TRANSCRIPT

Hello lovely creative, welcome back for day five of Light Up Your Creative Joy. Thank you for getting to day five with me, I can't wait for the next few days, and I hope you're enjoying the experience. So today we're going to be looking at exploring creative play.

We already started this a little bit with our random idea generation, But for me, play is a really integral, key part of our creative process. Even if we're a very thoughtful, considered person who doesn't dance around making lots of noise, the act of idea generation is inherently playful.

So as children we all have the ability to get lost in a play state, but when we become adults it seems to get a lot harder for some reason.

Why does this happen? Maybe because we're told endlessly that time is a precious resource, and we should use it productively and efficiently and get things done

Paradoxically, of course we're all more and more distracted than we ever were. Our mobile phones are constantly trying to suck us in and take our time. I know my screen time is always higher than I want it to be.

So how can we replace some of that time that we lose to things that aren't nurturing for us,

And replace them with play, which is shown to be beneficial to our well being. As Dr. Stuart Brown from the National Institute for Play writes, 'Play has a biological place just like sleep and dreams do'. And it's been shown in studies that play both improves our cognitive and social well being and contributes to our creative thinking.

Now that I've made a case for you playing a bit more, what is play? Well, Dr. Stuart Brown describes it as 'just doing it for its own sake. It doesn't have to have a particular purpose and that's what's great about play. If its purpose is more important than the act of doing it, it's probably not play'.

So today I have created three things which have no specific or practical purpose and I see them as an invitation that I'm offering you to play. So if any of them don't feel right or make you uncomfortable, by all means, just set them aside and don't do them, but I would love for you to just give about 10 minutes to each and have a go and see what comes out of it.

And if you can, I'm inviting you to turn your phone off while you do them. So you're giving yourself that space that we had when we were younger and we weren't always holding a phone to see what happens when you immerse yourself in creative play.

So from the resources we have the first one which is intuitive drawing or doodling. Find a pencil or a pack of colored pencils. Place your pencil on the paper and begin to draw a line.

Keep drawing it to see where it takes you. It might curve or twist or turn or form sharp angles. You might want to colour sections in or add texture or details. The key thing is just to draw something with no prior intention and not try and make it look like anything. So, please enjoy having a doodle.

The second one is making a word association poem. So you might have played word association games with other people, but this is one that you can do by yourself. So you set a timer for five minutes, and as a starting point you could open up your inspiration board and choose the very first thing that you see as your first word.

Then, without spending too much time on it, write down whatever the next word or phrase that pops into your head is. You might like it to rhyme, you might not. Just do whatever feels natural. And just keep going until the end and read your poem. Lastly we have move your body or fingertips. So please move in whatever way is comfortable for you, which is possible for you without causing any harm.

If you made a playlist yesterday, you might want to choose a song for that Otherwise select a song that comes to mind easily and just respond to it and the environment around you. I've written, you don't have to dance if it's uncomfortable. What happens if you allow yourself to move in response to the sound, making gestures or movements that you would never pull out on the dance floor? For me, that's very few.

I'm a very exuberant dancer. If you don't want to move your body for any reason, then can you do it with your fingertips instead? You might want to use the space below to write about how you feel afterwards. Did it feel embarrassing? Did you feel unsure? Did you enjoy the experience? These are all valid responses.

If you find that you can't stop laughing, that's okay too. There is no right or wrong way to do this. Or, you might want to write on these questions. What could make this experience easier or more fun for you? What might you do differently next time? And if you enjoyed it all, how can you create a space for more dance or movement in your life?

So I hope you have fun exploring those playful techniques. I would love to hear how it goes, but otherwise enjoy, and I will see you for day six. Bye bye.