In Defence of Bad Frogs

This morning, the Integrity Initiative team hosted Creating in Community, the open community workshop of the Trail of Creativity. It was meant to be a space for reflection, connection, and gentle challenge.

Challenge of what creativity actually means.

Challenge through the discomfort of being perceived, of fearing judgement, of feeling like you’re doing it ‘wrong’… and being met with acceptance instead.

I asked everyone to draw a frog with their non-dominant hand, in five minutes. At the end of those five minutes, every single person had finished a frog, and every single person showed it to the people around them. I don’t think that would have happened if I’d asked them to use their dominant hand instead. We would have heard “it’s not finished” or “I messed it up.” Instead we got giggles, grins, and some objectively wonderful frogs.

Why? Because asking people to use the hand they don’t trust took the pressure off doing it well. It stopped being about the product, and became about the process.

In writing the workshop, I went looking for how we actually define creativity, and I didn’t like a single definition I found. The one that comes up most often goes something like this:

Creativity is the ability to use imagination to create original ideas, objects, or solutions to problems.

…But creativity doesn’t need to solve a problem. It doesn’t have to be original to count. It doesn’t have to have an output at all.

That’s what we set out to challenge today.

Today (and hopefully through our creative workshops as they live on), we built a space where people were/are allowed to exist exactly as they were/are, imperfectly.

Good art or bad art.

Finished or not.

Slow or hurried.

Whatever felt right to each person, in all of their chaotic human-ness.

I asked the room what creativity actually meant to them, and the answers said more than any dictionary definition could.

An experience that takes me from the everyday into another realm of abstract.

An expression of my thoughts, feelings and my unique ways, being thoughtful in how I approach tasks, projects or processes.

Innovation, finding ways to do things within the limitations of my disability.

Reflecting my inner world, or creating something that evokes something I want to bring into me, letting out pain, bringing in light and calm.

Creativity is both multifaceted and innate. The concept of creativity feels quite abstract and I’m not able to accurately describe it.

That range is the whole point. Creativity was never meant to be one thing, measured one way, against one standard.

Now, I’ve facilitated this workshop a few times (of course, with adjustments each time). Nevertheless, each and every time I am deeply amazed and learn something new. Coming out of today, I now have a new definition of creativity that is uniquely my own:

Acceptance of the beauty that is imperfection and the realisation that leaning into uncertainty, curiosity and question is perhaps the greatest thing we have to offer as humans.

But of course, it isn’t my reflections that matter, it’s those of the people I shared today with:

I feel more comfortable leaning into imperfection. Being authentically messy and imperfect. And also being honest in my own failures and learnings.

Drawing with my non-dominant hand made me let go of my own perfectionistic standards, in order to reframe my idea that creative products have to look right.

Being creative is a human process that can include the messiness. The precision and perfection is not a standard to meet in order to be classed as being creative.

Expression doesn’t have to meet anyone else’s standard but your own.

Being seen through my art, communicating and connecting through art, are some of the most impactful, valuable, and meaningful experiences for me.

Thank you for holding space for us without making it about our commonality. Allowing it to exist without being the focus.

That last one is EXACTLY why peer-facilitated creative spaces are so important - not as an art therapy group or session… just as a deeply human space.

I do so much of my work around art and mental health because there is always something new in it to reflect on.

It’s a world, a tool, that’s tragically only accessed by people who are perceived as being artistic, or who are brave enough to fail out loud. And yet it’s a form of communication more effective than words. It’s practice at sticking with something even when it’s bad. It’s learning to navigate comparison, and to sit with the reality that there will always be someone “better.” It’s understanding imposter syndrome from the inside. It’s truth, in a world where so much isn’t. And it’s entirely ours, something that can’t be taken away or handed a different meaning by anyone else. Something we always get to perceive in the way we choose.

Most significantly to me, it is the ability to choose. Each line, each mark, colour, medium, stroke, word, image, idea, comment... a choice. I remember it becoming my only sense of choice and autonomy whilst receiving involuntary mental health treatment, and being the only safety I have. And for that, I will always have a very special connection with it.

That, to me, is what today was actually about. Not the frogs, although I will defend those frogs to my grave. It was about handing people back the permission to make something imperfect (and to choose to love it) in a world that rarely offers acceptance.

Thank you to everyone who showed up, hands ready, standards lowered, and made something real.

Stay tuned to see Where This Trail Leads.

Rachael