Overview
Some people grow up believing they are creative. Others learn very quickly to say, “I’m just not a creative person.”
When We Start Making Things Up investigates where that distinction comes from. Through research, conversation and participatory workshops, I explored creativity not as a talent that a person either has or lacks, but as something shaped by education, culture, confidence and the conditions surrounding them.
It reframes creativity as something enabled or restricted by the conditions around us.
This idea is the foundation for the project, Lit-A-Bit-Differently.
Category
Design Research
Participatory Research
Publication
Role
Independent Project learning from workshop participants
5 months
Tools & Methods
Workshop Facilitation
Participatory Research
Editorial Design
Who decided if you were creative or not?
Some people grow up believing creativity belongs to them.
Others learn to say: “I’m just not a creative person.”
This project asks where that belief comes from.
What I argue:
Two workshop became
the research
I wanted to understand what makes someone step forward with an idea, hesitate or hand creative authority to someone else.
So I asked 12 design students across two workshops to respond to the same brief of designing a lighting system using Tala's pendant bulb, a shared collection of materials and prompt cards.
What everyone made from the draw-and-pass warm up activity
The task was individual, but people kept looking to me for confirmation.
I thought I was casually checking in. To them, I was still the person who had written the rules and might know the “right” answer.
I realised that I was not just observing the workshop. My presence was changing it.
Workshop One: Noticing My Own Authority
So I changed how I showed up.
Instead of walking around and looking over people’s work, I sat down among them.
I wanted to see how creative hesitation would change if I stopped feeling like the person with the answers.
Workshop Two: Redesigning My Role
So, did the workshops make everyone feel creative?
Not exactly.
They showed me that inviting people to create does not automatically remove the structures that made them hesitate in the first place.
But they also showed me that those conditions can be changed.
What I Learned:
This is the short version.
The theory, workshop maps, participant behaviour and all the contradictions live inside the full publication.
Read the full analysis ↓
Tell Me What You Think! I'd love to hear it.
What This Project Grew to:
What This Project Also Grew To:
Lit A Bit Differently
