Creative health. A necessity, not just a luxury.

Yesterday, someone asked me for advice about doing an MFA after studying Computer Science at BsC. They were understandably nervous because to them, and I guess to people around them, it felt like a major sector jump. A leap from logic to feeling, code to canvas. And now I know a thing or two about sector jumps. From the commercial art world to a youth justice charity, I’ve moved across seemingly unconnected fields.

I gave some practical advice which is at the end of this [in case you too, want to do a master’s in fine art after studying coding].

But the question didn’t just make me think about MFA applications. It made me double down on everything I know, in my bones, about why creativity matters, and why it is not a luxury or a frivolous side interest, something to be embarrassed or nervous about pursuing.

Creativity exists in the very foundations of life, and of being human. I began using the phrase ‘creative health’ because I believe it sits alongside many other key components of health and wellbeing; good creative health should not be an add-on. It supports everything else, just as it is supported by other facets of good health.

My own jump, from studio visits and private views → safeguarding meetings and strategic planning sessions, were never odd or disjointed to me. There was a common thread.

A deep commitment to creativity, my own creative health, and the creative health of others. Not just individuals, but for systems, for cultures, for communities.

Yesterday evening, I was at dinner with some friends, and one of them asked me,

"Where do you see the most creativity? Where does it really live?"

And I actually thought of Moldova.

When I was 16 and 17, I volunteered with Operation Mobilisation, spending time in remote villages supporting families living in intense poverty.

And everywhere I looked, there was creativity: crafting, mending, building, making. Music and folk dancing and traditional skills passed down generations. Art, not as an extracurricular, but as a way of living. Of staying alive. Of connecting. Of coping. Of celebrating, thriving. It was both necessity and luxury [but the luxury part was also necessary… if you know what I mean], down time and working hours.

It showed me what I already knew but was struggling to articulate or see in my bubble of English home-counties privilege, where I was one of very few girls in my year group who would call themselves ‘creative’. In Moldova, as I wished to see in England, I saw creativity as completely integrated into the fabric of daily life, for everyone, accessible to everyone, and accessed by everyone, and elevating everything it touched. It wasn’t until years later that I began to articulate this as ✨creative health✨, what I saw were communities richly and deeply creatively healthy – and given the intertwined nature of the other facets of health, perhaps surprisingly given the scarcity of food, they were generally physically healthy [older men and women lifting their body weight each day, chopping and carving wood, weaving and washing], emotionally healthy and spiritually healthy too.

Last week, I spent time in the art studio of someone who had spent their adolescence and young adulthood in prison. Their first art show was actually held inside the prison walls. Being in that space with him, listening to how art had been a lifeline, as it had been for me [in such different circumstances that resulted in such similar mental pain, humans are so the same in so many ways] and how it was an urgent form of restoration and healing, was profoundly moving. It reminded me of the urgent need for the arts to be elevated to the status they deserve, especially in places of healing and restoration like prisons. We need to strip away the shame often attached to art, to embrace that there is truly no wrong or right in creativity, only creative health, a vital thread in living healthy, happy, whole lives.

In capitalist systems like ours, creativity gets entangled at both ends of the spectrum:

• In privilege, as a hobby for the wealthy, often framed as eccentricity or kookiness.

• In poverty, as an impassioned cry of courage and survival, reduced to the ‘starving artist’ trope, or dismissed as madness.

And it has been for centuries. On both ends of the spectrum we glamorise it and we monetise it [although of course we keep the ‘starving’ artist starving, the gallery takes the money].

Sidenote: A little reminder of this ‘fun’ little dissonance that despite the creative industries bringing in billions, in most cases, the money doesn’t go to the maker. It goes to the infrastructure around them, the gallery, the curator, the commercial pipeline. Our economic infrastructure doesn’t sufficiently and inclusively support creativity. We are happy to make money from the arts, but not pay the artists, we give value to the output but not the one who has created it. We keep open this chasm between the veneer and the reality. It’s very odd. We have begun tp democratise art and creativity like never before, but haven’t upgraded that same infrastructure and so there are more art students, but the same [few] opportunities, more people eager to work in ‘the art world’, same miserably paid [few] jobs.

Anyway.

And remember, we start separating children really early:

• Those who get piano lessons, drama club, pottery classes.

• Those whose parents can afford materials or museum trips.

• Those who are told they’re “good at it,” and those who aren’t, because their apple doesn’t look like an apple.

We don’t teach art in schools as a tool for communication, emotional processing, or meaning-making. We teach it as a skill to be graded. Very quickly it’s clear who feels they are creative and those who feel they’re not.

If I walked into a class of 8-year-olds, 5-year-olds even, they’d all tell me whether they were ‘good’ or ‘bad’ at art, and I can guarantee the ‘good’ ones would be the minority.

What we fail to teach is that creativity is not about performance. It’s about process. It’s about perception. It’s about problem-solving and play and possibility, [sorry for all the alliteration, I was on a roll].

Creativity is not a privilege.

It is a human instinct.

And in many places where money is scarce, creativity flourishes, because it must.

In Moldova, I saw generations pass down folk crafts that were both functional and beautiful. The kind of communal creativity we rarely allow space for in more individualistic, profit-driven societies.

We’ve created a culture that glorifies creativity as a product, while denying it as a process, unless you can prove it’s “good,” or that it can earn you money, or that it fits inside a system.

And because of how we frame the arts, as an industry, as something to be graded or sold, we end up with adults who either feel like creativity is something they “lost” as a child, or who burn themselves out trying to pursue it in a system that is not built for their creative health to be prioritised let alone celebrated.

So now, we’ve built a system where creativity, and therefore our broader creative health, feels like a privilege and a luxury.

But look closely, and you’ll see it is still, a necessity, for everyone.

Which I guess is why I’ve started to use the language of creative health. Given that post-pandem we’re all SO much more health conscious [I could write a whole essay on that…, and in fact I kinda did?] and so we get the significance.

Stop being self-obsessed, it's burning you out xox

For me, creative health is as important as my mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical wellbeing. It’s how I process the world. It’s a crucial part of how I stay well. It’s how I connect, and imagine, and adapt. And I’ve seen that in others too, across sectors, across ages, across continents.

Creativity supports resilience, communication, connection, joy, problem-solving, identity, innovation, belonging and SO much more.

And when people feel creatively well, when they are making, exploring, questioning, expressing, other things begin to shift.

If you’re someone who thinks creatively, even if you’ve never picked up a paintbrush, you know what I mean. Creativity shapes how we

• Problem-solve in work and life

• Connect with others across difference

• Build relationships, businesses, movements, and meaning

• Care for our families and communities

• Find light in the dark

So yes. You can be a computer scientist who applies for an MFA. You can work in tech or law or youth justice or finance or policy and still need to feed your creative health in private or public ways. It’s about reconnecting with your instinct to make meaning. To create.

By now we all have a reasonable idea of what looking after our physical health entails, but what about our creative health?

If you’re someone who’s burned out or disconnected, creatively or otherwise, it might not be a new job or a better morning routine you need. It might be creative restoration. Making time to make something.

Because creativity is about being alive to the world.

For me, it looks like artist dates. Gallery hops. Nourishing my inner artist child with doodles, collage, and arranging flowers. Protecting the inner place that allows new things to emerge. Creating even when there’s no outcome.

What does your creative health need? For how long have you neglected it? And what becomes possible when you nourish it?

You might not need an MFA. But you might need to listen to that instinct. The one that says: I want to create. I want to reimagine. I want to remember how to feel alive.

That’s not silly. That’s not indulgent.

That’s health.

Creativity is a thread that runs through every part of my life. And yet, somehow, it's both glorified and dismissed. Glorified in industry. Dismissed in everyday life.

So I return, again, to those communities where life is simpler. Where capitalism has less of a grip. Where creativity isn't “arts and crafts,” it’s life:

People dancing together.

Families passing down traditions.

Craft that is both functional and beautiful.

Art as a way of surviving, and thriving.

And I find it amazing that in times of real scarcity, people don’t stop creating. They create more. Because creativity is not a just luxury. It’s a necessity.

It’s something we are all born with.

And you can believe whatever you like about why that is, but my belief is this:

We were created by a creative God. A creator.

And we were made in His image.

So we must, too, be creative.