How to develop your creative manifesto
Rethinking Creative Purpose: How do you think about your creative development over time?
Dear Rethinkers,
Something wonderful happened last week. My dear friend, Holly Waddington, won the BAFTA for Best Costume Design for her extraordinary work on Yorgos Lanthmos’s mad film Poor Things. Holly and I first met when we were 17 years old at our interviews to study Fine Art at Oxford University. Despite being very different people, our connection was instant. Her unique creative energy was there from the very first time I saw her draw. She could pull together references from the wildest (and often strangest) places and somehow smash together these disparate ideas into something beautiful.
During our time at Uni, we were always dressing up. And she was always finding ways to do something unexpected, usually with me in tow. I have fond memories of being asked to decorate a fancy college ball and her deciding we she should make a thousand gnomes and light them up. Our house became a gnome factory! How we got work done, I do not know, but perhaps this was our art.
What’s extraordinary watching the film is that I can see all these scraps of ideas she’s collected and worked on over the years (minus the gnomes). The sleeves, the blouses, the white boots, the wedding dress, the colour palette, the sunglasses…it’s like this creative fusion of all these strands she has carried in her mind. Her phenomenal success (and I’m very proud of her!) has got me thinking about creative development. How perhaps our lives are about sourcing and collecting scraps that, if we’re lucky and dedicated, come together in one true masterpiece. To win an award for something is genuinely and uniquely you is the best prize of all.
So, how do you think about your creative development over time?
Read on to find out how I do this and what I’ve learned from my talented friends.