How we can all be creative

…even if we think we’re not

Kate Paine

2 min read

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Just now

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This week in my music studio has been all about the final touches to homemade Christmas songs, some created from thin air, others versions of old favourites.

We spend each lesson layering lyrics and chords and melodies, bells and triangles and shakers, until, finally, we reach the glorious final version.

The younger students don’t overthink it.

They don’t wonder if they have it what it takes or if just one more track of bells will tip it all over the edge. They don’t fear the reaction of anyone else who might hear it.

Instead, they just create, joyfully singing and playing, laughing in delight when I play it all back to them.

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But the older they get, I start to see the tendrils of doubt creeping in, and by adulthood, they’re really second-guessing themselves.

As adults we’ve too often lost that boldness and confidence that small kids have. We see mistakes as failure instead of part of the process, and we’re scared to give ourselves permission to create purely for the sheer joy of it.

Which is why I do my best to normalise hearing the sound of your own voice, taking a song and making it your own, and seeing mistakes as full of possibility.

This is all happening in my little music studio, but the implications are so much bigger.

To understand that you have it in you to create something, however small or simple, is a revelation.

To realise that perfection is overrated and that there is immense satisfaction in the act of creating, no matter the end result, is also a revelation.

It’s been a real pleasure to watch all my students, no matter their age or ability, creating this year.

They’ve done so with an increasingly instinctive understanding that whatever they choose to do will be the best choice and that the final outcome will be exactly right and never, ever, wrong.