TRANSCRIPT

Hello lovely creative. Welcome to Day Four of Light Up Your Creative Joy .

I hope you had fun yesterday playing with your random idea generation. Please do get in touch if you enjoyed it and let me know what funny or weird or whimsical or unique or strange things came out of that process.

So today we're going to be talking about how we can support our senses to invite or evoke creative joy. And again, that means whatever creative joy is to you.

So you could go back to day one and what you defined. Are you somebody who wants to feel content in your space? Do you want to feel happy, uplifted? What do you need to feel the most creatively connected?

So I know that we don't all have complete control over our creative space. Some of us might not have a designated creative space. I'm so lucky and I feel so grateful every day to have a studio, but I didn't always have that. And especially if we work in communal spaces, it can be very difficult to make sure that everything meets our needs.

So I've made a variety of different suggestions and I'm hoping that you can apply something from today, no matter how small, just to help you feel a little bit more creatively connected and engaged and that you're not overwhelmed or experiencing lots of distractions, that you're inviting creative flow.

So a good starting point could be to ask yourself the question, what do I like or dislike in spaces? And that can be a really good signpost to your needs. Especially if you're neurodivergent, you can be very easily overstimulated by lots of noise or very bright lights.

So the things you could just make a note of as we go through the activity.

So while we're going through this today, you might want to print off your resource for day four, which has sight, sound and scent, or you could just write them on a piece of paper.

So for sound. Let's start with music. What kind of music aligns with the form of creative joy that you identified for yourself? So, if you're somebody who wants to work in a very thoughtful, mindful way, would that be classical music or would it be really gentle meditative music. If you are someone who needs an upbeat energy when you're creating, what would get you into that creative flow state?

I actually use a variety of different songs to help me with my creative process. So, first I need to get that kind of energy up, I need to get that dopamine up, so I will listen to upbeat songs, and then when I want to focus and get into flow state, I have either purely instrumental songs, or I have songs I know so well that I don't really hear them, they just are like part of my being now.

Secondly, sight. Is the space around you inspiring you? If not, can you change it? Even something as simple as changing a lamp, so you're not using really bright overhead lights, but you might be using more ambient lighting, or maybe having a little box where you might have like a sketchbook or a pen that you really like using and you find aesthetically really pleasing,

those things can make a difference. They can just help us move through those little barriers that we meet every time we think about making something.

If you have more control over your space, you might want to experiment with coloured lighting. Now you can get little LEDs that can have like 12 different colours.

They're not very expensive and they're easily portable, so you can actually play with the feeling of the space and different colours and how they impact you.

Right now I'm using my incredibly bright studio lights which are not relaxing at all and very draining. So what lights drain you? What lights do you need to be able to do the things you want to do? And is there an in between? If you love daylight and you don't live in Cumbria in the winter, just working by the window can make a real difference to how you feel.

Finally, scent. Scent brings up all sorts of emotions and memories in people. Scent can make the difference between a space feeling cosy or dangerous. So what scents can you bring into your creative space that could facilitate feeling like it's welcoming, it's a space where wonderful things are going to happen, and if you're limited in terms of what you have access to, or you don't have a space that's a room of one's own, You could always use aromatherapy oils and just have one that you can sniff occasionally.

Just thinking about those tiny changes, those little shifts that you can make, that would just add or bring something to your creative experience.

I've also included a blank three segmented circle in the resources today because you might not find Sight, Sound and Scent are right for you and therefore I thought you could always put your own.

And at the end, there is a kind of writing page that you could refer to and it just says, What small changes can you easily make so your creative space is more welcoming or inspiring? And also, what would you like to do in the future with more resources? I think that sometimes fantasizing about the perfect studio can be really distracting and it can stop us from getting on with just enjoying the creativity with the life we have now, especially with social media.

However, it can be fun to just have a little wish list. For me, it was things like, I've now got a cutting mat the size of my desk, so every time I want to do something, I want to do some paper art, or I want to cut something out, I don't have to rummage around and find a mat and put it on the desk, it's ready for me there.

So it's just little things like that. I think I remember when I painted the wall behind me, suddenly the whole room felt so much more like mine. And just little knickknacks and things that I like to have around me when I'm working.

I know we have a game in my family where when we go for a walk, we talk about what our dream house would look like and we make them completely ridiculous and fantastical, like, giant tree houses and things like that. But sometimes the ideas that we have while we're talking about that, I remember saying I wanted to have all these star lamps hanging from the ceiling and I was like, I could actually make that happen.

So, that might be fun too.

Last thing I want to talk about today is ensuring that you're not using it as an opportunity to be hard on yourself or to make a list of the things that you don't have. So, for example, for me, a big pain point in my creative space is the fact that I'm very messy and disorganised and An obvious thing would be to say I want to make this space really clean and tidy because that's the best space for me to work in.

I have tried to do that for nearly 40 years and it will not be something I can bring into my everyday without a lot of shame and a lot of struggle. So now I've changed that parameter and it's more like how does my desk need to feel so I can be productive and also how can I support myself like having a box where I move things off the desk to sort out later so I don't get stuck in tidying when I should be creating, so that could be something else you can consider. I hope that that's useful to you. I hope you enjoy thinking about little changes you can make to your creative space, even if it's a travelling one, So that when you are planning to create, you feel that it's more welcoming and inviting to that beautiful state of creative flow.

And I will see you tomorrow for day five. Bye.