Most weeks in Creativity Bootcamp, we ask what creativity can do for your work.
How can it unlock an idea? Challenge a habit? Make a message stronger?
This week, our guest Bootcamper Zane Ewton takes us somewhere slightly different.
What can creativity do for you?
Zane works in employee communications, so, to some degree, creativity is part of the day job.
But when we chatted, we kept coming back to what happens away from work.
Writing. Photography. Poetry. Drawing things to make his kids laugh, making up stories, reading and taking part in creative challenges like Inktober and 1,000 Words of Summer.
Creative outlets woven into everyday life.
Zane also spoke openly about living with depression and anxiety.
He’s noticed a connection between the times when he’s making or creating and when he feels better able to manage things. And when those creative outlets disappear, things can start to feel harder.
There’s no neat equation here. Creativity isn’t a cure for depression or anxiety.
But for Zane (and many of us), it can provide space, an outlet or a change of focus. A way to connect with his family, other people and the world around him.
Books, he told us, can make him “feel human”.
And sometimes just 15 minutes spent making something can make a difference.
The question this week isn’t: What should I make?
It’s: What do I need creativity to give me?
CREATIVE WORKOUT:
Find your outlet
Give yourself 15 minutes or more if you can.
This one is for you, not for work.
There’s no brief to crack, campaign to improve or clever idea to take back to the team.
This isn’t about producing something brilliant. It’s about making space for making.
Step 1: What do you need?
Would a little creativity give you:
- Headspace – something else to focus on?
- Expression – somewhere to put a thought or feeling?
- Connection – a way to share or make something with someone?
- Play – permission to do something simply because you enjoy it?
Pick the one that feels useful to you today.
Step 2: Choose your outlet
Choose something small, creative and achievable.
- Write a page.
- Sketch something.
- Take a few photographs.
- Make up a story.
- Write four lines of a poem.
- Make something with your hands.
Choose something that feels accessible rather than trying to be overambitious.
Step 3: Make it small
Set a timer for 15 minutes and begin.
- One page.
- One photograph.
- One wonky drawing.
- One tiny story.
Go for it and park the perfection.
Step 4: Notice what happened
Don’t judge what you made.
Notice what making it did.
- Did it give you some space?
- Shift your energy?
- Quiet the noise?
- Help you notice or connect with something?
And if it gave you something useful, make returning to it easier.
- Keep the notebook nearby.
- Leave the camera where you’ll see it.
- Join a creative challenge.
- Protect another 15 minutes.
Your creative outlet doesn’t have to become a side hustle or another thing to be good at. It can just be yours to enjoy.
ABOUT ZANE:
Zane Ewton is an employee communications professional, writer, photographer and storyteller based in North Carolina.
His fascination with storytelling started early with rock ’n’ roll, professional wrestling and the magazines that brought both worlds to life.
After briefly choosing the “sensible” option of accountancy at college, he switched to journalism, studied photography and eventually found his way into employee communications.
Away from the day job, the creative side keeps moving.
Zane writes Title TBD, hosts the Tell Me a Story audio series, takes portraits, writes poetry, reads voraciously and occasionally draws things purely to make his kids laugh.
Connect with Zane:
LinkedIn
Substack
THE CREATIVE COOLDOWN:
The science behind the instinct
The science behind the instinct
After our conversation with Zane, we shared a book with him that felt particularly relevant.
Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health by Professor Daisy Fancourt.
Daisy has spent years researching the relationship between arts, creativity, health and wellbeing.
One large study involving almost 50,000 people identified three ways people commonly use creative activities to help regulate their emotions: distraction, contemplation and self-development.
Her wider work explores everything from creative hobbies and reading to music, dance, galleries and live performance.
The big thought running through Art Cure is simple:
Perhaps creativity and the arts aren’t just nice extras we squeeze into life when we have time. Perhaps they’re part of what helps us live it.
That doesn’t make creativity a cure-all.
But it does put some interesting science behind something Zane has discovered through experience:
Making space to make matters.
