Author: Elly Lucas; Photographer

The #STAYATHOME Challenges! Creative ideas to try out whilst self-isolating and social distancing.

Challenges

Ok team, I’m going to work on the assumption / hope that you are all, by now, aware of a certain health crisis – and that you’re taking it seriously. I know that being completely unable to escape its name at this point is stressing the heck out of a lot of people, so I’ve decided to keep it away from this particular post. Let’s keep this as a momentary haven, but in a considered way that doesn’t deny what’s happening. Deal?

Like so many other folk, I’m finding things a little tough-going right now and I’m acutely aware of my brain – particularly whilst having to practice self-isolating and social distancing – beginning to struggle with its usual acrobatics. So, whilst I was originally going to release these here challenges one at a time, I figured it might be an idea to put together a kinda creative challenge resource for you instead that you can dip in and out of depending on how you’re feeling day to day. This gives me a bit of extra headspace while I’m dealing with a few things and you a few options all in one handy blog rather than lots of separate posts. Hurrah!

As I’ve said previously: the aim here will never be to create something perfect – it’s simply to create for the joy and the interest (and, right now, the distraction) of creating, with just a tiny bit of direction from the theme / prompt provided. You most assuredly don’t have to identify as “a creative” in order to join in; the whole point is that these little exercises are being set to help you develop your creative mindset and have a bit of fun. Give it a go eh? You might just surprise yourself.

These are mostly just outlines of the challenges for now to give you a starting point or three. Keep checking back on Instagram and Facebook for more on each individual challenge! I’ll be sharing some of what I create from these prompts and hopefully a few things from you lovely lot too.

Ready? Here we go!

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Portrait of a loved one. Some of us might be a little more cooped up with our nearest and dearest than usual and could perhaps do with an exercise to remind ourselves about just how much we love them and all of their quirks and details. Some of us (myself included here) might be feeling kinda far away, missing them something fierce and could use something to bring them closer. So, in any media of your choosing, I’d like you to create a portrait of someone you love. Whether you choose to paint, photograph, draw or capture them in music or written word, I’d like love to be your intention; what is it about them that you adore? What space best represents them? Are they loud and outgoing or a little more quiet and considered? Do they live for bright colours or more subtle tones? What’s their style? What fascinates them? Will your portrait feature props or will your subject be alone in the image?

If you have a portrait or photograph of someone already, why not try writing a bit of prose or a thoughtful caption to accompany the image? So many lovely options here!

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  • One from the most beautiful late-Winter day last year, a day spent playing on steam trains with my Dad, my sister and her fella. We’ve been through a fair bit as a family over the last few years, but I love how much mischief and humour and general silliness comes to our aid in more difficult times now. The grin on my Dad’s face here, riding on a steam train with a nice brew in hand and the chance to go and peek around the engine sheds stretching out ahead of him, brings me more joy than I’m currently capable of articulating.

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Write a snapshot! Some of you might’ve already had a go at this one, but I can’t emphasise enough what a lovely, mindful venture this is. It’s one my absolute favourite creative exercises in the universe, and I say that as a photographer who – funny thing – quite likes cameras. It encourages me to stop and to really consider a moment, to actively find something beautiful or quietly fascinating in it, and to revel in that discovery. It is something that, during my brain’s more turbulent moments, brings me an extraordinary amount of peace. Choose your moment, take a deep breath and write about the moment in as much detail as you can possibly manage. Check out this blog for more information and step-by-step help to get you started.

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Illustrate a piece of advice (particularly pertaining to mental health / wellbeing) that you’ve found helpful recently. It can be in any medium – draw it, paint it, stitch it, write it on a post-it and photograph it somewhere interesting, collage it – whatever you fancy! Get those imaginations going and let’s get some good stuff circulating. Here’s my effort, with needle and thread and various scraps of material:

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It might not be particularly deep or poignant, but as someone who was raised listening to the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, it brings a nostalgic grin to my face and – quite frankly – it feels apt right now. When my brain’s feeling somewhat overwrought, a simple reminder to just stop and breathe and take stock (and not forget my towel) will often do the job nicely.

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Create an abstract still life image using things found in the kitchen. And then move onto other rooms. And maybe make an awesome mini-series?! But first, the kitchen. You don’t need a fancy pro camera for this (or any of the challenges set here), any camera will do – or you could paint or draw from what you see. Either get creative and set something up, or look a little more closely at what’s already there and how it perhaps changes as the light changes over the course of a day.

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Get creative with light and shadow. Those of you who follow me on social media will know that this is one of my very favourite things. Start to look for patterns in those shadows, and notice how localised areas of light pick out individual details. Photograph the shadows and spotlights as they are, or place something else into the image. Yourself or a handy nearby pal / family member / beloved pet or plant, perhaps. This works best on a day with bright sunlight, but it’s amazing what patterns lamp and street light make too when you start looking more carefully!

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VISUAL TREASURE HUNT or, possibly, visual bingo? Y’know, whichever floats your boat. Sometimes, if I’m not feeling particularly inspired, I’ll ask other folk online to challenge me to find particular subjects / concepts to creatively photograph. No speedy snapping, the idea is to look carefully and think about it – extra points for getting arty! Should you need a few examples to get the ball rolling:

  • T-t-t-textures! +10 points for a textural photo in each of the following categories: Nature / Urban / Geology ‘n’ stuff
  • Photograph something so exceedingly creatively that you can’t actually immediately tell what it is. +20 points if more than five people are completely bewildered.
  • GET REAL CLOSE. Tiny, macro details please and thank you. Assign your own points depending on smug levels.
  • Patternses, precious! Photos featuring each of these patterns in some way: Stripes / Snazzy Tiles / Spirals (Bonus +10 points if you get all three. Yes that was a Gollum reference in the challenge title. I like patterns, ok?)

Ridiculous descriptions are optional but recommended.

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Crank up the distortion / get reflective / put a frame round it. Take photos through things, reflect things back. What do you have around the house that you could use to distort an image pre-Photoshop…? What could you use to frame a composition? (Try out glasses, spectacles, coloured acetate and bottles of water for starters!)

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  • Phone photo fun with a cheap prism.

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Self-portrait. How are you feeling today? Can you demonstrate it using body language / light / expression / styling? Could you transport yourself elsewhere / create another world to inhabit in an image…? This is a perfect chance to articulate your emotional state or indulge in some artistic escapism, whichever will be most helpful today.

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Pick one colour. Create an image using different shades of just one key colour. Maybe that’ll be a portrait which coordinates styling with your location or matches makeup to clothes, maybe it’s a still life of all the bits and bobs you can find lying around in that colour scheme. Maybe it’s a collage made of recycled scraps of a shade or two, or maybe it’s something else entirely! Let’s see what you’ve got.

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And finally, for now:

Remote jam?! Inspired by the utterly gorgeous video below, ft Sam Sweeney and Jenn Butterworth, I would LOVE to see some more remote tune / song sessions happening! Put down a melody or some backing and see who might fancy joining in from afar. Medley of 90s classics, anyone…? Just how many harmonies can we get going?

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I really hope that you enjoy having a go at some of these challenges and that they help provide a bit of light / interesting relief from everything happening at the moment. Remember, you can repeat these challenges as often as you like! Try them out on different days, you might find that your brain responds better to different kinds of creativity depending on how you’re feeling moment to moment.

Be kind to each other, keep washing your hands and avoiding touching your face and please, please do everything you can to help protect the most vulnerable in our society (and our medical staff, for that matter). Things might seem overwhelming right now, but if we each play our part to the best of our capability, we can get through this together. One day at a time, eh?

All my love,

E x

P.S. If you’d like to share what you create using these challenge prompts, I’d absolutely love to see the results! Tag your posts on social media with #thinkmakeplaycreatechallenge or come and say hi in our new Facebook group – I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

P.P.S. Fancy setting a challenge?! Get in touch! thinkmakeplaycreate@gmail.com – it’d be wonderful to hear from you.

CREATIVE CHALLENGE – Episode 1: One Snapshot, No Camera

Challenges

It’s creative challenge time! I’ll not lie, I’m very excited about starting up this bit of the project. Every week / couple of weeks (we’ll see how it goes) I’ll be giving you a mini creative project to get your teeth into. The aim here will never be to create something perfect – it’s simply to create for the joy and the interest of creating, with just a tiny bit of direction from the theme / prompt provided. You most assuredly don’t have to identify as “a creative” in order to join in; the whole point is that these little exercises are being set to help you develop your creative mindset and, as with anything, improvement comes with practice. Give it a go eh? You might just surprise yourself.

Ready?! Let’s go!

Ok, so, I realise exactly how ridiculous this might sound, but stick with me! This is one my absolute favourite creative exercises in the universe, and I say that as a photographer who – funny thing – quite likes cameras. It encourages me to stop and to really savour a moment, to actively find something beautiful or quietly fascinating in it, and to revel in that discovery. It is something that, during my brain’s more turbulent moments, brings me an extraordinary amount of peace.

First up, a bit of background:

You might be familiar already (particularly if you’re acquainted with anxiety) with a practice known as “grounding”; a simple but incredibly useful means to help control the symptoms associated with anxiety by gently moving our attention away from the worrying/uncomfortable thoughts or memories and ‘refocusing on the present moment’. There are a number of different techniques and exercises associated with this practice, but the one most relevant to this challenge is the “5, 4, 3, 2, 1” method, which specifically encourages us to take in the details of our surroundings and really hone in on the small details (e.g. textures, shadows, subtle changes in light or sound). This method asks us the following questions:

  • What are 5 things you can see?
  • What are 4 things you can feel?
  • What are 3 things you can hear?
  • What are 2 things you can smell?
  • What is 1 thing you can taste?

Even if you don’t have anxiety to navigate, give it a try sometime! (Check out this worksheet for some helpful additional tips / information.) It really is amazing just how much more you begin to notice about your surroundings when you give yourself permission to stop and consider them; there’s such magic in learning to find beauty and intrigue in the small details.

Now, on with the challenge!

Advance warning: this exercise mayyy cause you to stare / swoon at things for surprisingly extended periods of time? I’m pretty sure I spent a solid 15 minutes fawning over the incredible colours and textures and patterns and general astonishing detail in this here rock, pondering everything it had seen and experienced. (Totally, totally worth it.)

Over the next week, I challenge you to write a snapshot of a moment in time. This has become kinda like my own personal creative version of the grounding technique; I love how much extra detail I see when I’m viewing somewhere with a mind to write about it, how much richer the experience becomes and how many more creative connections my brain makes as it considers a whole new world of visual metaphor and simile.

It can be from memory, if you’d like, but I’d very much encourage you to give it a go in real time to experience it most fully. Choose your moment, take a deep breath and examine the moment in as much detail as you can possibly manage. The moment doesn’t have to be anything extravagant – it could be something as simple as considering your morning cuppa. What can you see / hear / feel / smell / taste? How are you feeling in the moment? What’s the lighting situation? What textures / colours / patterns are catching your attention…? If you’re not comfortable launching straight into the writing, give the “5, 4, 3, 2, 1” exercise a go first and jot down your findings to create a few reference points. You don’t have to include everything in your writing, but it’s a useful exercise to help you consider and analyse your environment / personal state nonetheless.

Here’s a written example for you. This particular snapshot came into being the day after the three year anniversary of my Mum’s passing. I was up in Glasgow at the time and, despite feeling somewhat exhausted, I was grateful beyond words for the folk around me and the silver linings I’d learned to find:

“It’s the day after. Having survived the three year anniversary with the help of some very wonderful humans, I find myself here; sat in a perfect little patch of afternoon sun on the carpeted floor, cradling the last of today’s caffeine allowance, my back resting against the solid frame of my bed. I might be suffering with an absolute sod of a cold today, but an enormous weight has shifted. I managed more than two hours’ sleep last night, and the world looks infinitely brighter with the lessening of those dark circles.

As I sit here, breathing as deeply and gently as I can in my current condition, I become aware of a gentle flickering of light. The pale gold of Autumn sun is shepherded into the room here through an old alcove window in its right hand corner, the various intersecting lines across the glass shaping it into a series of satisfyingly geometric shapes. As the evening hours draw closer, the neat rectangles warp and stretch by increments into hazy parallelograms, melting lazily into the pale green paint on the wall.

Every now and again, a decidedly more curious glimmer of light catches my attention on the adjacent wall. This is a glimmer that swims across the surface; not the dancing movement of light filtered by leaves and swaying branches, but a bright reflection from something smooth and steady-moving. This is puppeteer’s light, curating and projecting its curious collection of shadows. It is a fleeting flash, boldly tattooing the smooth curves of the three-headed brass lamp on the sill onto doorframe and pillowcase, twined all around with leaf and vine. It is a moment of unknowing art, both heralded and played out by the rumble of tyre upon tarmac.

Know that while I still chase light, all will be well, I’ll be alright.“

I chose to write this in journal format, but you could absolutely work your findings into a poem / verse instead if you fancied. A number of my songs and concepts began life as a written snapshot, as a series of observations.

That’s it! Your challenge = officially set. If you have any questions at all, do get in touch! Leave a comment on the blog or on the relevant social media post and I’ll get back to you as soon as I possibly can.

Remember: this is a zero pressure creative exercise. The idea, at least to begin with, is simply to encourage you to slow down and take a moment for yourself, to look at the world a little differently. Stephen Fry reportedly once said: “Curiosity about the world and all its corners is a beautiful thing.” and I completely agree. Curiosity (and the ensuing ability to become completely fascinated and entranced by small details) became, for me, a distinctly potent antidote to fear and worry and overwhelm. I very much hope it has a similarly positive effect for you too.

Lots of love, as always,

E x

P.S. Should you create a snapshot that you’d be happy to share / be shared online, I’d so love to read / share it! You can post your work in a comment on this blog, in the brand new Facebook group, or you can simply add “#thinkmakeplaycreatechallenge” to your social media post and tag us in it. Enjoy!

P.P.S. This particular challenge is going to be regular thing, so if you don’t create something you’d like to share this time but feel like you might like to in the future, that’s lovely! There will be plenty more opportunities to get featured should you wish to.

Welcome!

Uncategorized

Hello! Welcome to THINK MAKE PLAY CREATE: a brand new space to explore and discuss the positive impact of creativity on mental health and our ability to communicate about it.

My name’s Elly and I will – to begin with, at least – be your tour guide around here. I’ve spent the last decade working as a professional photographer / designer / musician, and nearly two decades now using creative methods to help me make sense of (and articulate the state of) my brain throughout some decidedly challenging points in my life.

On the days I’m not able to find the words to describe how I’m feeling, or when my head is full of fog and proving hard to navigate or focus through, the ability to express myself using alternative means (for me, usually musical) or to slow down and look at the world a little differently (finding beauty and wonder in the strangest and smallest of places) proved to be an absolute game changer – and something which could be both learned and taught to / shared with others.

I feel I should perhaps, at this point, give you a little extra background into one of the reasons why this has become quite so important to me. The woman carrying the small blonde koala-child (hi!) in the photo above was my lovely Mum. She had the biggest heart and the best smile and spent her life wanting to help people as best she could. As it turns out, she also struggled with mental illness far more than she ever let on and (CW: bereavement) in September 2016, she took her own life. I didn’t see it coming, and I miss her more than I’m currently capable of putting into words. I’m creating this space in her memory, and hoping with all that I have that it does even a little towards helping folk as much as she did.

I’ll be sharing some of my own story and associated creative output with you here, setting a few challenges to get your creative minds fired up, and hopefully teaching you a few of the tricks and tools that have helped me so much over the years…

…but it mustn’t just be my voice here. I know what my personal experience of mental ill health (as a white, female, cisgender, non-disabled, generally pretty privileged person) has been and is, but it is so, so important – especially in such strange and divided times – that we learn about experiences outside of our bubble, that we listen to and support and hold space for each other.

And that’s where you come in!

I want this project to be as diverse and as intersectional as we can possibly make it. I’ll be actively looking out for lots of brilliant folk to feature, but I could really use your help finding them too!

So, if you use creativity as a means to aid your mental well-being; if you work in art or music therapy or the mental health field in general; or maybe if you just happen to have a person or project or charity in mind you’d particularly like to see featured on the blog – I’d love to hear from you. As well as featuring guest blogs (submission guidelines here), I’d love to photograph and interview a few folk for this too. Drop me a DM or email me at thinkmakeplaycreate@gmail.com to get involved!

Opening up the conversation around mental health is something very close to my heart. It’s incredibly important to me that you feel supported and represented here and that the content is made as accessible as possible, so I’d really appreciate any feedback you have as this project develops and evolves over time.

Check back soon for the first challenge blog!

Until then, thank you for visiting – I can’t wait to get this all going properly.

Lots of love,

E x

If you’re struggling with anything at the moment, or if you’ve been affected by anything discussed in this blog: please be sure to talk to someone about it and please, please don’t battle through on your own. Check out The Blurt Foundation and Mind UK for some brilliant online resources and, should you need it, The CALM Zone and Samaritans both offer a free, confidential listening and support service.