Finding the creative potential in anything
Rethinking rubbish
Recently I’ve been picking up pieces of cardboard, tin cans, bit of plastic and seeing if I can make something out of them. It’s a nice challenge, trying to give meaning and value to things that have very little of either.
I took part in an Improv course earlier in the year that I wrote about at the time:
One of the principles taught by the brilliant Pippa Evans is to ‘Use everything’, the point being that you can build from anywhere using anything to hand. With that in mind I looked at these bits of rubbish and started to think what I could do with them, and what they might suggest. It might be an oil stain, the arrangement of die-cut holes, a striking bit of typography, the object’s colour, shape or form that hint at some other possibility. Below is a selection of objects that I got to playing this game.
I like how these rejects, these throw away objects are being given a second chance. It’s not an overtly ecological message, but it is an action and a way of thinking that I believe is healthy.
But the main learning for me is that there’s creative potential in everything.
