From isolation to inspiration with the Creativity Found Collective

That's why I decided to join Creativity Found, because it's about creativity and actually, you know, just enjoying being around people who understand what it's like to want to do creative things. And then we went off and just spent a couple of hours with her and it's really cool to see her studio and and I wouldn't have done that without Creativity Found.

Creativity Found is a much more as you said, there's businessy people, there's people like yourself who've been in art and dance and acting and things. Completely alien world to me, but we can cross-fertilise ideas and experiences. It helps us in our creative roles. No man is an island and that's never more the case in art. Hi Creativity Found listeners.

It's January 2025 and I have been busy recording and editing future episodes of the Creativity Found podcast and have taken a little time out from releasing the usual episodes. I haven't left you high and dry, however. You will have noticed that I've released a number of shorter bonus episodes with guests who are members of the Creativity Found Collective so they can tell you how they can help you to get creative for yourself or or how they can support you if you are a creative

small business owner yourself. It's been so lovely to hear members tell me and you how much they value being a part of this creative community, which I built having been inspired by all of my guests on the podcast. Being part of the Creativity Found Collective I'm connecting with people all over the country which then lead to other opportunities. It's widening who's seeing me on LinkedIn, on social media and there's a lot of cheerleading

in the creative community. I think everyone wants each other to do well. You know, when you're running a small business it is great to have other people who are doing the same. Like-minded people, people who've had similar experiences or similar worries who can encourage

you, advise you. I think that's really, really great. I want to give listeners who feel inspired by my guests stories of starting or restarting a creative activity in adulthood, a place to go to do that for themselves. At creativityfound.co.uk,

you can do exactly that by browsing the choice of workshops, online courses, kits and supplies that are on hand for you to learn from. All run by small business owners, artists and crafters who want to share their skills with you. Please do mooch around to see what you can find and when you do connect

with a teacher there. Make sure to tell them you found them through Creativity Found. I would of course love to feature more arty, crafty opportunities on that site. So if you use your talent to help other adults learn creative skills, like Becky Paton and Paula Duncan, who were both featured in the January episodes, please visit creativityfound.co.uk/joinus to find out what's on offer in this membership, which, by the way, costs

just £7.99 per month. You can also join us if you can help to promote or lessen the load for creative small businesses. Just like

Sheena Wyatt and Nina Lenton, who we also heard from this January. I know that getting support or outsourcing tasks does not have to be expensive and can save artists and crafters a lot of time, energy and frustration. Which is why I'm so happy to be able to connect those artists and crafters with designers, social media and SEO experts, publishing advisors, other networking groups, and more through the Creativity Found Collective membership.

And if you love to help creative businesses to grow and thrive, we'd love to meet you. Visit creativityfound.co.uk/Joinus to find out more. As you'll hear from the clips from members that I've featured in this short bonus episode. We are a truly connected community and we love to help and learn from each other, whether at our monthly meetups or at any time of the year. We really would be so excited to meet you and learn about your small business.

What I didn't expect, Claire, was how super, super supportive you are of the members of the community. Like, you created the

whole page. You created a whole mini page for my workshop and shared it without me even knowing about it, even asking, without me even sending you a copy or anything. You just grabbed it from my landing page, made it, you know, your version of it, put it on the website, and I feel like I should coach you about charging

more for the membership, you know, because that's really, that's very rare, Claire. That's very rare. That level of generosity that you give. That's what I love about it. A community that gives you a monthly online meetup is great because then you can turn up from your own house, switch on the computer and have a chat with some people, then you've got somewhere that you can go to ask questions, get support for different

things. And if it's in the case of, you know, a creative community, it can inspire your own creativity as well, because you get ideas from those people. Because I thought, you know, mosaic artist, you know, I just pootle along doing my thing and didn't really appreciate that it's

incredibly important to be connected to other creatives, whether they're a painter, a sculptor, a ceramicist. We're all in the same boat. We're all trying to make a living, which is tough in this climate. And any tips and tricks that we can pick up from each other is huge. And just talking to other people, I'm getting

inspired in areas that I didn't realize were inspiring or could inspire me. I think being a micro business, it's just me literally in my spare room, is a very isolating thing and you can get stuck in your own head. Especially if, like me, you've started a business for the first time. There's a massive learning curve. My background's engineering, so getting into this whole creative marketing thing, digital admin, social media, using it properly has been a huge

learning curve. And by being part of a community of other people doing similar things, you can share ideas, they understand what

you're doing, how you're approaching things, you get tips. We were just talking about the way you're streaming this and it almost means I don't have to go off and research everything from scratch. Yeah. And then the last one I wanted to mention about how Creativity Found helps me is mental health, because it's something that's worrying me quite a lot at the moment. We see so many people, like, taking their own lives and just something that really worries me.

And I wanted to just mention to anyone out there that art can help and it's definitely helped me get out of a hole that I've been in. I think instead of thinking about your problems all of the time, you can start to think about your creative projects

and your art and start sort of immersing yourself in that and the sort of smaller things in life, because you're perhaps painting a flower or a leaf or something like that, and it just brings all of those horrible thoughts, those negative thoughts, back into something that's so positive. Thanks so much for the kind words, guys. In this episode, you heard from Nina Lenton, business mentor and writing. Kelly Drewett, SEO and websites. Debbie Page, ceramics. Mary Broddle,

embroidery. Juliet Sargeant, Sussex Garden School. Ela Wassell, Truly Boldly, You and Becky Paton, mosaics If you'd like to have a chat with me before committing to membership, you can book that by clicking on the link in the show notes or at creativityfound.co.uk/join

us.