The Creativity for All Podcast is a bi-monthly show designed to explore creativity in all its forms and hosted by Caroline Jestaz, a fiction writer, language teacher and writing mentor, who believes that we are all born with the potential to be creative and that potential is most of the time unrecognised, untapped and unvalued.

With The Creativity for All Podcast, Caroline is keen to explore creativity in all its forms, to debunk many myths about creativity – such as being for the chosen few, unreachable, expensive and painful, to show that creativity is for everyone and is accessible and to create a vibrant and inspiring community of like-minded people from all over the world.

The Creativity for All podcast is for everyone, whether you consider yourself a creative person or not. And if you think you cannot be creative, Caroline would like to change your mind about that!

So join her, every other Monday, as she explores and celebrates the many forms of day-to-day creativity, either focusing on a key topic in her solo episodes or interviewing, in her guest episodes, all manner of creative people, who share their take on creativity and what being creative means to them.

Mention the word ‘creativity’ and you will very likely be faced with perplexed or sceptical stares. To many it seems elusive, mysterious even, and is therefore completely outside their reach. To some, it's an illusion, a myth. And, on the whole, creative people are seen as established artists with a fertile imagination, finely-honed skills and a boundless capacity for self-torture. With such a take on the subject, one cannot be blamed for dismissing creativity entirely!

I believe that creativity can be found in everyday life and doesn’t require external validation, that being creative is fun and good for us and helps us connect with one another on a deep, personal level.

I believe that we are all born with the potential to be creative and that potential is most of the time unrecognised, untapped and unvalued.

I also believe that creativity is not just about writing stories or creating a work of art, that it manifests itself in many often unseen, day-to-day, forms that are worth exploring and discussing.​

With my new bi-monthly podcast, entitled The Creativity for All Podcast, I’m keen to:​

• explore creativity in all its forms,​
• debunk many myths about creativity, such as being for the chosen few, unreachable, expensive and painful,​
• show that creativity is for everyone and is accessible,​
• create a vibrant and inspiring community of like-minded people from all over the world.

​The Creativity for All Podcast alternates solo episodes, focusing on a particular theme, and guest episodes with all manner of creative people discussing their take on creativity and what creativity means to them.

My podcast is designed for anyone tempted to pursue a creative path or who’s already being creative. It’s also designed for those of you who think they are not creative or can never be creative. I would love to change your mind about that!

The Creativity for All Podcast is sponsored by Blue as an Orange, where we believe in creativity through communication and offer mentoring and coaching for aspiring writers, tailored language tuition and editing/translation services.

www.blueasanorange.com
caroline@blueasanorange.com

In this episode of the Creativity for All Podcast – the first guest episode of Series 1 about the origin of creativity – I'm talking to Helen Murray.

Helen is passionate about facilitating learning and development and is a qualified teacher and education development advisor. She’s also a home-educating parent who values freedom, self-direction and consent in education.

She's interested in learning as a creative process, which makes her the ideal first guest on my show. She’s an original thinker and in the seven years I’ve known her, there isn’t a single conversation we’ve had that hasn’t left me with food for thought, especially on the subject of creativity.

Helen and I talk about active learning, how to encourage children to be creative, about boredom as a trigger for creativity and the freedom to be creative, among many other topics, so I hope you will enjoy our discussion.

More information about Helen Murray

Do schools kill creativity?, A talk by Sir Ken Robinson, author and educator.

Bring on the Learning Revolution, A talk by Sir Ken Robinson, author and educator.

To most of us perfectionism is a badge of honour, the personality trait you brag about in interviews or performance reviews, the indispensable ingredient to a successful career, to a successful life. It’s the engine driving us fast, faster and faster for the most perfectionist among us. Perfectionism pushes us to always do better, to challenge ourselves further, ignoring any progress or accomplishments, while often putting our health and well-being at risk.

When it comes to creativity, is perfectionism our friend or our foe? Is it the engine we have to use in order to be creative or is it our very own poison, or both? Can we be creative without being perfectionists? Is it remotely possible?

The Creativity for All Podcast is sponsored by Blue as an Orange, where we believe in creativity through communication and offer mentoring and coaching for aspiring writers, tailored language tuition and editing/translation services.

Today’s guest is Meg Kissack. She’s a coach, writer, podcaster and all-round rebel-rouser for creative and multi-passionate women, who want to do the things only they can do and leave the world a brighter place. She is the founder of That Hummingbird Life, host of The Couragemakers Podcast and The Daily Pep! Podcast. Her motto is: ''Everything changes when you believe you matter''.

I’ve invited Meg because she uses her own creativity to not only encourage others to nourish and sustain theirs, through her podcasts and writing, but also to coach creative women, helping them tap into their unused creative potential.

'We need to be creative thinkers to survive in this world' she says, and rightly so.

Meg has an honest, compassionate and insightful take on what happens when we start being creative. We talk about listening to our intuition, giving ourselves the permission to create, the importance of being curious, the fear of failure and of success, the benchmarks we set for ourselves when it comes to being creative and the creative scars, bruises and boxes we have to navigate in order to embrace our own creativity. Every interaction I’ve had with Meg has left me inspired, so I hope you will enjoy her interview.

The Creativity for All Podcast is sponsored by Blue as an Orange, where we believe in creativity through communication and offer mentoring and coaching for aspiring writers, tailored language tuition and editing/translation services.

A shorter episode, published a week early, on the relationship between anxiety and creativity, the role of storytelling, and  embracing creativity in order to fight anxiety.

These are scary and anxiety-inducing times, so I hope this episode will encourage you to be creative and bring you some respite from the relentless news cycle. Stay safe.

Today’s guest is Dominique Henz. Dominique studied theatre and film in Germany, Scotland and Australia. She was a director at the Mainz State Theatre, worked for ZDF, the German public-service television broadcaster, for Deutsche Bank, the University of Göttingen, the Max-Planck-Institute and has written a PhD on the Australian movie director, Peter Weir.

In 1994, I saw a beautiful and heartbreaking production of a play by Joshua Sobol entitled Ghetto, directed by Dominique, as part of her third-year project at Glasgow University. She was a student still, but already a fully-formed director, putting together a play in English, aged 22, which included a band singing and performing live.

I chose to invite Dominique on the Creativity for All Podcast, because in the twenty-five years that I’ve known her, she has showed an uncanny ability to use her creativity to not only further her career, but to challenge herself to keep on learning new skills and exploring new fields.

We talk about her desire to understand others, how they work, what their stories are and how communication and interconnectedness are at the core of everything she does. About the role of storytelling, not only in creativity, but in everyday life, and about tackling fear and venturing outside of our comfort zone.

Dominique shares her motto and experience of following her intuition and approaching complex or tricky situations creatively. I've always found her courage and creative approach to life inspiring, so I hope you will enjoy her interview.

Being creative is not a passive process, creativity isn’t born out of the void. To get creative, we need to feed and stimulate our brain. But where do we start, especially when our energy and concentration levels aren’t as high as they used to be? In this episode, I look at what makes us creative, even in the most stressful of times, and how to nurture and nourish our own creative potential in a kind, compassionate and strategic way.