A restful future through art
The festive season and end of the year is a time for getting together. It is a time when we reconnect with family and friends and enjoy moments of relaxation. It can be a time for reflection and a chance to re-engage with those hobbies, creative projects and artistic activities that have been waiting for you to rediscover them.
Taking time to rest and engage in the creative act is a powerful thing.
Getting involved in creative activities in your community is a great way to meet people and maybe even spark your own creativity. It can really inspire you to dive into your own artistic side.
This past year has been a year of action. It has been a year of change. For some it may have also been a time of overwhelm and noise. But the creative process can be a great way to break that cycle.
Creativity can be a way to slow down and settle your mind. It can be an individual act of reset. It can also be a time to connect with whānau and engage in some playful rest over the summer. These are things you can do simply at home. They are things you can go and experience. It could also be the inspiration you can find in the creativity that lives in Waikato.
With all of the demands of the world around us, regularly engaging in artistic creativity can be a playful moment of rest that nurtures your overall wellbeing. It can be a way to build the muscles of imagination that engage creative thinking, build positive habits, and ultimately provide a meaningful way to recharge and rejuvenate in a way that resonates with you.
The act of creative rest is an intentional opportunity to be present in our chosen creative pursuit. It is about embracing the moment to explore and experiment and play – whatever your artistic discipline.
Whatever you have planned over the next month there will be lots of opportunities to engage with creativity in the community. The summer is a season for creativity in communities. It is a season of festivals and concerts and exhibitions and experiences. Community-based creativity is a joyful expression of place.
This is about art in the community.
Community art making has a direct connection to the concept of cultural democracy. In the report by 64 Million Artists, Cultural democracy “describes an approach to arts and culture that actively engages everyone in deciding what counts as culture, where it happens, who makes it, and who experiences it.”
It is about an idea where culture and artistic expression are generated by individuals and communities rather than by institutions of central power. It is about connecting creative activity to as many people as possible.
The concept of community art is a way of empowering people. It is about connecting people with the act of creativity. It is about things like enabling artists to work within communities to create public murals, plays and compositions. It is a way to showcase how social change can flourish through creativity. It is a way of championing the voices of people in our communities.
This process of engaging artistically in communities is about supporting creativity and creative thinking at the flax roots. It is about connecting people and places. It is about building neighbourly relationships and helping people to feel empowered to share their own stories.
This summer, if you have an opportunity to engage in creative activity, or you can connect with a local artistic community, please do it.
Utilise the process of creative rest and creative play to build new connections. Through this activity we can expand our collective understanding of arts, culture and creativity as being things that happen at any scale. It is about building audiences through building community, and it is about having more artists involved throughout our communities in all kinds of ways.
And if you feel inspired by your summer of creative activity, why not volunteer with your local creative community group, serve on the governing board of an artistic organisation, or contribute in other ways to help make more arts and culture happen in Waikato communities.