Creativity — a Secret Advantage for Mental Health and Well-Being?
Recently, I participated in a pottery workshop which was organized by a student initiative club. The course lasted for 2 hours and 25 participants were accepted. In the beginning, it was really inspiring to see that everybody was a little bit shy and no one really knew where to start as well as felt kind of afraid of being not good enough. Although, after some time passed, we created through open communications and of course instructions from our teacher a social comfort and thus, a safe space. Another big question was what we are going to create during the workshop?After a short reflection, I decided to expand my tableware household in order to personalize my Lisbon apartment and feel even more at home. As I love preparing food for my friends and inviting them for dinner at my place, I decided to form from small up to large personalized bowls.
Why did I choose it?
I have chosen it because art is my passion in every sense. Since I am a child, I love practicing art and I remember celebrating my 13th birthday with my friends at a pottery store. Why do I chose it ? I have multiple reasons for that: On the one hand, it was inspired from my childhood experience as it evokes me of how it felt to be surrounded by friends and have a shared creative experience. Additionally, I reconnected with my passion which I have neglected over the past years. On the other hand, I am curious to get to know new people with different backgrounds and stories as it inspires me. Therefore, I was pleased by participating in a workshop with not familiar people and getting out of my personal comfort zone.
Why I liked it and what I aim to improve for the future
I love the feeling of being free, having a break from reality, and just concentrating on yourself. At this time, I was so stressed due to multiple deadlines from my assignments and I was short in time to cancel — fortunately, I did not. The pottery workshop evoked me of a creative outlet. It offered an outlet and a release from both physical and mental benefits from expressing yourself by creating something unique. My art result was simply a record of thoughts, ideas, and emotions I was feeling.
In the beginning I struggled to let go of all my high expectations and thus, become aware that my final result is not something that will be evaluated by anyone as it is just for myself and it is all about to let my creative expression flow. Fortunately, our teacher helped us to tackle this issue, however, I felt in some moments stuck in my head. In the second part of the workshop, I was finally able to improve my focus and it allowed me to escape the worries of my life and shifted my focus toward my creation. As a consequence, I dedicated my team to my creating and was able to fully focus on something which helped my mind to relax and to expand. In addition, while partaking in a group workshop, one can socialize confidently with other participants while still allowing for silence. The overall atmosphere helped me to relax any socially anxiety and it was easy to start a conversation with a stranger as we felt connected by shared creative experience and thus, encouraged overall sociability. In the end, the workshop felt like a retreat or a meditating meeting. It was amazing to see all the upcoming good ideas flow, consequently the different outcomes while exchanging our intrinsic motivation for creating the figures. Besides my positive feelings, I felt kind of disappointed by myself that I had such high expectations of myself. I wanted to create something which looks perfectly correct and missed the aspect that everyone is a great designer and it’s perfect. However, I will do my best to learn from this experience and turn it into action in my future.
What can we learn from the workshop?
All in all, the workshop opened a window that gave me a fresh insight into my mind. I was slightly blown away by the experience and I want to continue expressing my thoughts and emotions through art: either it is photography, painting, etc. I see the power of art as therapy that can surprise each one of us. Additionally, this experience made me realize that it takes consistent effort in order to achieve meaningful results and be able to activate your true power from the inside. Also, this experience emphasized that a community is critical to our overall wellbeing and the decline of our connectedness is coming at the same time mental health issues are on the rise. The feeling of working in a community influenced my mental health and happiness and thus, it was easier to create personal connections. Furthermore, I reflected that setting process goals, as opposed to regular goals, will allow me to be much more creative. This approach connects to Design Thinking which re-frames the problem in a human-centric way, creates many new ideas, and adopts a hands-on approach in prototyping, testing, and trying out problem-solving concepts. Finally, I want to embrace the quote in this context:
“Design is everywhere, inevitably, everyone is a designer” — Tim Brown of IDEO.
What does that mean for our project?
Aligning my experience to the project of urban gardening in Lisbon, there are some connections that are fundamental to understand and interpret. Our overall goal is to create a community, bring people together in order to strengthen resilience. It is a solution that covers the problem of climate change in a systematic way, and thus, we decided to include services around the whole chain, even it seemed of adding complexity in the first place. It is essential to keep in our mind that everything rises and falls within a community. The community has a significant sense of purpose: Effective communities embrace conflict and diversity (e.g., across social and professional groups) to excellent learning that occurs from appreciating multiple points of view. As board members of the project, we have to provide people with an explicit vision and line of sight so they are clear about the broader purpose of the project and how they can be proactive and make an impact. In terms of goal setting, it is crucial to avoid setting goals too high as it becomes discouraging, losing motivation, and giving up on already defined plans. Besides that, we have to invest time and energy in maintaining our bonds. Giving individuals a better experience strengthens the overall community and thus, resilience.
To sum up, our overall long-term goal is to strengthen and to sustain community!
