#42 - Home Made

For years, I would have said I was not creative. Although I wrote and created workshops and lessons, I would freeze when presented with an artistic, hands-on project. I suspect many of us have these 'scripts' from negative experiences of art lessons at school, or just from the general fact that there is so little room for creativity built in to school curricula.

Recently, I've been realising how very creative I actually am, thanks to our wedding preparations. We really wanted a 'home-made' feel to the day with that sense of community and creativity. One of these projects is making hearts out of clay and painting them, to create decorations for our marquee. We've been lucky enough to get sample paint pots from an inspirational paint company called Auro which produce natural, environmentally-sustainable paints. Instead of the normal toxic odour of paints, this paint smells of lemons and is just a complete pleasure to use (see http://www.auro.co.uk/).

When I see those clay hearts now, I feel that WE are in them, because of the creativity we invested in them. They carry within them memories of the time spent, the conversations my partner and I had, the feel of the balmy summer evenings when we sat in the garden making them. After the wedding, we'll be using these hearts to decorate our home and they'll then carry with them all the embodied energy from that magical day. Home: made.

I feel sad for all of us who have been living through this Age of Cheap Oil because it has distanced us from this joy of creativity. We doubt the viability of making things ourselves, believing it to be easier to import anonymous mass-produced goods. However, as we continue to see the price of oil rising, we'll see more and more of this 'powering down' and 'skilling up' which people talk about. We'll start shifting to seeing ourselves as vitally useful, productive human beings who can make things. We'll feel that WE are in our surroundings, that our own stories infuse the objects around us, and rather than just seeing the product, we'll remember the process.

Inquiry: How could I inject some creativity into this aspect of my life?

Action: Make something this week with your very own hands. Bake an apple pie, make a card for a friend's birthday, create a collage, sew a little purse, turn a glass jar into a lantern, or make strawberry jam. I find this especially fulfilling when using materials that would otherwise have ended up in the bin! If you feel you don't know where to start, ask someone to show you. Or find a website which talks you through a creative process. Notice the 'scripts' which you run about you 'not being creative' and let this next creative act be the start of a new script.