The Many Faces of Creativity

A few months ago, I found myself in a creative crisis. Or at least, that’s what I thought at the time. Throughout October to December, I was spending the vast majority of my time working on an incredibly exciting project—The Maker’s Space (I wrote about it here for those who haven’t come across it before)—but throughout that period I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t actually being creative.

I wasn’t sketching. I wasn’t stitching. I wasn’t painting. When I would get home in the evening, I could manage to work on the new Woolies (those were already designed and effectively just kits at that point), but I couldn’t bring myself to think of new designs. When I went away at the start of January I took loads of fabric and threads with me and then felt totally overwhelmed about where to begin. The longer this went on, the more unsettled I became. I started to worry—had I lost my touch? I had never found the creative process difficult before, so had all my focus on The Maker’s Space make me forget how to actually make?

For months, this gnawed at me. I’d sit down in the evening, exhausted from a long day of recording, writing, planning—and I’d feel oddly unfulfilled. I kept telling myself, You’re working on what you need to do! You’re designing a course about creativity! But in my mind, because I wasn’t physically making something, I wasn’t truly being creative.

Now, months later and with the beauty of time to reflect, I realise how completely wrong I was. That period was incredibly creative—just in a different way from what I was used to. And I don’t think I’m alone in this. So many of us have a narrow view of what creativity is, and we don’t give ourselves credit for the creative work we do when it doesn’t fit that traditional mould. The issue is, that attitude can be detrimental to our confidence, so I think it's time we changed our perception of creativity.