Beefing Up Boundaries - Or "On When To Hold Something Back For Yourself"
Why We Need An Everyday School Of Art, From The Mother’s Perspective
I’ll start with a question, to myself, and perhaps to you too. What were your boundaries like in your twenties? By 25, how far had you got sucked into a mindset which was starting to shape itself around responsibility to others? And how did this mindset inform your boundaries?
Responsibility is an incremental creep – and most definitely, in my case, a completely willing incremental creep. In fact, I saw each stage in that creep as a mark of maturing, growing, becoming. I loved being able to take onboard new responsibilities – loved the feeling of challenge and growth they brought with them, the feeling of purpose, of pay back to others, to the world. But therein lies the rub… if the feeling of “responsibility” which impacts life choices is generally responsibility towards others, whilst we feel like we are growing into ourselves, and whilst that feels good – are we also growing away from ourselves?
There are of course a million versions of ourselves that we could grow into, or could have grown into. As each choice we make leads to other choices becoming available, the alternate “us” float away in bifurcating realities. We can no longer know or imagine what we could have become. And that’s fine – more than fine; it keeps us sane. But how do we know we kept hold of the “essence” of ourselves amongst all those choices? Did we manage our boundaries sufficiently well at each stage to ensure essential qualities, traits and dreams were protected?
For me, allowing those boundaries to be more permeable than they might, has been hugely pleasurable, and I do not regret those muslin-thin veils which bring rich rewards in so many ways. But that essential eight year old me, the me that was happy digging up clay from the garden, building model villages, cutting, sticking, making… is that always intact? Always fed and watered? Might I have protected that version of me a little more along the way, with more robust boundaries?
Two things collide for me now, each of which illustrates these permeable but rewarding boundaries, and both of which I think provide an opportunity to build back boundaries which are perhaps a little more protective of the eight year old essential (but undeveloped) me.
Firstly, AccessArt will soon be 25 years old. For those of you that don’t know AccessArt, we are a UK visual arts education charity, established by myself and Sheila Ceccarelli in 1999. It’s been a long journey, and I’m not yet finished as far as AccessArt is concerned. At its core, AccessArt is entirely built on the notion of sharing. And as AccessArt has been built by Sheila and I originally, and by the team and myself for the last three years, I have SHARED! All my creative thoughts, ideas, insights and visions, have gone straight down the funnel into AccessArt. My sharing boundary has been about as permeable as it can get. I take a day off, I create space for myself, I have an idea – and hey – its fed back into AccessArt and the community. “Hold something back for yourself” is a phrase that has been running through my head for years. But the truth is, it’s hugely pleasurable, and I have to admit that once you’re practised at it, it’s actually easier to share a creative idea and see it grow through a community, than to keep it to yourself and struggle alone. So, no regret or remorse, only acknowledgement, together with a promise to myself to redirect some of my creative energies back to myself.
The second thing that collides for me, is that my daughter Rowan, and co-author of The Everyday School of Art, is 18, and has started to pursue her own creative education at art school. A flat in London, a new life, new experiences – so exciting. The envy inside me is tangible, not because I am dissatisfied with my life (the one built by all those bifurcating choices) but because I realise how much seeing where she is at, feeds right into that eight year old child in me that is shouting “what about me?” “have you forgotten what I like to do?” (basically, “make”). But of course there is a feeling of loss too, because our creative lives have been so tied together; the most permeable barrier of all is that mother daughter one and if I ever had the urge to go and make, then I carried Rowan under my arm there too. And again – if I am totally honest, it’s a whole lot more rewarding and often a damn sight easier to facilitate making in someone else, especially your child, than to struggle and do it yourself. But we all know loss creates space, and it’s exciting to explore what might fill that space, for both of us. So again, no regret, only acknowledgement, and a promise to myself to take advantage of this space to reconnect and refuel my own creativity.
So now it's time for me to beef up those boundaries, stop deflecting my creativity towards others, face up to the fact that if I try I might fail, and keep some creativity back for myself. That “little old lady me” in my head, that might one day “do some painting”? No such thing. Let’s do it now.
And that’s where The Everyday School of Art comes in. I know, yes, potentially, The Everyday School of Art could be just another vehicle from which I over share and deflect, BUT there is an accountability to The Everyday School of Art which I never had from AccessArt, or my daughter.
So, this is a shared venture, not just shared for Rowan and I, but also with you, so if any of the above resonates, in any of its guises, life stages or bifurcating presentations, then please join us, and let’s together hold all of our “selves” accountable in prioritising the development of our innate creativity.
