63 episodes

Creative Lift is for you if you are a writer or any other kind of artist who takes your work, your practice, and your growth seriously enough to dare to play your way to the page.

Each episode includes an invitation for your curiosity, a game or thinking experiment, and a question or two to take into your week.

Creative Lift Naomi Kinsman

    • Arts
    • 5.0 • 13 Ratings

Creative Lift is for you if you are a writer or any other kind of artist who takes your work, your practice, and your growth seriously enough to dare to play your way to the page.

Each episode includes an invitation for your curiosity, a game or thinking experiment, and a question or two to take into your week.

    Creating Space - Designing with Strategic Thinking in Mind

    Creating Space - Designing with Strategic Thinking in Mind

    In this season of Creative Lift, “Creating Space,” we’re making the abstract and sometimes confusing creative process more tangible. We’re giving ourselves tools to see the way we move through the creative process so that we can ideate, craft our work, gather feedback, and revise our work with more clarity and flow.
    Today’s episode, “Designing with Strategic Thinking in Mind,” builds on the concept of the Illuminary, which I outlined in episode 60. In this imagined space, you can visualize different kinds of creative thinking inside distinct mental rooms. In our last two episodes, 61 and 62, we explored the Studio where you’re invited to think expansively—brainstorming, improvising and experimenting.
    Today, we’re heading over to the Workshop, where you’re invited to think critically—making decisions, developing ideas, and revising your work.
    When I spend too much time in the Studio, my ideas spiral out of control, leading me into intriguing, but often illogical territory. When I spend too much time in the Workshop, my work bogs down under the weight of my critical eye. 
    Even though both rooms are essential, so is the wall between them. Without a wall to separate these kinds of thinking, your inner critic has clear access to throw darts at fledgling ideas. In retaliation, your creativity is likely to rebel and either shut down or tangle storylines into rats’ nests.
    My recommendation is that you firmly close your Studio door, and march across the hall into an entirely separate room where you can envision your Workshop. You’ll want to be able to move easily between the rooms—often in one work session, you’ll start out in the Studio to generate ideas, head over to the Workshop to begin to shape those ideas, hit a snag and need to pop back to the Studio to brainstorm again, and then bring your solution ideas back to the Workshop to finish the day’s work. The more capacity you build in these two spaces, the more fluidly you’ll be able to use as you move between them.
    Let’s explore the Workshop, which is filled with practical tools and the can-do optimism you need when you’re facing a pile of messy, but promising ideas.
     
    Episode Links:
    Sign up for Creative Lift tools and resources
    Find me on Instagram: @naomikinsman
    Find Alex on Instagram: @ag.doherty

    • 10 min
    Creating Space: Playing in the Studio

    Creating Space: Playing in the Studio

    Today’s episode of Creative Lift, "Creating Space: Playing in the Studio," is a hands-on experience of playing in one of the Illuminary's rooms, the Studio. You can think of the Illuminary as an inner creative hideout that is made up of various rooms designed to support your creative thinking process. The Studio is a space for divergent thinking, brainstorming, improvising, and experimenting.
     
    Last week's episode offered a tour of the Studio, and today's episode invites you to experience it. Since this is a hands-on experience, I encourage you to listen to this episode when you have a few quiet minutes to focus and a pen and paper in hand.
     
    Episode Links:
    Sign up for Creative Lift tools and resources
    Find me on Instagram: @naomikinsman
    Find Alex on Instagram: @ag.doherty

    • 13 min
    Creating Space: Designing with Play in Mind

    Creating Space: Designing with Play in Mind

    In today’s episode of Creative Lift, dive with me into the first of the Illuminary’s rooms, the Studio. You can think of the Illuminary as an inner creative hideout that is made up of various rooms designed to support your creative thinking process. The Studio is a space for divergent thinking, brainstorming, improvising, and experimenting. In our episode, we’ll explore why play matters, no matter what age you are, and how play facilitates your creative flow and momentum.
    What kind of environment would work best for you in your internal Studio? What colors, tools, and supplies invite you into a playful state of mind? Your Studio is a place to experiment, even when you have no idea whether a possibility will lead anywhere productive. In this space, making a mess is not only expected, it’s celebrated.
    Don’t miss out on next week’s follow-up episode! In this season, we’re alternating between an episode like this one, that provides a tour of one of the Illuminary’s rooms, followed by an episode like next week’s, in which we’ll play through a hands-on activity together to get a feel for what actually being in that room might feel like. I encourage you to set some time aside next week to join me in the Studio and stretch your playful thinking skills.
    Episode Links:
    Sign up for Creative Lift tools and resources
    Find me on Instagram: @naomikinsman
    Find Alex on Instagram: @ag.doherty

    • 10 min
    A Room of Your Own - Why Creative Space Matters

    A Room of Your Own - Why Creative Space Matters

    In Season Eight of Creative Lift, our theme is Creating Space. Today’s episode is titled A Room of Your Own: Why Creative Space Matters.
    When you think of creative space, what comes to mind? Do you think of your physical creative space? Or does your mind turn to something less easy to define, such as your mental or emotional space?
    Maybe right now, you’re in a season where you feel you have the just-right amount of creative space. Or maybe you are longing for more physical or metaphorical creative space in your life. No matter where you are, this season invites you to take a deep breath, and to look at creative space in a new way. You’ll gain tools that help you apply your creative thinking skills directly to your creative process. We all have those stuck places that come up over and over again. What if your creativity was exactly what you needed to reimagine those challenges and overcome them?
    It’s likely that in one place or another, you’ve heard me speak about the Illuminary. This imagined villa houses many rooms, and each room offers a particular thinking environment. The Studio, for instance, provides you an expansive, playful space where you can ideate and dream. Across the hall, the Workshop holds practical tools to help you craft those ideas and dreams into a shape you can share with others.
    The Illuminary makes what the invisible—our creative thinking process—visible. By illuminating the shifts we make from one mode of thinking to another, we avoid common creative blocks. By equipping each room with tools that are personalized for our own approach, we learn not only to rely on our strengths, but also create ease in the spaces that are less comfortable for us.
    Throughout this season, we'll explore the Illuminary’s rooms, discuss the essential mindset required for each, and try out activities that help you experience the feel of each mindset. In today’s episode, we’ll walk through the Illuminary so that you have a map for where we’re headed in this season, and I’ll share a few stories about how and why I developed this tool for myself and others.
    I’m very excited to share the Illuminary’s tools and creative mindsets with you. They’ve been transformative for me in my creative process, and I have seen them blast through obstinate creative blocks for others, too. My hope through this season is that through these tools, you will find a renewed sense of momentum and joy as you unlock new horizons in your creative process.

     
    Episode Links:
    Sign up for Creative Lift tools and resources
    Find me on Instagram: @naomikinsman
    Find Alex on Instagram: @ag.doherty

    • 9 min
    Living the Artful Life: Dare Greatly

    Living the Artful Life: Dare Greatly

    Much has already been researched, said, and written about the tension between creativity and fear. Even so, I didn’t feel this season would be complete without a discussion of creative courage, and why daring is so crucial in the artful life.
    Brene Brown writes, “The willingness to show up changes us, It makes us a little braver each time.”
    What if you didn’t have to produce perfect work on the first or the fiftieth attempt? What if the point of the game was being willing to show up, and seeing how that act of daring, especially in the face of a challenge, built your overall courage?
    When I think about living the artful life, I can’t help but ask myself: why? Why is this approach to living so important to me? After all, as we’ve noted throughout this series, artful living could also be called “intentional” living. Yes, transforming work into play, and creating moments of delight, and finding the just-right metaphor to express our perspective, experience, or emotion is absolutely worth the effort. Also, approaching life in this way does, in fact, take effort. Or maybe the better way to say that is living artfully takes extra thought. We are invited to pay attention in a way that brings us joy, that connects us to others, and that creates deeper meaning out of our everyday experiences.
    In this final episode of the season, Living the Artful Life: Dare Greatly, we’ll explore how approaching the artful life with courage can begin with one tiny experiment. My hope is that we may all dare greatly this week, and also allow ourselves to start small.
    Episode Links:
    Find me on Instagram: @naomikinsman
    Find Alex on Instagram: @ag.doherty

    • 7 min
    Living the Artful Life: Permission to Play

    Living the Artful Life: Permission to Play

    Why is play important in the artful life? In episode 58 of Creative Lift, Living the Artful Life: Permission to Play, we’ll chat about some reasons that play may be more important than most of us give it credit for, and how you might give yourself permission to play.
    We all know that the amount of energy we have when we approach a task is essential. If we experience our task as a slog, it likely will take more time and what we produce will often be of less quality. When that same task is framed as play, it can become buoyant, which speeds up the work, makes the work fun, and also often creates stronger, more inspired results. From cooking to designing our days, play can unlock our creative energy and give us the momentum we need to move forward.
    What possibilities might giving yourself permission to play unlock for you this week?
    Visit this link for the show notes.
    Episode Links:
    Find me on Instagram: @naomikinsman
    Find Alex on Instagram: @ag.doherty

    • 6 min

Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5
13 Ratings

13 Ratings

ReadWriteDance ,

Excellent creative tool!

This podcast is an amazing tool to help identify strengths and weaknesses as a creative person. [Honestly, any professional would benefit from this type of story-based self-exploration.] For sure, I will return to Season 1 repeatedly to rewrite my own story as my creative journey evolves. Such a great quality podcast—I highly recommend!

Rengobe ,

🌸 Thankful

With this exercise I was able to see new aspects of a space I had created to move through some of the most challenging times in my life. While it is still the same space, it has a new set of tools and a safe space for what it to come next in this journey through life with Art.
I am excited to see what you will have for us next!

Lreadwritereview ,

Great for creatives!

Love this thoughtful and practical podcast for creatives. Such a unique perspective and fun concept. Love it!

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