A few weeks ago now, as part of Project: Happiness, I went into Pendle Primary Academy to deliver a creative workshop. The children visited the beautiful Bolton Museum to be inspired by the amazing Egyptian collections. We created some beautiful designs, which we then made into origami books.

The children worked so hard to create beautiful intricate designs….not to mention the amazing teachers!

These amazing designs will be used to create a laser cut community Mandala….I can`t wait to see what they look like!

Thanks to everyone who came along on Saturday…..what a lovely time we had at the beautiful Bolton Museum. 

They always do a craft afternoon on a Saturday, so check their website and drop-in for some creativity! 

There were children as young as two years old concentrating for an hour! to create the most beautiful design.

All the amazing butterfly designs that were left will be exhibited and used to create a large Mandala, as part of Project: Happiness.

Even Pocahontas cam along! (aka Ruby!)

I was very excited to pick these butterfly cases up from Bolton Museum….

I am going to use them as inspiration in a few workshops I have happening in the next few weeks. Can`t wait to see the designs…..

I have been so inspired by the women in the group; the group has always felt relaxing from the start, so I feel sad to say bye. It feels like the group was  just starting to build trust with one another; I hope they can take that spirit away with them.

We finished work off and talked about which pieces we wanted to exhibit, we also reflected on the group and our creativity….

“friendly group”

“good social life”

“would have liked it to be longer”

“learnt new skills”

“took me out of my comfort zone”

“gave me a whole new insight into myself”

“makes me want to push to do what I want to do”

“It`s brought creativity out in me again”

It felt like a really special session; it amazes me how much you can achieve in such a small amount of time….the women left the group with pages and pages of creative drawings, prints, paintings.

Thank you for being so open to trying new things.

I find it a hard balance to create a workshop that is both challenging and relaxing….being creative can really make you feel out of your comfort zone, which is how some of the women in the group may have felt on this session. One woman said, “this is the hardest thing I have ever done.”

Alongside a challenge comes the risk of feeling like you have failed….and this feeling tends to come up when peoples` perfectionist comes to the surface and someone who always tends to be a bit of a perfectionist finds it difficult when there is no clear boundaries of what is right and wrong in my experience. One of the difficulties of perfectionism is that people tend to think it is a positive attribute and they feel it helps their creativity. Perhaps it could help to drive them to get what they see as ‘right,’ but there is the problem for me…there is no ‘right’ and it is getting rid of these restrictions that is true creativity for me.

There is a bit of perfectionism in the group, but I am hoping as the weeks have gone by they have started to feel a bit freer to experiment and challenge themselves. One lady said,”…this work is the best I`ve done.” This made me really happy, as this lady had judged her work quite harshly and this acknowledgement of her pride felt really important.