Welcome to my blog!

Welcome to my blog! Thank you so much to each and every one of you who has clicked to have a read of my first post here. I would really like to let you all know why it is that I have decided to get this blog up and running.

During the covid pandemic I came to many realisations for myself. One being that as much as I love making theatre it felt difficult to do so during a pandemic so I decided to undertake some time to develop who I am as a person. Firstly I wanted to grow as an artist, this led me to The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, which made me realise despite the fact I had a Drama and Theatre degree I still doubted my abilities as an artist. It made me rediscover my love for creativity in a new light and made me consider how the process made a significant improvement on my mental health. Exploring this further, led me to a mindfulness course which took me to this project idea (which I will explain further). Surprisingly, this created a change in how I take on each day. I've really learned to just open new doors and discover what may be behind them where as before things seemed somewhat not relevant to me or I was not worthy of the knowledge.

The idea that I arrived at was how can I explore creativity and art alongside looking at how it benefits our mental health. Furthermore, how do I view creating work which isn't as stressful and fast paced as the experience I had over the course of my degree? How do I use it to heal myself and how I can share this experience with others?

When I started to change the view on my creativity many things emerged: opportunities to work with other people, a podcast. More importantly, the idea that I do not need to continue in formal education for me to keep growing as an artist and as a person, at least not for the moment anyway. I hope to be able to share some of what I have learned with you as time goes on, as it is now clear that a blog is the next natural step to the list I've just mentioned.

I’m hoping to create a community feel on the blog as much as I can for people to have access to. Part of this is about helping each other, talking, discussing and not judging what others may have to share. This isn't necessarily an advice page, I'm not a therapist. Nor am I a mental health expert, I'm just a person who wants to continue to grow. For me some mental health advice has not always been the most effective so I will not be offended if this page is not for you. I'm incredibly, grateful for all the support that I have had so far on this project and I hope that the support continues to grow. Stay tuned for more posts! A massive thank-you to Max Rule for demonstrating his own creative powers in designing this blog for me.