Creativity Found: Finding Creativity Later in Life
Real-life stories of finding or returning to creativity in adulthood. I'm Claire, and I re-found my creativity after a time of almost crippling anxiety. Now I share the stories of other people who have found or re-found their creativity as adults, and hopefully inspire many more grown-ups to get creative. I chat with my guests about their childhood experiences of creativity and the arts, how they came to the creative practices they now love, the barriers they had to overcome to start their creative re-awakening, and how what they do now benefits their physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.
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Creativity Found: Finding Creativity Later in Life
Creatful - creativity for local community
•Nancy Fellows•Episode 57
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How crafting can help you through mentally difficult times. For this bonus episode I am chatting with Nancy Fellows who founded Creatful CIC to enable people in her community to access mindful, informal arts and crafts events and, where needed, to signpost them to mental wellbeing services, all borne out of a need Nancy identified while struggling with her own mental health.
Creativity Found is all about helping adults to tap into their creativity. As well as inspiring listeners with my guests’ stories of how they found or re-found their creativity as grown-ups and how that has benefitted their everyday lives, here at creativity found I also want to encourage adults of any age to find their own creative passion. I host a website that anyone can visit to search for creative classes, workshops, online courses, kits and supplies, for all sorts of arts and crafts activities. I also run two memberships. One to help anyone that is creatively curious get past whatever is holding them back and give them access to new creative activities and experiences to try. The other supports and promotes businesses that teach creative activities or sell kits and supplies.
Hi, I'm Claire, host of this podcast, as well as inspiring listeners with my guests stories of how they found or refound their creativity as grown ups, and how that has benefited their everyday lives. Here at creativity found I also want to offer adults of any age opportunities to find their own creative passion with a directory of arts and crafts, workshops, courses and kits. The creativity found community also provides support for the small businesses and sole traders who make these workshops happen, and build, market and distribute the kits. One of the ways I can do this is to give creativity found members their own bonus podcast episode, to spread the word about their wonderful offerings, and help creativity seekers to find them. For this bonus episode, I'm chatting with Nancy fellows who founded createFile to enable people in her community to access mindful informal arts and crafts events, and were needed to signpost them to mental wellbeing services, all born out of need Nancy identified while struggling with her own mental health. Hi, Nancy, how are you? Hi,
Unknown:
clay I'm good. Thank you.
Claire Waite Brown:
Brilliant, I would love for you to tell myself and my listeners more about create fold.
Unknown:
Yeah, well create full is a community interest company. Which means it's it's not like a charity, but it does run not for profit, and it's owned by the community. On a day to day basis create for is running craft and art groups bringing people together in a different locations in my community. We run some evening workshops and family events, and lots of fun stuff going on. With this underlying focus on mindful creativity. I'm making sure people have access to somewhere where they can be signposted to local mental health services and access to modern therapeutic activities in their community.
Claire Waite Brown:
So when people come to your events, you have particular craft events, you have craft and chat, which I know is more informal. And people can bring their own crafts or use the materials that you bring along. What do people like to do when they come to these sessions? Do you have a lot of people using your materials? And how do the sessions kind of pan out generally,
Unknown:
it's really varies. There's a lot of variety. Usually the group evolves over a number of sessions and just naturally, we decide together what to do. And some people are much more comfortable just bringing along their own projects and sit there doing their knitting and kind of watching what else is going on. I always bring a new craft to each group which we can explore together and sometimes that's something that requires us all to focus and have a play around together like the crime may or sometimes it's we pay a person, some materials we've had donated, the variety makes it really exciting and we just say evolve.
Claire Waite Brown:
That sounds brilliant. Why did you start createFile Do you have a personal story? Was this something you were looking for yourself? Maybe
Unknown:
Yeah, so I've always been a creative. I believe everyone's a creative but I've always been a typical creative always got stuck in with kind of arts and crafts went on to do product design and design management at university kind of ended up in the corporate world. But I've always sourced the jobs that were the most creative, even if it's just making a PowerPoint look pretty. And I think through COVID, like most people, I was reassessing how I was living my life and how much time I was getting with my children. And I also had quite a severe mental health crisis in 2020. And at that point, I really realised how important creativity was for my personal well being a part of my recovery. From that particular crisis, I was picking up my pencil again, and just starting to scribble. At one point, I just really couldn't, you know, like the typical heavy depression, people talk about we you can't get out of bed. And I haven't really experienced that before. But the first thing I felt I was able to do again, was, was kind of picking up my pencil and having a little scribble and then it kind of moved on and got my watercolours back out and picked up some of the things I've done over the past. And I just realised how, yeah, how important that was. At the same time I was seeing different therapists, I've seen a number of therapists over the, over the past kind of eight to 10 years. And I've observed how therapy is often about reading, writing, you know, go away, read this passage, or go and write this letter, I'm dyslexic, I've got fairly mild dyslexia. And I've always just adjusted what I do, and it's never really impacted my life. But that just naturally meant that I would come home from therapy, kind of read, what could be bothered to read into about my homework I've been asked to do, and translate that into a creative exercise. So, for example, anyone who's done any kind of visual work in therapy, you probably talked about, like your safe space and kind of visualising the safe space. And that in itself is a creative activity. But then I've gone on to make a worksheet and to help everybody be able to access that activity. I'm a firm believer that you, we shouldn't have to be going to therapy before we get access to lots of these modern therapeutic tools and techniques. So yeah, so a mixture of kind of my own life changing, and my realisation around creativity and how important it is, for our well being kind of ended up in in Washington create for back in November of last year.
Claire Waite Brown:
Well, that's amazing. It's obviously sad that you had to experience those experiences for yourself in order to come out the other side, but it's good that you're there. And hopefully, with your kind of events, you can maybe get to people before they get to a very or slightly unstable mental point of well being.
Unknown:
Yeah, I think when I've been on Well, I've known that I've struggled, struggled socially. And that made it really hard for me to go out into my own community and find groups and creative groups and so on. But it made it even harder, because when I went out to law, I think what I found in my local area was often the groups were for specific demographics. So they'll be, you know, that group just for the elderly, or that group just for moms, and I always felt like that was really daunting to maybe be the odd one out slightly or not quite completely fit. So that was also really important when I launched create for to make something inclusive. So we are for adults of all ages and abilities. All of our events, have disabled access, and I really try and do what I can to make sure that anyone in their community when they start looking for something can find us and feel like they will be welcome. And then come in and hopefully find something else through where we signposted needed. It's not always that people come to us and stay with us, they might come to us and we might say, oh, actually we know about this really good writing group that's around the corner and or, you know, maybe they need to be signposted or referred to to mental health services or that type of thing as well.
Claire Waite Brown:
Yeah. And presumably that isn't only Mindfulness that is also just if I want to come along and have a chat while doing something that I enjoy, or maybe whilst finding a new creative activity.
Unknown:
Yeah, well, we call you mentioned earlier, our kind of main model is craft and chat, which is a casual, crafty art group, I suppose. But sometimes we do more chatting than crafting. And you know, we'll realise, oh, my God, we haven't done anything for half an hour. And that's okay, as well. And I think for a long time, I've observed mindfulness being taught as tucked over something that you have to really focus on. And, you know, it's practising mindfulness is described as this intense focus on the present moment. And actually, I think mindfulness is just about being in the moment. And you'll find yourself doing that in your different creative outlets. And in lots of different ways, even if it is just having a conversation face to face with someone not flicking through your phone. Or it's just so hard because we are in a world where we're expected to multitask. And we are constantly stimulated. So we don't get a lot of opportunity to be mindful. I mean, you having this conversation, you're being present. You're taking time out of your day to do something you enjoy. And that's okay, even if that's all you achieved. So
Claire Waite Brown:
yeah, I think that's a really valid point. Because you can often be bamboozled with ideas of mindfulness that it means really concentrating or it means doing something highfalutin, or it means doing some kind of physical exercise. And there are ways that anybody can find just those moments, through something that they enjoy.
Unknown:
Why do you come to craft and chat, I come to craft and chat, because I like the social side. There's always someone's chat, too. We battle out ideas, and have different experiences through crafting, and it helps make my crafting bigger. I really liked it again, for the social side, because it's just nice meeting other people with similar ideas, different ideas. I mean, I've loved experiencing new things, things I would never have thought about trying at home. So it's lovely because it's safe. And it's just, it's just a really, really nice enjoyable experience every week.
Claire Waite Brown:
Grateful is specifically in Hampshire. And I know that lots of places have maybe other craft and chat type events. Why do you think people like that? Maybe Why do you think people need that? Why do you think creativity within the community is an important thing.
Unknown:
It's a tool. It's helping people connect, whether it's a choir, whether it is people sit in painting together, whether it's a writing group, these are all just tools to give people spaces, safe spaces where they can come together, find like minded people, connect, maybe make friends and go on to have relationships outside of the crew. I think, post pandemic it's been really clear to see where we miss that. But it's still very hard for some people to get back out and go to groups. I'm acknowledge that. But I think the people who have been able to do it and are there and are connecting again, are really getting something from it and really feeling grateful for it because they missed that time together. So really, yes, it is great to learn new skills, whether in crafting and arts and so on. And the creativity is is really fun. It is just a part of the tool to bring people together to make your people have got spaces they can go to in their communities to help reduce isolation. It's all part of the bigger picture.
Claire Waite Brown:
It is a whole holistic necessity. I completely agree. We're not isolated beings. We do need to be together. And that's such a lovely way to do it as well. Thank you so much for telling me all about it. Nancy grateful is a member of creativity found so you can find the create full page at creativity found.co.uk/create Full where you can find all the links but also while you're here, Nancy do tell us how people can find you.
Unknown:
Well, I have a new website which is really exciting, although it was designed by me so I'm a bit dodgy with that stuff. But if go and have a look. Please provide any feedback or create for.co.uk and again on creativity found and more Grand Cross the social media platforms, different tags and all that stuff. But yeah, you go to the website
Claire Waite Brown:
brilliant. Thank you so much and
Unknown:
I really enjoyed it.
Claire Waite Brown:
Thanks so much for listening to creativity found. If your podcast app has the facility, please leave a rating and review to help other people find us on Instagram and Facebook follow at creativity found podcast and on Pinterest look for at creativity found. And finally, don't forget to check out creativity found.co.uk The website connecting adults who wants to find a creative outlet with the artists and crafters who can help them tap into their creativity
