diva throwing a tantrum?
An adult rediscovering play?
What does this reveal to you about the cliches and stereotypes that you carry around with you regarding creativity?
Is creativity something you are at ease with within yourself or are you sceptical about it?
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