Foreword
4
As we grow older, we can begin to feel awkward or silly about play, our interests change. As teenagers our ‘childish’ things tend to disappear. However, this is often the time when we need play and creativity most: to enrich academic performance, help with focus, problem solving, being mindful and keeping well. Creative activities can help us reflect, heal, process, cope, recover and relax. In the moment we can ‘simply be’ and it can help us to settle when feeling stressed. It is not difficult to ‘play’ but it does require time and knowing where and how to start. We need not to feel self-conscious as we shake off apprehensions and challenge our misconceptions. Getting started is often the biggest challenge, the blank page can seem like a barrier. Each workshop has been developed, challenged and adapted over my 20 years of teaching, and they continually evolve with new encounters and feedback from the people I work with and teach. The continual line which scaffolds and weaves throughout this programme is the 10-minute lesson I taught as part of the interview for my first teaching position. I was terrified, I had 10 minutes to engage and win over the twenty five 16-year olds. They got it, they laughed and I was hired. Inside the rainbow was inspired by an artwork from a woman prisoner in the Koestler Trust. She had spent hours deconstructing what the inside of a rainbow looked and felt like to her; both joyful and terrifyingly sad. Land escape is embedded in my experiences of working in Kakuma refugee camp. The hostile harsh ‘nowhere’ desert that hosts almost 250,000 refugees, most living there for at least 17 years. Yet, creativity thrives as hope grows on barren soil.
Sue Mulholland
Being creative keeps you well
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