I’ve set myself or groups of people a number of creative challenges over the years, and I really enjoy them. I’m just setting up another one to start at the end of this month – so I thought it would be a good time to explain what it is I love about doing them.

Noticing details and being in the moment

The first one I did was a 30 day photo challenge with no theme – just to take a photo every day. I noticed some patterns clearly emerging in the types of photos I took, and realised that I’m drawn to the little details of both nature and urban life.

I enjoy taking the time to look around me and see what catches my eye. Sometimes those details end up in creative pieces I write, sometimes they inspire another series of photos, and sometimes just looking for them is a way of staying in the moment and forgetting about everything else in the world for a few minutes.

Creative communities

The one that particularly sticks in my mind was the one I did with the theme ‘green’, which I encouraged other people to join in. 12 of us took photos every day for a month and then shared the collections at the end of the month.

The reason I enjoyed this was because I was doing something with other people. Even though we were all taking photos separately, we were sharing them as we went on social media and then we came together and discussed them online afterwards.

Inspiration

Since those early challenges, I have created many other 30 day photo series, which have included the themes ‘colours of autumn’, ‘sky’, ‘the alphabet’, and ‘black and white’. Each one of those helped me gather inspiration for other creations, for example writing, or gave me a photography focus for a few months.

I enjoy gathering that inspiration as it usually involves going for a walk, so I can combine my need for fresh air with my enjoyment of noticing details and taking photos.

Working with limited free time

Last summer I tried an experiment with a slightly different format to the challenges I had done or run previously. This one was also a month long, but was less intense than the ones with daily photos that I used to do! These days I don’t have time to take photos every day, so I thought I would see what happened if I just set a theme for each week. I also expanded the concept to include any form of creativity that the participant wanted to do, not just photography. So there were also some paintings, digital art and I wrote a short creative piece inspired by a photo I’d taken.

The 4 themes for the summer challenge were: ‘green’, ‘triangles’, ‘sky’ and ‘water’. You can see the photos and creations from participants by searching for #untanglingsummer on Instagram.

I enjoyed doing the challenge last year because it involved connecting with other people who were also interested in being creative, and I loved logging on each week to see what new images had been added using the hashtag.

I’ve decided to include an optional Facebook group for the spring 2023 challenge, as some participants wanted a more private space to share their work.

If you like the sound of a relaxed 4 week challenge, with a new creative prompt each week, you can find out more and sign up here.