This is our 1,000th post, & Counting!

Thank you for being part of this by your visit – do stay a moment and have a look through what is now a generously sized magazine online on creativity and how to make more and enjoy more.

There are hundreds of posts on many different arts and crafts, organised into the senses: taste, hear, see, make, read, smile, sense (for the spiritual) – as well as the ever cheering if you’re pressed for time – “5 mins” and “Thing of Beauty” categories.  So if you are in a dash, there is still something inspiring you can access in a very brief time.

Most of our posts are concise enough to read in a lunchtime break.

But many of them also give some recommended tips, prompts and ways forward for creatives reading the post – optional homework, if you like – but not for marking!  These are called “Creative Takeaways”.  Any time you’d like some new input in that way, just type in “Creative Takeaway” at the Q prompt and choose what sounds most fun.

On the other hand, if you’re interested in a specific area of creativity – also enquire at the Q prompt….  Give it a try!

Personal Note

It’s been a blast writing about people and creations which are worth seeing – fresh in my mind when I find them, randomly or when they’re long-loved by myself and I get around to putting down my amazement – I enjoy sharing the good news.  For pure amusement, I invented a favourite pedantic commentator to introduce “Friday Night is Health & Safety Film Night” for a long-running series.

Here are your favourites, according to statistics which never lie (do they?).

Greatest Hits

Over the years, the most popular posts have been:

1. Comedy Food: Letitia Cropley see here.   Sandwiched between a post on Shakespeare inspiring transport poetry and how to write  your novel/play – this is far and away the most popular post, even though it is also one of the shortest.  Letitia Cropley was a character in the UK comedy “Vicar of Dibley”, known for producing homebaked favourites – with a terrible twist of one incongruous ingredient.  This post was published at the end of 2017 but has been popular ever since.
2. Pattern Inspiration: Elena Nuez, see here.  A whacky industrial designer in Spain,
   crazily and recurringly popular with our readers over the years.
3. Cartoons Exhibition: at the Oxymoron Museum with John Atkinson, see here.  A wonderfully imaginative series of cartoons.
4. Exhibition Review: Barbara Rae: the North West Passage 4th August – 9 September 2018, Edinburgh RSA, see here. One of the longest titles for any post, but certainly lets you know what to expect – a review of this exhibition.  A must for anyone interested in the Arctic and a very personal post, as I visited the exhibition, briefly met Barbara to autograph the book accompanying the exhibition for a friend – and then revisiting with said friend to see the catalogue a few weeks’ later.
5. Mary Oliver – morning poetry writing, see here.  An opportunity to listen to a wonderful recording of Mary reading a poem and an encouragement to the writers among us to seize the early hours of the day to explore, think and write. Coincidentally, written and published just months before her death at the start of 2019 (the poet was 83).
6. Learn to draw WITHOUT talent, see here.  An opportunity for those of us more artistically challenged to enter into drawing without being a Leonardo da Vinci beforehand
7. Becoming a Spoken poet, Sarah Kay, see here.  If you ever wondered how to take your poems to a listening audience, here is one person’s experience of the journey, delivered as a 20 minute TED talk.
8. Writing his First Movie Script – Sylvester Stallone, see here.  An unglamorous, hardearned start to a stellar movie career as maker.  Stallone wrote his script for “Rocky” when he was so broke, he had to sell his dog.
9. A fine line, 4 artists exhibition – Edinburgh, see here.  Group exhibitions and places where various exponents and arts flow together is grist to our mill at ,&. A printmaker, ceramicist, willow weaver and artist/printmaker.  In this case, I got to attend a discussion with the artists who also curated the exhibition, reporting back with photos and quotes from the cultural frontline.  The high viewing figures for this post were probably because the artists referred to it on their own websites.
10. Review: Laura Boswell at Birch Tree Gallery, see here.  An insightful landscape artist’s talk on her practice which includes Japanese woodblock techniques, at a small gallery in Edinburgh which consistently curates excellent landscape art and holds artist’s talks.  Laura generously gave me time to interview her, agreeing for it to be audio recorded.  So the writeup is firsthand research.  Laura also runs her own excellent social media content.