When the Creative becomes UN-creative

It's been a week since the dreaded deadline which definitely killed off over 70% of my brain cells, and I'm not going to lie, I still feel extremely deflated.

I've been choosing to take creative courses for as long as I can remember: I've always been surrounded by it, with my Mum being a Graphic artist and me and my brother sharing the same interest in graffitiing the family dining table. And subsequently having parents who were completely fine with that. I had art teachers pushing me to my limit, while I had college lecturers constantly shitting on my ideas, but that's all part of being a Creative, bettering yourself through both appreciation and critique.

Most of my friends went straight to University, knowing exactly what they wanted to do. I however, had just completed my A-Levels, without a clue where to go next. I'd gone to college to take Art, but also didn't want to limit myself to this, so in addition I took a Psychology, English Lit&Lang and Photography A-Level - Photography literally being a subject just so that I had four of them to do. Even after A-Levels, where Photography was my highest grade with an A*, I was reluctant to accept that Photography was were I was headed in life.

So I decided to take a year out to complete the notorious Foundation course (which in hindsight every hopeful Creative should consider doing) and I started the year in what we called, Multi-Dis. This creative disciplinary strongly focused on the textile, ceramic, design side of the creative industry, one in which I thought I had strengths in, as Stoke-On-Trent is renowned for what once was its booming ceramic industry. Pretty much almost immediately, I found myself producing my surface pattern on a graphic tablet, nothing to do with raw materials or heat pressing the dye out of fruit.

(Sorry if I'm boring you)

When it came to specialising, I ended up giving in to what I would consider my 'talent', and chose Visual Communications. Sometimes you have to consider that, especially if you want to make a career out of your creativeness, not all creative disciplines are for you. Even if you can easily draw that naked guy in life drawing, despite his constant farts and snoozing, and still get him to look realistic, you probably won't be the next Leonardo Da Vinci.

So to get to the point of my, so far pointless, blog I am basically admitting that somewhere between me accepting my creative ability in the visual communication world to actually getting on a degree level visual communications course, I have lost my spark.

I chose this course originally because it looked the most thought provoking. I felt that I'd be coming here to actually learn new things (which I am) whilst also defining the skill set I already have. Like I said, I am 100% learning new things. It's all business focused mind, but it's still learning new things. And whilst I'm in no means saying I dislike the course, I am feeling somewhat unmotivated.

Now I don't know if that's because I haven't had an overly successful group task yet where everyone has shown up and participated and the stress levels haven't been overly insanely hiGH... and breathe... or if starting a new life at University is getting to me more than I thought it had. But there's definitely something lacking that hasn't lacked for me before. But what's the point in writing a blog about it?

Well these two weeks post-deadline have been all about reading. And the books have actually been super inspirational, it's almost like they know that they might have drained us over this last term. 'Hegarty on Creativity' has taught me many things, and is definitely a must read for all Creatives. If there's one lesson that I could take from these books, it would be that only you can find the solutions to your problems; whether this be personal, creative or for work purposes. The solutions are there, you just have to find them.

Now I've just written a good 400 words on how I've got to this deflated point in my life. And whilst writing it I've realised that I'm actually surrounded by the NTU School of Art: I have flat mates left, right and centre who are a part of it, my accommodation is physically surrounded by the art buildings why am I sat here letting myself feel uninspired, unmotivated and uncreative?

I need to get my creative mojo back.

For my first step, I've cheekily asked a flat mate if I could watch her in her studio, as I'm pretty convinced that talent rubs off of talent. And I know for a fact that I thrive off that sort of environment, where everyone is creative. I want that arty edge, not only for myself, but for my work: i know that some of my FCP colleagues are going to be better at the business side of things than me, some better at the context stage whilst I might thrive off the execution. I've got to put myself out there and create the input I need to get the output I want, and maybe then I will feel less like you're average sloth and more like the sloth meme that changed the world.