Community as Creativity and Craft
Community as Creativity and Craft
What we make with the space between us
Every once in a while, someone (usually my grandma) will ask me if I’ve been doing any creative work in my personal time. I can reference that I try to write some, do an occasional freelance design project, or my annual Christmas card, but outside of that, I haven’t felt like I’ve had much to show.
In high school and college, I was an avid art journaler. I drew, painted, and collaged the things I was thinking about and wanted to remember. I shared more online. It was part of my daily life and way of being in the world. This type of reflection and release felt critical and natural in those years.
At the end of college I was a dance teacher and had access to studio space I would often practice and play around in before or after class. I had a regular journaling practice and was working on a poetry project.
While I still drop into a ballet class now and then, I don’t have that time and space built into my weeks the way it was a few years ago. My writing has shifted closer to creative non-fiction and personal bits of things I want to remember and memorialize.
At times, I have felt guilty that I don’t currently have a regular visual creative practice outside of design work or that I don’t create bits of choreography the way I used to, as if these natural changes in how I process the world over time have meant I have let something important fall away.
I’m curious about the concept of creative outlets for people who work full-time in creative fields.
When is it too much to be constantly making? Working in a creative job, I feel an (almost certainly self-imposed) pressure to also be effortlessly excellent at creative hobbies, especially when it’s adjacent to my professional work. In some unique mix of genuine interest, curiosity, and utilitarian shoulds, there’s always a long list of new creative proficiencies I could be adding to my repertoire: floral arrangements, sewing, cooking, printmaking—all while keeping up with all the ones I’ve loved and nurtured, or just dabbled in, in the past.
Yet I believe we all have deeply creative impulses and that creativity is an undeniable part of human life. And while one cannot be constantly creating without rest, creativity begets creativity, and the more we engage with it, the more it becomes present and guiding in our lives.
When I take a step back, I see that the last few years have had a creative outlet that has felt like a welcome break, a process of making that has been truly fun, playful, and even vulnerable.
It has come in the form of planning theme parties and birthdays for loved ones, the specificity of the gifts I have taken delight in giving, and finding creative ways to celebrate and nurture the relationships in my life.
And while I may have a Leslie Knope-like affinity for themed events, I don’t think the creative nature of relationships is at all unique to me or those who find it easier than others to claim creativity or hospitality as an attribute.
Deeper than just my delight in thinking through all the elements of my Las Vegas Casino Night-themed Super Bowl party, is a slow and intentional effort towards creating spaces of ease and fun. To gather people. To be able to offer the people I love birthdays that celebrate who they are. And to grow in the areas I am weaker—to interrupt less and be more present, to send better thank you notes, or to simply remember to send them in the first place.
Vincent van Gogh famously said that “there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” I’m coming to see that the process of creating community and beautifully reciprocal relationships is an expression of the creative process—one of humility, patience, effort, surrender, surprise, and joy.
After all, we talk about building relationships, making community, and creating spaces. We’ve all been engaging in this creative work all our lives and the more we practice it, the better we get.
The concept of craft has been on my mind the last few months, bringing with it a welcome pull toward refining and sustaining certain efforts rather than setting grand new goals. I want to continue to hone my craft in how I communicate, listen, practice presence, and extend hospitality.
Though craft is a technical term, I don’t think it’s out of place to use it in the context of something as embodied and personal as our relationships—after all, things like presence, remembering, asking, listening, and generosity are at least in some way skills.
Craft is the belief that small actions, refinements, efforts, and trying agains matter and amount to something significant over time, and that every time I listen more fully, that skill grows, as well as connection.
In her well-loved book The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker speaks to the generosity of clearly setting and communicating expectations to guests, so that they can enter an event space confident of what is and isn’t expected of them. Artful communication gives others the gift of getting to be prepared and confident when entering a space. It embraces that the craft of planning can create more freedom for guests. Thoughtfulness and communication go the longest way.
I have ideals, sometimes too deeply rooted in Pinterest or social media, but community is not an aesthetic. It shouldn’t be inherently expensive. Hospitality doesn’t require lavish tablescapes and boutique guest rooms. It’s not about having a certain amount of space in your home, doing certain activities, or cooking certain food, but about leaving—creating—space in our lives for community, friendship, and love to blossom. It’s about the attention we pay to the important people in our lives and the possibilities for seeing and celebrating others are endless.
A friend of mine keeps a note in her phone of all her friend’s favorite color combinations and whenever she sees the combination she thinks of them and sends them good wishes.
At her wedding, another friend of mine set party hats at our table since it was also one of our friend’s birthdays and left handwritten notes for each guest at their seat.
My brother loves to cold call his friends throughout the day when he has time.
And while small details amount to something much larger than their sum, there is also a serendipitous, uncontrollable nature to all that is created. Bigger, beautiful forces are at play in creating art of all types, including the art of loving people and being loved by and it takes something between a process and a journey to get there.
Sometimes community, friendship, and love come quickly, swiftly, as if the connection was always there just waiting for the opportunity to burst forth, and sometimes it’s built slowly, little by little. Like any other creative work, connection cannot be forced, and sometimes the efforts never yield the vision in our heads.
There are no two relationships that will ever be the same. Every time we enter into a new friendship we venture to create something that has never existed in that exact form before. And it is never built alone. It is co-creation, which puts it wildly outside of our control.
The raw materials we create from are ourselves—our experiences, stories, hopes, silliness, and pain—and if we hold these elements with reverence, care, and a dose of spontaneity, beautiful things can unfold.
Because the best writing, design work, parties, relationships—anything—I have participated in, has felt like I am a steward of the process and a receiver of the final product, delighted and somehow surprised by where it led me, even though I was there in the making of it the entire time.