Podcast season 5: Episode 2 – How to add creativity into life story work

Please note that this transcript is auto-generated and therefore will contain some errors and natural pauses in conversation.

DAWN: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Creative Life Story Work podcast. Your regular dose of life story, work inspiration. Every month we bring you life story work ideas, tools, and honest insights from a range of perspectives. Stay connected to the latest thinking in life story work as we talk to people with lived experience, practitioners, local authorities, carers, and people who are shaping the way we help care experienced children and young people make sense of their past and build a brighter future.

In this episode, we’re going to be talking all about creativity. What it means, why it matters, and how to bring it into your practice even if you don’t think you’re a creative person.

[00:01:00] And so I am absolutely delighted to welcome into the podcast studio, Nic Golightly, one of our blue cabin associate artists who delivers life story work sessions with care experienced children and young people, and she’ll be exploring this topic more with us in an online classroom between 10am and 1pm on Thursday the 13th of November.

Hello, Nic Golightly and welcome this morning.

NIC: Hello, Dawn Williams.

DAWN: Lovely to see you. Nic, would you like to tell us a little more about your journey into becoming a freelance artist.

NIC: Ooh, what a beefy question to start. It’s massive.

DAWN: Number one.

NIC: Well, I suppose it’s important probably to say that I’ve been an artist working freelance since about 2006, which is quite a while, isn’t it?

[00:02:00] But I’d say that I’ve always been quite creative and so my pathway into being a freelance artist went from doing a design degree at Teeside University and then directly working with young people after that. I was asked to work in a gallery setting called Gallery TS1, with what were named NEETyoung people.

So not in education, employment, or training straight off really, straight out of university, which I felt really sort of privileged to get that opportunity. And it was only because somebody had seen what I was up to and what I was making. But I suppose as a graphic artist, which means I use graphic design and visual art in my practice, it kind of pulls on lots of different creative sources.

I find creativity really helps my mental wellbeing, mental health. But that can look like lots of different things. So the work that I create with young people is usually graphic design or illustration.

[00:03:00] But my practice is all sorts of things really from stitch to digital illustration, to all sorts of things.

DAWN: One of the things that I hear a lot of people who, some people who may be listening to this podcast, they’ll say ‘I’m not creative at all, absolutely no, that’s not me.’ Why do you think that, well I’m gonna call it a myth. Why do you think that’s a such a common response that we hear?

NIC: Yeah, it is a common response that we hear, definitely. And it doesn’t surprise me that people say it because I’ve heard it so many times. And I think it’s fear-based. I think it comes from the fact that at some point in our lives we’re told that some people are creative and others aren’t. And we’re told that this is creativity and these are the boundaries of creativity.

So, you know, look to artists like Monet or Van Gogh, or many others, and we say that is a creative person.

[00:04:00] That is the type of art that is sort of accepted as what people should be making. And we kind of forget that at one point we were children. All of us, no surprise, were children and we used to play with materials, you know, whether that was getting a paintbrush and splattering paint all over a piece of paper or whether it was gathering any materials to make monsters or vehicles or anything.

And actually that idea of play and just embracing what you’ve got in front of you, actually that’s creativity. And creativity isn’t always necessarily an artist, but it can be a creative thinker or the way that you accept or play with ideas or don’t accept sort of the status quo, I suppose.

So for me, I think creativity shouldn’t be something we all shy away from, but think about how can we change the script a little bit, play in a space that maybe play isn’t encouraged or just kind of drop that fear of, ‘I’m gonna get this wrong. This isn’t gonna be right because I’m not a professional artist, or I’m not creative’.

[00:05:00] Well actually we can all have a go, can’t we? And sort of encourage that in a child, really, I think is really important.

DAWN: I like your definition of creativity there, and I wondered if you would have some everyday examples of creativity that people might overlook or not even name as being creative.

NIC: So I think like I said before, we assume creativity is arts and crafts, and materials, and making things. Yes, it’s making things, but it’s sometimes thinking about things a little bit differently.

[00:06:00] As an artist who creates things all the time, I find it quite difficult to sometimes use creativity in the stuff that I’m working with young people or adults on, so I might not, because it’s my full-time job, I might not want to, you know, do typography to chill out, so I would say cooking is definitely one of the creative activities that I do.

Gardening, you know, planting seeds is creative, it’s therapeutic, it’s enjoyable, but then also the decoration of your home, the choice of the cushions on your sofa. Generally everything in front of you, you know, from the computer screens we’re looking at, to the headphones we’ve got in our ears, to the chairs we’re sat on to the rug that’s on the floor.

We’re all created by somebody and took creative thinking to imagine them. So you’ve kind of got to break down that mindset of creativity and creative thinking is one thing. Actually, we can all pick up materials and change them or manipulate them or place them and actually that’s what’s important.

And sometimes we might go into the realms of technology or different kinds of thinking, but also just doodling on a page is creative.

[00:07:00] I mean, I love a good doodle, let’s be honest. No, but I think sometimes we put too much pressure on ourselves, that’s for sure.

DAWN: And why do you think creativity’s such a powerful tool when you are working with care experienced children and young people?

NIC: I absolutely think that creativity is some kind of magical thing in some respects. I’ve sat and worked with young people who haven’t wanted to talk, haven’t been able to write, haven’t had very much confidence, but actually sitting and doing, playing a game with them, or drawing something or making a pattern or recording their voice.

All of those different activities sat together, doing them together, supporting them, showcasing that you might not get it right, you might get it completely wrong and it be fully acceptable.

[00:08:00] You might make mistakes and make a bit of a fool of yourself, but actually within that realm, you’re sort of saying ‘we can step out of the seriousness of the everyday, or we can, we can experiment and think about this in a different way’, but it also builds a really strong relationship because what you’re doing there is you’re putting yourself out there a little bit. I mean, we talk about it in social pedagogy, don’t we?

About the powerfulness of sitting in a space and sharing a space with a young person, not like a teacher, not like a lecturer, not necessarily like a parent even, but actually just being present and sort of sharing that space, and the togetherness, the collaborative nature of it – that breaks down so much and gives young people especially, and adults, but especially the young people who we’re working with, gives them a bit of space to just be, and I think as professionals, we can hold that space so that they feel particularly safe within it.

[00:09:00] But also open it up to asking questions through, I always talk about alternative questionnaires, you know, rather than it being a piece of paper and a pen. Actually, what we’re doing is we’re saying that blank piece of paper could be screwed up into a ball and chucked across the room. It could be photographed and made into a texture to use for a piece of artwork. It could be made into a paper airplane that we fly across the room, but we’re opening up a conversation alongside it. So it gives space really, I would say.

DAWN: You mentioned it a couple of times about getting something wrong, and so how can you, as the artist in that space showing imperfection alongside those young people, how does that strengthen relationships?

NIC: I think it’s really important to get things wrong – not major things – I’m not saying that that’s forgivable, but actually in a certain space by showing that you are human and that you can be quite happy with mistakes that are made and that they can become creative outcomes in themselves.

[00:10:00] Then actually the young person then can then see that you are human, that you are quite happy in that space.

Yeah, and actually stepping out of sort of a comfort zone to explore something different, how actually within that realm is really exciting. That you can make something that you didn’t think was possible. It’s also a learning zone that you’re just slightly out of your comfort zone, learning new skills or how to experiment, and then you can come back into that comfort zone again.

But as an adult in that space for those young people to see that your behaviours, when you get something wrong, that you accept that and you are not saying ‘oh, screw it up in a ball it’s done. We’re not working with that. It’s gone wrong.’ Just flipping that and sort of saying, ‘okay, well that’s happened, how can we use whatever we made here to become something exciting. How do we just place that to one side and not worry about it too much and move through how we’re feeling?’

[00:11:00] Actually, they can then mirror whatever you’ve done in that space. And I think you become an advocate for experimenting and talking together through things and I think for some young people they need an adult who is showcasing those methods of working that it’s not always right. But we can put pen to paper and we can try, or we can experiment and see what happens.

DAWN: Let’s go to a break so that you can hear about our Creative Life Story work membership offer.

TRAILER: ‘We want people to gain more of an understanding about what it’s like to be care experienced and to have a better understanding of what it actually means.’ Could Creative Life Story Work make a difference to the care experienced children and young people you work with? Maybe you are a social worker.

[00:12:00] ‘I think we forget at our peril that actually telling a child the story of their early life is one of the most profound uses of social work power that we could ever operate.’

Perhaps you are a foster carer. ‘You know, when they say it’s all about the child, it’s not because our experience is that it’s about the carer and the child, and it just gives a new angle to our relationship because we’re learning about each other together.’ A Creative Life Story Work membership will give you or your whole team access to resources, including activities you can use in direct work with children and young people, training with life story work experts and lots more.

‘And I think a lot of our children looking for meaning, looking for, you know, well why is it I feel this way when my. You know, my friends don’t. Why is it I get angry internally and my friends don’t? The greatest thing we see is when we are able to say to young people, this is your story. This is about who you are. And then children towards the end say, it’s not my fault that these things happened, but it is something that I can do something about. And once we have that, then we know we can move forward.’

[00:13:00] Find out about our membership for individuals and for organizations on our website, creativelifestorywork.com.

DAWN: What are some of your favourite tools or activities that really help spark imagination in the sessions that you are running?

NIC: I go from one extreme to the other with materials and activities – from materials that are really expensive, that are wonderful, and I get the opportunity to buy them with a budget and the young people can use those. So things like POSCA pens, which are expensive paint pens, which are wonderful, and a lot of graffiti artists use them and a lot of young people have used them before, but might not have used the really expensive ones. So good quality materials. And then also just for mark making, I like just taking stationary in and just using whatever I’ve got in the drawer.

[00:14:00] I like the idea of anybody can make anything with anything. So the fact that you’ve got something to draw on and draw with, sometimes I say about lipstick on a mirror, but all of the things that are surrounding you you can equally play with and create with. The types of materials I use can vary from Fimo, which is like a polymer clay that you put in the oven and harden once you’ve used it. Stickers – hopefully I’m gonna be doing some sessions, designing sneakers in the not so distant future, which I’ve done before, and t-shirt designs and bag designs and pattern making from a variety of things. So I think what I like to bring to the space is things that young people might not necessarily have used before, but also things that they can grab at home and changing the perception of how they use them. So a variety really.

DAWN: You mentioned there bringing things into the space.

[00:15:00] So what is it about the space that you create that encourages play?

NIC: I generally like to tell my participants, whether they’re adults or young people, that once we start a session, I do a welcome to the studio, so if we’re in a Zoom room, I might say, ‘right, this is our Zoom studio, and in the time we spend together, you are in the studio.’ And so it’s a creative space. So even to start off with kind of imagining that.

If we’re in a physical space, then I might have all the tools that we’ll be using for that day, and we might put things upon the wall. We might move around that space quite differently. So there might be chairs and tables, but we might not utilize them for the whole session. We might leave the studio. So for instance, we did some sessions up in Newcastle at Ouseburn Farm, and we went out and we took photographs of the animals and we talked about happiness and which were the happiest animals.

DAWN: Which was the happiest animal, Nic?

NIC: Well had a bit of a mixture. There was some very miserable pigs, I’ll say that.

[00:16:00] And they all had names like Margaret and Kenneth. I recommend people go to Ouseburn Farm just to go and see the names of the animals that they’ve got there. It’s a really wonderful place to visit, and they’ve got a very good café as well. But I suppose also. recognizing as a practitioner, I don’t have all the answers in that space, so sometimes it’s just nice to take a snack and a drink and start off the session and say, what do you want to do today?

We’ve got these materials. What can you imagine? And not restricting it to just my imagination, because actually the joy of collaboration is the fact that you’ve got a mega brain really haven’t you? It’s not just a solo person working in the silo, it’s everybody together. So encouraging that togetherness, I think is really key.

DAWN: And for those practitioners who aren’t maybe feeling creative, what would you suggest as one small step that they could take to add something into their own work?

[00:17:00] NIC: I would say explore different things which you can bring to a session. So different materials or different assets. So within a recent blog post that I wrote for Blue Cabin, I talked about lots of YouTube tutorials for drawing different things. Young people absolutely love them. My kids think they’re absolutely wonderful, but if you’re not so confident yourself in creating things and drawing specifically, you can find them and they’re step-by-step tutorials to create different characters. I would also recommend going to places like, and there are other establishments available, like Hobby Craft or The Range, and there’s items that are sort of blank, so there might be blank mugs or blank animals or blank sets of drawers or love hearts made of sort of craft materials that are really easy to decorate.

[00:18:00] Also, you can think about the contents of what you put in them as well, and so the young people can think about wishes that they might have for the future, or it might be a way of talking about their past and their likes and dislikes, for instance, so they can all link to life story work, and you can sit alongside them to create those things.

So those, those would be two suggestions. But also the Live Classroom is gonna be an opportunity for people to understand some of the sessions that I’ve run in the past and then some other creative ideas that I can leave them with as well.

DAWN: Brilliant. And just to repeat again that that Live Classroom is 10am to 1pm on Thursday the 13th of November to hear more from Nic Golightly. Nic, my last question to you, if anybody listening to this podcast were to remember just one thing, what would you want that to be?

NIC: Well, I’ve got to be really corny, ’cause I love ending up ending on some sort of corny thing. I’m gonna leave everybody with a definition of creativity. Is that all right? Which I’m gonna read.

[00:19:00] DAWN: Oh yes. Yeah, so is it different to the one that you did earlier on or the same?

NIC: I think, well, it’s what defines someone as creative. So not a a definition of creativity, but what defines somebody as creative. And I think this kind of makes you just think – because I wasn’t very eloquent at the beginning and we all get into a certain patter by the end of a podcast.

So I read this and I thought actually that, that makes me think that I’m certainly creative. But there’s others out there who might not think they are and they definitely are. So shall I give it a go?

DAWN: Yes, please.

NIC: Okay. So dear Google, what defines someone as a creative? Answer, if you are willing to take risks in the hope to receive the best outcome with a new idea, you are a true creative. You are persistent in all your efforts to make an idea become a reality, and are willing to cross fragile bridges ready to tackle any obstacles along the way.

What do you think about that, Dawn?

[00:20:00] DAWN: Wow. So that’s about curiosity, problem solving. It’s massive. It’s how we started. It’s massive.

NIC: Yes. But a willingness to have a go though, isn’t it?

DAWN: Yeah. Which has been right at the heart of all of the things that you’ve talked about today. Nic, thank you so much for our conversation today. A pleasure as always, and I hope lots of people are inspired to join you in your upcoming Live Classroom to delve more into some of the playful activities that you’ll have on show for them.

Thank you.

TRAILER: Whether you are a foster carer, someone who has experience with the care system, or you work with children and young people, we hope this episode has given you an insight into how we can make life story work better for young people and how you can use it in your own practice.

[00:21:00] You can find out more about Creative Life Story work on our website, creativelifestorywork.com, and you can find us on LinkedIn and Blue Sky at CreativeLSW.

Please do get in touch there with any comments or questions as we’d really love to hear from you, and if your podcast app allows you to, please do leave us a review as it really helps others to find our show. So until next month, bye for now.