This week started with messy ideas, definitely. I’m interesting in where ideas come from in the first place, and we touched on this in a previous module.
This article on It’s Nice That was a great read on inspiration – covering many theories and creative people’s personal experiences.
“…inspiration is often dependent on “how you take in the world’s context”. In this sense, a creative mind isn’t formed naturally, and creativity has to be cultivated, maintained and topped up regularly for inspiration to take hold – you have to work at it like any other creative task. “One of the things research has shown is that our brains create ideas through combining information that exists within them. It’s almost like you’ve got to keep filling up the top of the funnel, and pull on those levers of the creation and judgement networks to enable conscious inspiration – the eureka moment.”
So what topics am I pursuing this week?
1. Where do ideas come from? Give myself time to think and explore – yoga to give myself a solid hour of time to myself to disengage from stress and mind chatter. Mindfulness and wellbeing – could be a topic? Try a floating tank.
2. I think there is a very rich background to mine surrounding the idea of the Feminine Divine. My personal religious background has a complicated relationship with the concept, but there are many historical, mythological and cultural avenues to pursue for this topic.
3. Continue exploring Cornish Myths, beyond the videos – but I’m not sure what. The topic is still very important to me, but I’m not sure what my angle would be to take it further. I feel like the video project is very resolved (not finished, we are still working on more!) so I need something more.
4. Creative spaces – this is triggered by working from home, and I’m wondering how lockdown and work from home orders have impacted people, especially working mothers.
Tutorial
After a tutorial with Dan this week I’ve crossed the Feminine Divine off of my list of topics. He pointed out that I should choose something I will enjoy, and that it sounded like that particular topic would be painful to me. He is absolutely correct, but I think it will be a topic I will return to privately as it is a very rich and meaningful subject. I have a lot of thoughts and very vulnerable history with a high cultural cost associated with this, as it is a taboo subject religiously speaking. He had a good point about the Cornish Myths project being the subject I seem to feel the most excited by, and this is true. I started laying out my experience of living in Cornwall, and explained how I am coming up on living as long in Cornwall as I did in America. I’m very aware that this is building up to an identity crisis for myself! This feels like the beginning of something to explore, as I feel like there is a real connection between where I live and my identity now, in a way that I never developed as a child because I moved so often.
Floating research
I am also going to pursue the float tank idea, and have booked a session in mid-March. I’m very nervous about this, but also incredibly curious and excited. From my research into floating, it does take a few sessions to really feel the benefit. I won’t be able to try more than one at the moment, but I hope the experience is helpful. It will give me the chance to pursue different avenues of idea generation as well as (hopefully!) be a relaxing or meditative experience.
I am trying to be more mindful this module, and have started taking a yoga class once a week. I really missed my yoga classes during lockdown, but have been too scared to start them again. I’m still nervous about being in a room with other people, but I need the time for my mental and physical health. I live too much in my mind and it is very helpful for me to focus on inhabiting my body rather than my mind for a time. I’m hoping that being more mindful and creating a schedule for myself will be able to mitigate some of the stress I experience around hand-in deadlines, or keeping up with my blog!
Peer-led session
The peer led session was very helpful again this week, but I don’t feel any closer to finding a topic. I need to make a list of what is most important to me for this module, rather than focusing on an output or trying to find an idea with a commercial or social angle.
Aims: TBC
Objective: TBC
Target Audience: TBC
Not terribly helpful! Sometimes working out what I don’t want to do is just as important as the rest, so I tried a list of what I don’t want to include as well as a list of what I do want to work on.
References
ECKHARDT. 2021. Sea Lion on Rocky Shore during Daytime. Unsplash.com. Unsplash. Available at: https://unsplash.com/photos/IpMs8teMex0 [accessed 6 Feb 2022].