march – Page 3

March 13, 2025

Learning a Second Language as a Neurodivergent Student (Child or Adult!)
If you’re autistic or ADHD and you’ve struggled with learning a foreign language you are not alone! The typical class structures are not made for our brains.

Growing up I had no idea I was autistic.

I was an early talker, a self taught reader, and my social differences were percieved as “shy.”

Flash forward thirty years and I am learning so much about myself alongside my autistic child. For one thing, our brains process language completely differently than neurotypicals.

If you want to do a deep dive into language development I suggest starting with Alexandria Zachos of Meaningful Speech. She has a lot of free resources on her blog and Instagram.

While I was learning to support my child’s speech development I had some big epiphanies about my own use of language and specifically why I struggled with Spanish classes in university.

Neurotypical humans learn speech word by word.

This is why most babies point at objects to learn their names. They learn a bunch of single words and eventually use them like building blocks to make sentences.

This is the way foreign language classes are structured because this is the way most brains process language.

I’m thinking of the times in class we would recite conjugations – as if that was at all useful outside the context of a sentence. 🫠

Autistic humans (and some ADHDers) learn speech in chunks. 🤯

Our natural language progression is to pick up phrases or sentences like shiny objects.

Bonus points for musicality, expression, or relating to our interests.

Once we have enough chunks we naturally start to mix and match.

How can we use this to teach (or learn) a second language?

Now we know why traditional curriculum aren’t going to work for us.

So what do we do instead?

1. If you do use a curriculum look for something that introduces phrases. Not words. 💬
Learning individual words is not helpful for gestalt language processors.

We need to see them in action.

Even if you find a curriculum that does this, you’re still going to need to supplement it to really engage a neurodivergent student.

2. We need hear a human native speaker. 🧑

Because we’re picking up on the whole language gestalt – including intonation.

Google AI is not the way forward here.

This doesn’t mean you need a private tutor, but whatever you are watching or listening to should be a real human who is a native speaker of the language you are learning.

3. Find expressive & interesting material. 📺

We’re incredibly lucky to live in a time where our favorite TV shows are probably dubbed over in multiple languages. Here’s the secret sauce where you engage with your student about whatever they are most passionate about.

We are currently loving the Spanish dubs of Numberblocks on Netflix. (My kid literally falls asleep listening to the soundtrack – which is also available in Spanish!)

I find that it’s easier to pick up on language if you’re watching shows that are made for emerging speakers (toddlers). Vocabulary is simpler and the speed of speech is (usually) slower.

But we also love watching Totoro in Japanese.

There’s something to be said for the immersion of watching something you love. Before my child was fluent in English he was singing the theme song to Totoro in Japanese.

Sometimes it’s about what speaks to your heart.

4. Sing! 🎶

Our brains engage with music on a different level than spoken language. Sometimes neurodivergent folks even sing before speaking.

99% of what I do remember from Spanish class was from songs.

There are so many YouTube channels for songs.

Super Simple Songs has translations for Spanish, Japanese, and Portuguese.

Just search for children’s songs in whatever language you want to learn.

Or jump in the deep end and try translating a pop song. I did this for Kudai’s Quiero after studying abroad in Mexico. It’s twenty years later and I still know it by heart.

5. Consider auditory processing supports. 🎧

Not all neurodivergent folks struggle with auditory processing, but plenty of us do. Sometimes I can’t “hear” sounds unless I see them.

If you’re watching a show or YouTube channel look at your options for captions. Captions in the native language are really helpful. But sometimes they do differ from the recorded audio so you have to watch out for that. (This is always the case even with English.) Or English captions can help with understanding the context.

Another great tool for students who need to see to hear is AAC.

David already had the Proloquo2Go app as a support for communicating in English. He hasn’t used his AAC in months so I set up a second user in Spanish. (I’m sure there’s a way to set up a bilingual user too.)

It looks like this. When you tap the word the tablet speaks it.

I wish this app were not so expensive.

But language curriculum is also quite an investment. I wanted to mention this because it is such a powerful tool. Since we already have it – using it for a second language is an exciting way to put that investment to good use.

I started with a template for an emerging speaker and then customized folders with phrases from Numberblocks.

It’s really important to put in phrases for our neurodivergent kids in addition to the single words that come preloaded.

I’ll probably write a second post specifically about how we use this.

The caveat is that AAC tablets are not very expressive. This is like a speaking dictionary, but it will not teach you the natural musicality of a language. You still need a native speaker (in real life, recordings, TV, or YouTube) to model language. This is a tool for making that material accessible.

6. Read books together! 📖

I love bilingual books with two languages printed side by side.

But I learned the hard way to look for books that are for “early readers” versus classic favorites.

La oruga muy hambrienta is a mouthful.

While I didn’t learn much conversational Spanish during my time studying abroad, I am fairly confident at sight reading words. (It helps that the sounds in Spanish are very consistent versus what we’re used to in English.)

If you’re not comfortable reading aloud yourself (yet) try audiobooks!

But it’s also okay to be imperfect and make mistakes while you are learning. It’s all part of the process. If you’re a parent reading with a kid – seeing you make mistakes and correct yourself can be a good life lesson.

7. Practice with friends. 👭

Once you have phrases use them in your daily life.

Weave in what you’ve learned with your family or a friend group. My little extrovert is already having short conversations with native Spanish speakers in our area.

Follow his lead and look for opportunities to practice and learn in community.

8. Play! 🕹️

Try simple games in another language. Learn the phrases needed for a card game. Play “I spy” or charades. Put the words you’ve learned to good use.

You may even find video games or apps with multiple languages. Toddler apps are designed for emergent speakers (we love Eric Carle’s), but they do tend to focus on words versus phrases. If you’re picking up individual words (numbers, colors, nouns) try to learn phrases too so the words don’t get “stuck.”

Toolbox for ND Language Learners 🧰
1. Learn phrases and sentences. Not words.
2. Learn from a human native speaker. Not AI.
3. Find expressive & interesting material.
4. Learn songs!
5. Try captions and AAC.
6. Read books for “early readers.”
7. Speak the language in daily life.
8. Play!
If you found this useful I’d love to hear from you. I’m always open to chat or share resources, but simply hearing that you enjoyed this will make my day.

Email Sarah.

To anyone who’s just wandered in.

Hi, nice to meet you!

I’m Sarah Shotts, late diagnosed autistic artist, writer, and mum to an autistic child who I’m home educating.

I write eclectic emails each month about creativity, neurodivergence, and (quite frankly) whatever my current hyperfixation happens to be.

Sign up here if you’d like monthly-ish emails.
Read more: Learning a Second Language as a Neurodivergent Student (Child or Adult!)
March 12, 2025

Just playing, but maybe I’ll circle back to this.

Read more: untitled post 156078766
March 12, 2025

Studio in Spring

Miniature daffodils in front of the studio. First signs of spring.

Read more: Studio in Spring
March 11, 2025

From Where You Dream

by Robert Olen Butler

“Please get out of the habit of saying that you’ve got an idea for a short story. Art does not come from ideas. Art does not come from the mind. Art comes from the place where you dream. Art comes from your unconscious; it comes from the white hot center of you.”

The concept of this book is that storytelling comes from your unconscious and not your logical mind. This tracks with the writing process of Ray Bradbury, Dorothea Brande, even Terry Pratchett. It also maps onto the concepts of “day brain” vs. “night brain” writing explored on the podcast Writing Excuses.

But the farther I read into this book the more rigid and didactic Butler’s approach seemed. He needlessly used plot examples requiring a content warning.

I can’t say I wholeheartedly recommend this book, but I do find this concept of taking space to “dream” a story before you write it both liberating and extremely challenging. After setting an intention for more reverie in 2025 I have instead completely rebuilt my website and migrated my newsletter. 🤷

But my best fiction has come from that place of the unconcious. So this is a technique I want to explore.

If you do read this book, take it with a grain of salt. Artists often sound as if their way is the only way because it is the way that works for them.

For their creative ecosystem.

What you or I need may be completely different.

With those caveats here are some passages I found interesting.

“Voice is the embodiment in language of the contents of your unconscious.”

Most artists spend a lot of time and energy trying to find / discover / hone their artistic voice or style. Whereas this suggests that leaning away from analysis and toward the unconscious may bring you closer to your true voice.

“What you forget goes into the compost of the imagination… in a compost heap, things decompose. Your past is full of stories that have been composed in a certain way; that’s what memories are. But only when they decompose are you able to recompose them into new works of art.”

Love a creative compost metaphor of course. He is paraphrasing British novelist Graham Greene here.

“The organic nature of art is such that within the process everything must be utterly malleable, utterly fluent, so that everything ultimately can be brought together; and if there’s anything in there that will not yield, is not open to change, you cannot create the object.”

This is something I’m finding in my own process. I come in with a concept for a story, but the more closely I hold myself within those bounds the worse the writing is. This past year my writing started to enter this dreamspace for the first time. I found the story was moving like shifting tetonic plates.

“Rewriting is redreaming.”

I think the most radical idea in this book is that even editing (normally considered an analytical process) can come from the unconscious.

And should in Butler’s opinion.

As a literature professor he has all the tools for analysis, but claims not to consciously use them. He rereads his books looking for “twangs” and redreams them until it all “thrums.” Even his rewriting process coming from the unconscious.

“The compost heap of the novelist, the repository that exists apart from literal memory, apart from the conscious mind, is mostly made up of direct, sensual life experience.”

More creative compost. Butler has an obsession with sensory details and decries all explanatory words (for emotions, etc.) and here is where you can fall into the trap of taking on his style for your own. Centering on sensory details can certainly make a text richer, but to use them exclusively feels extreme.

It’s a stylistic choice not “good” or “bad” writing as he frames it.

“[Fiction and technique] must first be forgotten…before they can be authentically engaged in the creation of a work of art.”

He’s basically explaining here that all of that analysis (of stories and literature and writing technique) goes in the compost heap and he doesn’t trust it until it’s filtered through dreamspace.

“Desire is the driving force behind plot.”

I think this comes to the heart of his dreamspace technique. Rather than plotting a work analytically (something I am apparently allergic to) he let’s the objective of a character drive the action. This prevents the awkward situation where a character simply does something because the plot requires it.

It’s a bit chicken and the egg.

I don’t think one way is right or wrong. But when you’re done your character had darn well better have a drive for what they are doing. But doesn’t it sound more fun to let character drive your writing rather than the other way around.

“Writers who aspire to a different kind of fiction— entertainment fiction, let’s call it, genre fiction—have never forgotten this necessity of the character’s yearning.”

He is a straight up literary snob here. 🙄

But it’s worth mentioning because this chapter reminded me of musical theatre structure.

Something strongly present in my personal compost heap.

There’s always an “I want” song in Act I.

“[The artist] doesn’t know what she knows about the world until she creates the object… the writing of a work of art is as much an act of exploration as it is expression, an exploration of images, of moment-to-moment sensual experience.”

I think a lot of writers sit down to “write a book” not to “discover a story.”

For all of my criticisms of this book I do think I’ve added some rich humus (with a pile of horse 💩) to my compost heap.

That said, I hesitate to give Butler too much credit. The reason I bought his book was that I was already curious about a more intuitive approach based on Ray Bradbury’s Zen and the Art of Writing.

I gave up marking quotes because I wanted to quote every other line. And ended up too intimidated to write about it at all. Which now feels silly because I’m writing about this book that is a dim reflection of it.

Bradbury very much wrote from this dreamspace and drawing images and characters from his unconcious. I just need to find the fortitude to do it justice when writing about it.

Maybe next month.

Photo Credit: Patrick McManaman

Read more: From Where You Dream
March 9, 2025

Bilateral Mirror Drawing

Thank you YouTube algorithm. This was a hit.

The whole channel is full of great art lessons.

Read more: Bilateral Mirror Drawing
March 3, 2025

“Suddenly, you don’t follow people as you do on social media, but you follow their curiosities. This makes a much richer and sprawling environment to explore.”

Kristoffer writing about are.na

Read more: untitled post 156078228
March 4, 2024

Rekindling a Note Taking Practice
I’ve always loved note taking.

Even as a kid I would collect notes and information, magazine pages, booklets. I think it’s something of a neurodivergent impulse. Autistic folks often love collecting things and I’ve only just realized that part of that drive for me is in collecting information. I love learning things, but I also love cataloguing what I’m learning.

(Important to note this is not a universal love among autistics. There are a lot of different ways our passions and interests can show up.)

Through the years I’ve tried on different styles of note taking, but I’ve always loved the idea of a centralized system. The problem is I kept trying on other people’s systems and they were never the quite right fit.

Recently, I’ve been working out how to create my ideal note taking system.

A caution, dear reader, not to try and recreate my own system for yourself. But I hope by sharing this it can shatter some misconceptions about research and note taking and open up the realm of possibilities to you.

If you’ve been around for a while you’ll notice this is kind of an amalgamation of several different note taking projects I have had. Gathering up everything under one roof as it were. Over the years I have tried: physical notebooks, file folders, the Pocket app, Evernote app, traveler’s notebooks, blog posts, podcasts, Notion, and finally a library card catalogue drawer. Each of those attempts was, in a way, trying to create a system that I saw outside of myself and they were all too rigid.

My new system is a digital analogue hybrid.

I love handwriting notes. Typing them. Shuffling around papers. For years my ideal system (the one of my university mentor) was a series of matching composition notebooks. (1)

Then it was digital. I went “all in” on Evernote and it didn’t take long to reach the threshold where they wanted to charge a monthly fee. I think I was between degrees at this point and couldn’t imagine paying for that so I pivoted back to paper again.

Austin Kleon blogged about commonplace books and I was hooked. I tried to create a color coded indexing system. I tried numerical systems.

The trouble with notebooks is no matter what kind of system you use it can be hard to find what you’ve recorded in the past. (2)

After a while I gave up on that and started sharing monthly updates on Patreon. A round up of everything I’ve read, watched, or listened to with some of my favorite quotes.

I always circle back to physical though. Early 2019 I tried a physical notebook to document what I wanted to share to Patreon. This was shortly before Davy was born and it quickly went out the window.

But the digital format survived. It lives on as my newsletter.

The trouble is when I’m really in research collecting mode I have more than I can reasonably share in this format. And it’s also not easily search-able.

So in 2020 I started a Notion. That also has stuck with me, but there are some caveats.
- It’s a third party app that could disappear or start charging at any moment.
- And I haven’t kept up with cataloguing the details like I did in the beginning and it’s starting to become a bit of a tangled mess.
Part of the problem is I created this system when Davy was still napping in my lap a lot. So I had ages to poke around on my phone. Now I have other things to do and this type of cataloguing is not at my top of priorities. Here’s a screenshot where you can see I no longer take the time to fill out “by” and “type” which are kind of essential when it comes to finding what I’m looking for.)

So I swing back analogue…

When Davy started school I read yet another book about note taking and I fell in love with the idea of writing or typing up all my notes on index cards in my “free time.” But Davy was only in school for half days and by the time you take the commute into account I was lucky to get a couple of hours each day. I spent most of them writing a book and making art.

Now we’re home educating so it’s all a muddle of life and creativity without any clearly delineated “studio time.

If you’re neurodivergent you may have a similar cycle…

Get excited by a project.

Find a creative spark to create a system.

Abandon system.

Feel guilty.

But something was different this time around.

In all of the research about neurodiversity and autism to support David I am learning to support myself. And to reframe my perceived “deficits” as differences.

Instead of feeling guilty I got curious.

Why did some methods work better than others? What would really work best for me?

When I switched up my Substack schedule I freed up some mental bandwidth.

That extra capacity is really key here. I rarely innovate when I’m at capacity.

The second magic ingredient was playing around.

I was reading a new book and wanted to take notes. Instead of using Notion I followed my impulse and wrote them up on index cards. I knew it wasn’t something I could maintain, but I did it anyway.

Kids Speak Image, Lynda Barry, September 20, 2023

Meanwhile I’d been thinking about how to document and share content in a more casual way online. The weekly Substack posts had been too time consuming, but I knew if I slowed my publishing schedule to monthly (or even fortnightly) I would have so much I wanted to share and document in the in between.

Then Austin Kleon linked to his Tumblr. I played around with a Tumblr account for a couple weeks and fell in love with the ease of it.
1. Find something lovely.
2. Share it.
3. Type in some tags.
It didn’t take long for me to see the caveats though.

Mostly I was still creating content for someone else’s machine. Tumblr is old (in internet years) and who knows how long it will be around. Also, people started seeing and liking my posts and I was afraid I might start feeling social media feels about the value of posts based on their engagement.

But there were also things I loved about it! One of which was how visual it was! My brain loves scrolling through a visual archive versus something that looks like a giant excel sheet (no offense Notion.)

What I needed was a private Tumblr. Somewhere I could archive notes, images, even videos or podcasts. With a simple tagging system.

Enter the microblog.

I’m not sure how long it took me to realize that I could just make this on my own website.

Not a blog, but a microblog. My blog is a place to share long form writing with other people. Whereas this microblog is a collection of bits and bobs. A place to archive research and document my creative process as a tool for myself. Which I might sometimes point to.

I love it.

It feels like such a simple way to make a visual record of my thoughts and ideas. If you scroll through it’s essentially like taking a peek inside my brain. What am I reading? What am I thinking about? What was the obsession of the day?

I am fascinated by the process of ideas unfolding and layering and coming alive. It’s something I’m always unraveling when I look at other people’s work and it’s part of why I love following artists and creators online. (3)

What I got stuck on was the name. At first I called it scraps, but that didn’t really fit. Eventually I realized the answer had been there all along.

Welcome to the Chronofile

Sometime along the way I started calling my notes “The Chronofile.” You can see the hashtag in early Instagram posts and a note taking folder on Notion.

The name come from one of my creative muses – Buckminster Fuller.

He was a brilliant inventor and artist and writer and is known largely as the creator of the geodesic dome. I could go on and on about him (and I probably will some other time) but for now I’ll explain that he too was an obsessive notetaker. He documented everyday of his life in something he called the Dymaxion Chronofile. His file includes “more than 140,000 papers and 1,700 hours of audio and video” (all of which are archived in physical form and take up 1,400 linear feet.) (4)

Google Search results for “dymaxion chronofile” December 4, 2023

All the more reason to go digital! I do not have that kind of space. 😂

But there’s something about analogue.

Writing things down engages a different part of the brain than typing. (5)

Not to mention the physical record and embodied act of moving around notes and seeing them in visual conversation with each other.

What I happened upon by writing those notes about Lynda Barry’s books was that I can have the best of both worlds.

Physical notecards of my favorite quotes – in a card catalogue drawer, and a searchable digital archive – hosted on my own website.

I can easily type up notes on my phone (using the Squarespace app) and then later jot them down or type them onto a card for my physical file. This also adds a layer of curation for my physical chronofile.

It also means the letter and number codes (used above) are largely irrelevant due to the search-ability of my digital chronofile. Which is quite a relief because they never felt natural – just another outside system I was trying to use to reinvent the wheel. Why create analogue reference systems when digital search does that so easily?

I fully accept this process will shift and change. But what I’m trying to do is to utilize the best features of each medium.

Analogue for muscle memory. For embodiment. For serendipitous connections. And for aesthetic share-ability.

Digital for search-ability. For time lord technology (fitting a lot in quite a small physical space). And for the ability to include photos, videos, and audio files.

Embracing my inner Magpie

The real delight here is that scaling back my Substack publishing schedule has freed up bandwidth to rekindle my passion for research.

From deep dives into artist communities like Black Mountain College and the Arts & Crafts Movement to the mundane history of tenterhooks.

This hybrid system feels in alignment with my brain and the way it works and that makes all the difference.

The Saga Continues

One of the coolest things about Substack (or blogs) is that you can update posts as you have more information. Here’s a space I’m creating to do that as I evolve my note taking practice.

2/9/24: I’m experimenting with adapting this method to Obsidian. It resolves a few problems I was having with the Squarespace app and hosts everything locally instead of using my web hosting space. I may still use the Chronofile on my website occasionally as a microblog, but I’ve taken it off the site navigation for now.

I’ll be honest I was drawn in by the constellation visuals (these are called graphs.) I saw this twitter thread from Morgan Harper Nichols and was immediately enchanted.

My own graphs are still small for now, but it’s cool seeing how ideas connect.

There are lots of aesthetic reasons I’m really enjoying the app, but from a practical side it makes sense too. Instead of uploading your data into an app you’re creating text files and nesting folders on your own computer.

This means if Obsidian goes defunct you’ll still have all of your notes.

And that’s the main reason I’m transitioning away from Notion.

The stars are just a bonus. 💫

Still here? You must be a creative kindred.

How do you collect notes and information?

Do you prefer analogue or digital or a bit of both?

Thanks for being here.

FOOTNOTES
1. I might have stuck with this one for simplicity sake, but around this time the paper and binding quality of composition notebooks went right down. I still remember the gummy goo of one particular notebook binding that peeled up. *shudders*
2. At least it is for me. Kudos to you if you’ve figured it out.

3. After watching every single one of the Vlogbrother’s videos I finally read John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. And it felt like reading a book by a friend. I could see all of the random obsessions he’d had over the years come together in his book. The same for Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing.

4. Dymaxion Chronofile:an archive of nearly every day of Buckminster Fuller’s life. Atlas Obscura. July 11, 2013.

5. Study shows stronger brain activity after writing on paper than on tablet or smartphone, University of Tokyo, March 19 2021.
Read more: Rekindling a Note Taking Practice
March 29, 2023

More Reaching Than Rooting
First off, a quick update for local folks!

I’ll be attending my very first book festival as a self published author this Saturday! I’ll be doing a reading and signing at NWA Book Fest and would love to see you there! It feels surreal and I’m not sure I quite believe it’s real yet.

Find all the festival information here. (Catch me on the main stage at 2:30pm).

A peek into my creative process and current works in progress.

This week I’ve had more “reaching” energy than “rooting.”

Along with preparing for the festival I’ve also applied to two more art exhibitions at Spilt Milk Gallery and The Anthropology of Motherhood.

You can download either of these printables (Reach & Root or 100 Submissions) here.

I recorded a podcast episode with Kiki from Heiter Magazine. (Coming your way in April.) Podcast interviews take a lot of energy so I am experimenting with quarterly guests this year. In the past I’ve tried weekly or monthly and that has been too much. This is part of my seasonal planning approach and slowing down to find my own pace.

I’m also undertaking a just-for-fun puppet alteration project for a Wheel of Time parody contest. I haven’t done any crafting or fan art in a really long time so this has been fun.

Also Davy is fascinated.

Maybe I’ll share a peek at that next week.

Other bits and bobs I’d like to recommend…

Watch

“I used to think that art had to begreat to be worthwhile. Now, I only think it has to be to be worthwhile.” John Green. Maybe Art Only Needs to Be. Feb 21, 2023.

Me too, John, me too.

Listen

The On Being podcast is BACK and I am loving it! These two episodes were amazing.

Janine Benyus Biomimicry, an Operating Manual for Earthlings on natural organisms as mentors and peers… learning from them rather than about them.

And Rick Rubin Magic, Everyday Mystery, and Getting Creative. I have SO MANY quotes from this one because I listened while parked in the car while Davy napped:
- “The real practice of the artist is a way of being in the world.”
- “It’s hard for me to finish projects because I always see the possibilities of what else we could try and I want to try everything…”
- “What I came to realize is that there is a time for this open play. And it’s in those first two parts of the process, the seed phase… and experimenting.”
- “By working with sensitive artists, we resonate together in that we’re feeling things that not everybody else is feeling.”
- “There is no connection between the amount of time invested and how good something is.”
- “The sustainable part of the practice is: start with things that are easy to do.”
Read

Reflections on shapeshifting and reframing “scattered” by Cody Cook-Parrott

That’s all for this week, but I’d love to know what you’re up to.

Feel free to drop a link or comment below.

Cheers,
Read more: More Reaching Than Rooting
March 10, 2023

Making 360 VR with a 3 year old collaborator ✨
Hullo all,

I’m playing with the structure a bit here. Trying out categories rather than themed emails. I’m also bringing back some old themes long time supporters may recognize.

Let me know what you think.

I haven’t had much studio time this month unless you count making Number Block counting beads with Davy and the 3 hour masterclass I took from Amie McNee & Jimmy Winestock.

A peek into my creative process and an update on my collection, This is my Brain on Motherhood.

This week I’m sharing a sneak peek at a 360 VR piece I made in December. It’s taken a while to work out how to share this online.

UNRAVEL

2023 / VR 360

An immersive experience demonstrating my internal experience of motherhood.

As an autistic parent my brain does not prune synaptic pathways. This means to process information I often have to unravel a tangle of connected thoughts among sensory input, memories, and connections most people would overlook.

There are two ways to experience this work.
- If you have the YouTube app you can experience this work in VR here. Just moving your phone to look around. Please select HD by tapping the cog or it will load super blurry. 🫣
- Don’t have the YouTube app? Here’s a simulation of how it looks in 3D.
- Or you browse still photographs here.
Curious about the process? Here’s a timelapse.

This piece was inspired by a piece of writing by Hayley Dunlop which reminded me of doing this as a child. It was purely creative play at the time. I later revisited this process in directing class when I was asked to “completely transform the space.”

Hayley’s writing connected this memory to neurodivergent thought patterns which immediately made me want to create this with Davy.

Working alongside him added all sorts of layers – both layers of meaning – and literal pools of knots (which were never part of my previous efforts.) 😂

Other bits and bobs I’d like to recommend this week.
- Katherine May’s podcast How We Live Now with Priya Parker – This is a chat about gathering well and drawing the lines we need around different social events and communities. I couldn’t have listened to this as a better time as I had been struggling with the Code of Conduct for my membership program and this gave me all the confidence to go with my gut. I’ve also ordered Priya’s book (affiliate link) which happens to have a gorgeous watercolor cover.
- We’ve subscribed to the newspaper for the first time ever and I loved this article about artist Thaddeus Mosley.
- Waiting for a quiet moment to enjoy this studio tour…
I also admired these shadows.

Minor updates March 2025 to correct links and images.
Read more: Making 360 VR with a 3 year old collaborator ✨
March 9, 2022

What is a creative ecosystem?

What is a creative ecosystem?

When I talk about creative ecosystems what I mean is expanding your concept of creativity beyond the act of making. Every part of your lived experience makes up your creative ecosystem.

I developed this metaphor to help me build a healthier creative practice. Each element of a natural ecosystem (sun, water, air, etc.) is matched with a creative counterpart (body, mind, environment, and so on.)

Once I began seeing creativity in this way I couldn’t unsee it.

I also noticed a holistic view of creativity was quite counter cultural. It’s an alternative approach to these two common creative traps.

1. One Size Fits All Advice

Too many creative leaders are trying to pass on their specific creative process as if it will work for anyone.

Even my beloved Julia Cameron is guilty of this. The seeds of this idea were sown when I reread The Artist’s Way as a new mum. I knew creativity was an important part of my life and wanted guidance in how to maintain my creative life through new motherhood.

But suddenly, Julia’s advice no longer served me. I was exhausted. I didn’t have the capacity for daily journaling. And it wasn’t what I needed.

What I needed was a nap.

Reaching the end of my rope taught me that caring for my body and my mind is an essential part of the creative process.

I still don’t write or make something every day, and that’s okay. I’ve found a new rhythm that’s working for me. It’s fluid and adaptive and continues to develop over time.

2. Hustle, Hustle, Burnout

For years I’ve been working under the hustle, hustle, burnout template. I would push myself past the edge of my capacity and then crash and burn.

I see a lot of my fellow artists doing the same thing.

There is a growing awareness that we need rest, but it’s often treated like one more thing to squeeze into your to-do list.

What we really need is to rebalance our entire creative process.

Here’s where your creative ecosystem comes in.

Consider the Big Picture

When you stop hyperfocusing on productivity and take a step back you can see that every bit of your life is interconnected. It all serves your creative process.

Instead of following a template created by someone else start paying attention to your own needs. Then, make little shifts that honor your own capacity.

Discover your unique balance of structure and freedom, input and output, solitude and community, and more. Dig into your purpose and why you’re creating. Create rituals for rest and reflection.

When I saw there was more to art than simply making my own creative ecosystem began to thrive.

I can’t make a fun quiz to determine if your ecosystem is a forest or a canyon.

Only you can decide that.

But I have spent two years writing a book to help you start the journey.

Break down your creative ecosystem and explore it one step at a time.

Discover Your Creative Ecosystem is a short read full of inspiring images and prompts to reflect on your personal creative practice.

Available in hardcover and paperback. As well as a free PDF edition for readers experiencing financial hardship. And there’s also a fully illustrated companion for journaling or multimedia collage.

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Read more: What is a creative ecosystem?