If there existed a ‘Social Services for Creativity’ that measured how we cared for our own ideas, I wonder… how might we all fare? What might the feedback be? Do we push away, abandon, neglect, or judge harshly new ideas that come to us? Would there ever be a recommendation that our creative ideas/babies be taken into care?

In our busy lives, it is truly very hard to dedicate time to our natural creativity and prioritise it. And yet, when people do make time, to allow images and words to rise up naturally from within, it can potentially give back so much on many levels – mentally, physically, emotionally. As I watch people drop into their creative process, writing and making art freely, their skin glows, they look more alive, energised, grounded. Often deep insights occur, as if we’ve connected with a wellspring of something bigger than ourselves.

Connecting to our creative nature, following our intuition and imagination, learning how to let it guide us, to serve as an inner compass… might it also be a powerful antidote to some of the mental health challenges of our time? Maybe if we don’t learn to use our imagination in supportive, freeing ways, that’s how it can turn against us, conjuring up dark fears, anxieties. Yet, if our own minds can box us in, limiting our ways of seeing and being, our imagination can also potentially lead us out.

One of the many reasons we don’t make and protect time to follow and explore ideas is that our inner critic talks us out of it. As the poet Mary Oliver wrote so eloquently in her collection of essays in ‘Upstream’, our self can be interrupted by another part of our self, which can be far worse than some of the other inevitable external interruptions and distractions that occur. I can’t help but wonder… what happens to all that natural creativity inside us, all those bubbling ideas, if we deny them any form of expression.

This Saturday 7 June I’m running a CPD workshop to explore ways to work with the inner critic, and importantly, to find our inner allies. so we can offer a new kind of welcoming committee for our ideas and natural, vital creativity, whatever form that may take. Whether you are interested in freeing more of your own creativity, or in helping others develop their own potentials, this CPD workshop can offer new creative tools and strategies. There’s no need to be artistic or identified with being creative to take part. All arts materials and light refreshments are provided. Just bring curiosity and a notebook.