Rushing not reflecting
I am often in a rush. There are lots of things to do (right now!) and I’m always thinking ‘what’s next?’ It feels like I have a tightly wound spring in my chest which keeps me moving in haste. Sometimes I even catch myself not breathing. I am fairly certain that this low-level anxiety is a contributing factor to me finding it hard to stop, even for a moment or two. Looking after myself, stopping to refresh or to reflect, is frequently the lowest priority activity on my list.
I’m a big advocate for regularly taking time to reflect on how things are going, especially in your creative practice. It can be helpful to pause and not jump straight into the next thing. If we take the time to reflect after each big event or body of work, it’s so much easier to navigate a path forward, one that is responsive to our needs and in line with our values.
The importance of WHY to your practice
This time of year isn’t just good for making resolutions and setting goals; it’s a really good opportunity to reflect on what’s been happening and what lies ahead. At the start of the year I encourage everyone I know to do a bit of a Creative Practice MOT and see where they’re at with the creative side of their work. There are lots of people out there offering you fantastic advice to kickstart your business in 2018 but, I suspect, fewer people asking you why you do what you do, and what it’s all about. I’d like you to challenge yourself a bit. It’s so easy for makers and other creatives who produce tangible things like objects to focus on the HOW of their work, but in this post I’d like to talk about the importance of WHY to your practice.
Conversations with makers: Rachel Jones-Jones
I first met Rachel at the 3rd year work in progress show and was immediately taken by her project on failure and risk taking. I invited her to be part of the Makers & Tools project last year, and was thrilled by her engagement with the concept despite the demands of finishing her final year collection. Since then we’ve shared some excellent disucssions about the nature of making and our creative practices. In this conversation I caught up with her during her first term as Artist in Residence and we discussed what it’s like taking those first steps post-graduation, what it means if you’re not making and coping with failure.
What is my creative practice?
Like many people, I’m using this quiet space at the beginning of the year to consider the state of things, to reflect on what went on in 2017 and to start putting together a very loose plan for 2018. I’ve been steadily working through guides and documents sent to me by people who advise and support creatives for a living, and having put together my own Creative Practice MOT course (which twenty lovely people are currently using) my head is filled with questions. Questions like ‘how do you feel about your creative practice?’ or ‘which of your services were most profitable in 2017?’ questions which may have definite answers or may lead to a vast place of unknowing…
Books to inspire: Why we make things and why it matters
With January being such a good time to take stock and reflect I thought my book recommendation this month should be a book that allows you to consider your creative practice through the eyes of another.
Peter Korn’s Why we make things & why it matters is a beautiful book. Part autobiography, part philosophy for living (and making) it is deeply personal and yet completely relevant to all people who aim to make a living from the work they do with their hands.
Harnessing social media for motivation
A couple of weeks ago I took part in a project where I was asked to document all the food I ate, including the waste from the meals, and to reflect on my food/cooking/eating habits. The images and words were to form research for an artist’s new collection of work. I had the option to write a short piece and email some images, but because I’ve been on a social media hiatus (as I talked about here) I thought it might be a good way to get back into the Instagame. But making all this public didn’t feel right, so I set up a private account just for the project.
Don’t forget the big picture!
I have a feeling that this week is a bit frantic for everyone no matter what your creative practice. Whether you have orders to fill or deadlines to meet, this last working week before Christmas, with all the associated activity of the holidays, can be exhausting.
Mindful of how little time you all have to read blog posts right now, I just wanted to touch on the importance of not losing the big picture. With so much to do it’s easy to get blinkered, to become dead focused on what needs doing, that we forget why we are doing these things. And in this momentary forgetting we can lose our energy and motivation.
Dealing with a dip in creative energy
This illustration by Gemma Correll could be a portrait of me in winter. By the end of Feburary it is most definitely me. Every year I struggle with this season. Sometimes I’m lucky and I only get the winter blues, but sometimes, like this year, things turn out differently and life gets really tricky. I am a greyscale version of myself, and the energy and enthusiasm for life that I have in spring and summer disappear with the daylight. It takes all my energy to look normal. I get frustrated and angry at myself for not managing to cope, for finding things hard when it seems like there’s no reason to feel so bad. This year’s extreme symptoms have led me to realise that I shouldn’t battle with myself like this. It does me no good to admonish myself; I need to be kinder and work with myself to find my own way through. So, armed with a SAD lamp that is retina-burning bright, and a will to do things differently this time, I’m going to share with you my plans for the dark months. Now, you may not struggle with the change in the seasons, but I’m guessing that everyone has times in the year when their mental health takes a bit of a dip and as a result their creative energy suffers. This post is for those times.
Books to inspire: The Art of Possibility
I love this book. It is one of the few books I know I would be very upset if I lost. It regularly makes the journey down from my bookshelf onto my desk or bedside table and I never tire of rereading passages. In some ways I feel the book houses the kind of optimism that I wish I had in greater measure. Not a Pollyanna, life is great (even when it’s not) kind of outlook, but a sense that we can affect so much in our lives if we just realised it. That the world is a place full of opportunity and possibility and we are active participants within that. It’s something I know to be true, but sometimes find hard to remember.
The authors of this book – Rosamund and Benjamin Zander – are a couple who work in very different fields. She is a family therapist and a painter, he is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and a teacher of music students. Together they bring insights from their spheres of activity; their stories and examples are inspiring and motivating.
Guest blog post: Katy Gillam-Hull
This month there is a bonus Wednesday so I thought it might be nice to invite a maker to write a guest post and hear a different voice for a bit. I met Katy Gillam-Hull fairly recently, at New Designers One Year On, and due to the nature of her work (with found, historical objects) I felt like I was talking to a kindred spirit. I’ve been interested to hear her talk, recently, of a change in her practice, or the need to think about a change, so I asked her if she wouldn’t mind putting her thoughts down into words, to elucidate the current state of her making practice. Enjoy!