Caitlin’s Creative Business Bookshelf - Episode 8: Craftfulness
Another book from the Creative Business Bookshelf! And we're looking into Craftulness this week! Let's dive into how good crafting is for our mental health, doing stuff with our hands, the Industrial Revolution, and banana bread...
Before we get into it, I just wanted to extend an invitation your way. If you've been enjoying the podcast and if you've been loving what I've been talking about on here, I would really like to invite you to a Hobby Finder workshop that I'm running on Thursday the 1 June, but replays will be available. It's the bargain price of five pound and in it, I will be leading you through how to find your hobby or creative thing.
So if you've been feeling really inspired by what I've been sharing here and you're looking to add more creative self care into your life on a more practical basis, then I would love to have you.
So I encountered this book in a bookshop completely by accident and it actually really helped me get really clear on why creativity and creative self care is so important to me in the first place. It really cemented and really confirmed a lot of things that I was thinking about it, and that I was feeling about it.
It's called Craftfulness, as in like mindfulness and crafting and it is by Rosemary Davidson and Arzu Tahsin. The subtitle of the book is mend yourself by making things. Oh my goodness. If that is not what I am all about, if that is not what creativity for me is all about, then I don't know what is!
As you may have guessed by the title of the book, and as I've already kind of alluded to, this book, really delves into the link between our mental health and craft and creativity. And there's so much interesting stuff in there, it ticks the boxes of what I think really good books on creativity do. I think it really balances the actual creativity notion of it with actual evidence and actual studies and things like that.
So if you are someone who is a bit more practically minded, I think you'll find a lot to love in here because there is a lot of references to studies, references to projects, real life projects out in the wild that have really gone deeper on this link between creating things, making things, being crafty and our mental health.
One thing I found really interesting at the start of the book is obviously with books like this, it starts off as a bit of like history.
A bit of history
And the book takes a little look back at why the Arts and Crafts movement kind of started in the surface. And the book discusses the fact that actually it was born out of rebellion against the Industrial Revolution, where obviously the nature of working changed.
And nowadays, according to the book, people have this kind of women's institute, granny in a village hall notion when we think about crafting. But actually, I think that in recent years, I don't think it has that association anymore. I think we get further and further away from it all the time.
We had all the jokes about making loads of banana bread over lockdown and things like that, but I really think that was indicative of a kind of bigger thing. For a lot of us, work was either you were either on furlough or not as nice circumstances where people were made redundant, businesses closed, et cetera.
Just the fact that we all collectively seem to engage in hobbies more, to engage in the things that bring us joy that not related to our work. We all joked about banana bread, but I actually think the making of banana bread was deeper than that. And you may be listening to this and thinking, Caitlin, it's not that deep. But in my opinion, it is!
Crafting and cottagecore
The trend that kind of came to mind when I was thinking about this as well was thinking about cottage core. And I don't think cottage core could have existed had it not been for the pandemic and lockdown.
Cottagecore for me is the perfect embodiment of how younger generations are reinterpreting arts and crafts. So we're seeing a lot of baking, making things, gardening and all the things that I think would have been seen as quite uncool once upon a time. I know that when I was growing up, yeah, it wouldn't have been a thing, but anyway, big digression, that was a point where I kind of disagreed with the book just because I really don't think that we have this, like, oh, crafting is just what Nanas do on down the village church or whatever.
I think it's way more than that now. I think it's really coming back round to that idea that when the Arts and Craft movement started during the Industrial Revolution and it was a bit of like social rebellion, I think we're seeing the same thing now.
For me, that does feel like a really big middle finger to capitalist corporate hustle. I feel like even engaging in hobbies and engaging in things like doing things just for fun, not to make money, is like inherently an anti capitalist act. I wonder if that's why we're still being drawn to things like that, is because we're kind of acting out that like decades old rebellion against the world of work. And yeah, I would also say that actually tying this back into being a business owner or a freelancer or whatever you refer to yourself as, I started my own business because I could see the world of work was, like, not working for me anymore.
And I think that is a massive reason why a lot of us come to it is because we're rebelling against the status quo, right? We're rebelling against the work has to look like this. You have to make money like this. Oh, you can't make money from being creative. You've got to do something sensible. Attitudes that really, sadly, I think are very pervasive still.
The idea of the creative genius
The book goes on to discuss, and this is something I try and address in my work a lot, that the big barrier to being creative is that the idea of someone being a creative genius still exists and is still peddled a lot. And I'm sure that if you're listening to this, you know that it's like nonsense.
But I think there's definitely still the idea of people doing creativity right and people doing creativity wrong. And I think somewhere along the line as well, once we've got capitalist and toxic productivity like factoring into all of it as well, I think it's made our relationship to creativity quite complicated in a lot of ways because we know that it brings us joy. We do these things that we love, but then there's a lot of complicated feelings like society around it, I think, which stops a lot of us doing it.
The education system as a prime example of this. And I think there's a really good Ted Talk. I think it is going to watch Ted Talk and definitely go and watch it because there's lots of really interesting things in there. And I think especially if you're adjacent teaching, there's a lot of good stuff in there. But it's by Ken Robinson about how schools kill creativity. And an example I have from my own personal life on this is that I remember this book unlocked this core memory of me. By the way, I'd completely forgotten this even happened until I read this book.
I remember doing compulsory they call it DT, design technology, over here in the UK, if you're listening from elsewhere. And I remember doing sewing in there and I absolutely hated it. I was like, this is rubbish. I don't get it. It's hard, I don't enjoy it. And you flip to today and sewing is, like, my favourite thing to do. I think it's magical. I think it's beautiful. I think it's such a glorious way of self expression.
But then I think back to twelve year old, 13 year old me, who was like, this is pointless, this is stupid, I hate this. I think a lot of us have very similar core memories in the British schooling system, particularly. I definitely had a lot of feelings around art because I quite liked doing it, but I wasn't, quote, unquote, very good at doing it. I couldn't really draw. Obviously, I was lucky. My art teacher was quite untraditional and she was very encouraging, but I don't think everyone is like that.
The actual book itself
So the book is effectively divided into two sections. So the first section is discussing the benefits of being crafty and how it links in with mindfulness. And along the way, it addresses a lot of things like getting into flow and how good creative flow is for us, and the idea that creative flow is something we have really quick access to when we're children. But obviously, as we grow up and as we go through the aforementioned formal education system, we get a lot of it taken away from us and what we think creativity has to look like changes because obviously, we're kind of being primed for the world of work, not primed for the world of play and fun.
Creative flow is a really precious thing, and it's something that, if you're not sure what it is to you, it kind of looks different to everybody. But for me, the very clear, concrete example it always looks like for me, is when you get so stuck in doing something that you forget what the time is. I've been doing this for hours without even realising it's. For me, it's like any activity which makes me forget I have a phone. That is what creative flow is to me, personally.
And I found that really fascinating because as business owners, especially for online business owners, we're using our hands primarily for, like, typing, scrolling, answering emails, all things like that. But when was like, the last time that we actually used our hands to make a thing with our hands?
This is something I always talk about a lot, but creativity is like the journey to the destination. But if you get to the destination and you've got something tangible at the end, that's really, really cool. For me, there is nothing that brings me, like, greater happiness than having made a thing and being able to say to another person, another human being, look, I made this with my own two hands. Am I comfortable with saying that to people? Not always. But it's something that I think is really important and I think we've kind of lost. What we build online is like amazing, obviously. How amazing is it that as freelancers and business owners we get to make money doing these wild things that previous generations wouldn't even have heard of or understood, let alone imagine travelling back in time 50 years and explaining to people back then what you did now it would blow their minds.
Any task that engages your hands gives you a sense of control over your environment and as a result, is quite empowering. And I hadn't really thought of it like that before. But obviously we live in quite a fast paced world especially running businesses where things can be really tough. And having that sense of control is obviously something that's quite beneficial for us, because it kind of reminds us, I guess, that no matter how stressful or difficult things get, we can always return to things that make us feel good and the things that yeah, the things that really bring us joy and creative flow and that meditative effect, which is another benefit of practising craftfulness the fact that it connects mind and body, resulting in that kind of meditative flow state connection with ourselves.
And the connection with ourselves is something that, to be honest, I've shied away from talking about sometimes with my work because I think it's quite a difficult thing to explain to people. But I think it's something we've all felt quite deeply. The fact that we're getting in touch with our own self expression and what is living up in our brain and, like, bringing it forward into the world. Not to mention that a lot of the creative activities we engage with are quite repetitive by nature.
And obviously when things are quite repetitive, obviously it does bring us that flow state because we're kind of almost like switching that part of our brain off that is concentrating and bringing us that elusive and wonderful flow state that we all talk about and think about. You think about things like colouring in crochet, knitting, things that require a degree of concentration but not too much concentration and also have that element of repetitiveness to them that obviously brings us to that flow state and that brings to the meditative, relaxed state. It starts to regulate our mood, starts to bring our heart rate down and has all those lovely benefits.
But what about challenging the notion that we have to be good at it? And this is what I'm always saying, and I will say it again, but creativity starts with doing things, small things, over and over again. I shared a really fun graphic from the amazing Lisa Congdon, who is a fantastic artist. I really love her work and she wrote a really amazing book, which I will probably talk about at some point, but she shared a graphic on basically how you get more creative and nine out of the ten steps were practising. So doing the thing and doing it over and over and over again is how we get more creative. And the idea that creativity breeds creativity, the more we do it and the more we practise it, the more naturally we will have in our lives.
We make tiny decisions to be creative every day, and that is taken directly from the Craftfulness book. And I think that's a really important thing to bear in mind when we're embarking on any project, whether it's for fun, whether it's for work, whether it's anything. But we are always making those decisions to be creative.
When we're prioritising something that's just for fun, that is a decision to be more creative. And those decisions all add up and they all snowball and it turns us into creative people, even though I think we are all creative people in our own way.
But obviously, the more we practise it, the easier it is to get in tune with it, the easier it is to get in touch with a flow state. And that has such an amazing effect on everything else in our lives. Because if we're feeling calm and chill and in charge of our emotions and we're getting constant ideas and we're taking the time out to relax, then obviously it's going to have an effect on other stuff. That's why I'm talking to you as a business owner, to other business owners, because I've seen the benefit firsthand.
When we go off and do something fun that we love to do, it really does have that amazing impact on our mental health.
The projects in the book
Now, this is a problem I have with the book. Some of the projects it recommends are not that accessible, so it talks a lot about things like pottery and book binding and things like that, which are fantastic, don't get me wrong, but they can be very difficult things to practise at home with limited equipment.
For example, I remember looking at the book binding thing out of idle curiosity and thinking, oh, goodness, I've heard a lot about that, but I've never done it myself. Maybe that would be a fun thing to try, but it was a little bit prohibitive in terms of stuff it was recommending and things like that. And yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure how much you can talk about small acts of creativity every day and also be like, well, we need to tackle this big grand thing that will cost you money where it's not necessarily as accessible. I think we can access creativity through anything we have at our disposal. We don't need to spend a lot of money doing it.
We don't need a trip to a specialist shop in the middle of nowhere, because not only is it I don't know, I have feelings on this, just because I think that we don't need to spend a lot of money doing things that make us feel good. We have everything around us that we need, like right now, in this moment.
And that is okay, and that is correct, and that is how it should be. We do not need to invest lots of money in a craft or a hobby that we may only pick up once and never again, because I know I certainly have done that. I did the clay earring making thing over lockdown. Hated it, didn't like it, and I didn't spend a lot of money on it, but I spent enough money where I was like, Well, I've got all this stuff now. It kind of just feels like a waste.
And it isn't a waste because we all learn stuff from it, right?
But I don't always necessarily agree with the notion that we have to go out and learn a new thing in order to be more creative, actually, and bringing it back to the Hobby Finder workshop that I'm running very soon. That is a notion I want to challenge in there as well and say that constantly looking for the shiny thing and constantly looking at inspiration is one of the most unhelpful things we can do for our creativity sometimes. Because if we're looking and it's all chill and good, awesome, but if we're looking and kind of using that as another barometer to measure ourselves against so I think it's quite damaging.
I know that I certainly have got stuck in. I need to do a thing. I'm going to go on Pinterest for a bit and try and find some inspiration and then it's 2 hours later and I've made like nine boards but I haven't actually done anything. Pinterest is a creative practice. That's one of the many hills I will die on.
But I think if we're doing that all the time and not actually doing anything, then I'm not actually sure how helpful it is and it means we kind of just perpetuate the shiny thing syndrome. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but when it's stopping us from doing something that's maybe better for us and is more practical based, then it’s not ideal.
Some of the projects that are discussed in the book are really good. There was a good knitting one, if I remember rightly. But I would have really loved to have seen some more accessible things like, I don't know, maybe journaling prompts is always when I return to because I think literally anyone can use those because all you need is a method to write stuff down with.
But yeah, something that maybe challenges the more crafting of something for like privileged people. That was the only part of the book, I think, where I kind of thought it would have been such an amazing opportunity to just really give something really practical and really like something that anyone can do, something that you can pick the book, put the book down, go around your house and find stuff to do to actually practise the craftfulness.
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