Taking yourself on a creative date is one of the best ways to nurture yourself as an artist: we all need to give ourselves time to “refill the well”, regain perspective, and open ourselves to new ideas, influences and thoughts. But what makes a good creative date is different for everybody: listen to this week’s episode to find out more!
Whatever you do, mindset is key
Personally, I reckon it’s a lot to do with mindset: wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, try and adopt a sort of “neutral” way of being: neither thinking about the future, or the past, just being where you are, doing what you’re doing.
I could’ve said “practice mindfulness” but that’s more doing:
Practice not-doing.
If you keep your ears and eyes and mind open, if you truly listen and look and stop thinking*…you open space for new ideas and discoveries, even in your home environment.
*Stopping thinking: that’s a bit of a trap. You can’t. What you can do, is learn to observe your thoughts but not engage. For a brilliant description of this, you can’t do better than Andy Puddicombe of Headspace.
If you want to make an actual and specific date, it could be as simple as giving your inner artist the time and attention they deserve. So in a way, spending time doing whatever your inner artist wants – that’s a creative date!
I let my inner artist out to play when I was supposed to be writing this, earlier in the week. I let her footle with an update of the podcast graphic (see above!) then play around creating this list of ideas for creative dates:
Click the picture to download a PDF copy, and share it with a friend if you like!
Mentioned in this episode
Andy J Pizza’s Creative Peptalk podcast
TED talks
Esme Young
Louise Baldwin
Cas Holmes
Native Hands
Zoe Intermittent Fasting Study
Maidstone Museum (including the Solomon Island canoe!)
Stained Glass Museum Ely
Fashion and Textile Museum
Welsh Quilt Centre
Ceredigion Museum
Fences App
Gina’s instructions to make a fabric coaster on YouTube
Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons
You can find Gina here.
The music is Dear Autumn by Ikson and you can find it at https://soundcloud.com/ikson
