Has anyone seen my inspiration?

Laura Darling discusses July's inspirational Creative Hub.

So what do you do, as a creative, when your inspiration packs its bags and sets off with no indication of when it might return? 

1.    Despair
2.    Panic
3.    Take a breath, pull on your metaphorical walking boots and go find yourself a new source.

The speakers at the last Creative Hub, Helen Cann (fine artist and creator of the most beautiful maps) and Holly Budge, (go-getting adventurer, activist and jewellery designer) showed how inspiration can come from listening to the stories of others, emerge suddenly out of the doldrums, be prised from sheer dogged determination and from a higher desire to do something good.

Helen’s 2014 journey from Iceland to Gotenburg on a whale-tracking expedition met with no whales (nothing sizeable, anyway) and the expedition was delayed due to bad weather, but as she talked to the people of Reykjavik and the fishermen of the Faroe islands, stories and songs and traditions sprang into life and she based her expedition maps on this lore rather than on the path of the whales.

Holly says her inspiration is driven by passion, doing things that that push her out of her comfort zone, help others and give her a sense of achievement. A word of warning – don’t visit her website if you feel you’re not really achieving much in your life. Do it if you want to see how one woman bounds from one project to another, tying them together with her passion to make change happen.

Feeling pretty enlivened by this stage and ready to head off into the wilderness or at least the beach for some contemplative thinking, we joined Lisa Westbury and Emma Haughton as they set out their latest thinking around the creative curve and finding your place on it. The stages are cyclical and some are more comfortable places to than others (Yes! I love starting and researching a new project! No, I hate finishing anything!)

Any new project involves the preliminary stages of having an idea; welcoming it, playing and planning it to those tricky doing and ending phases to the final stage, the fertile void. And this is the stage where you may cry - Has anyone seen my inspiration? But, take a breath, close your laptop, screw the lid on the paint tube and wait, poised. Because the next joyous rush of inspiration is out there, waiting to be found.

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