I came up with an exercise called INSTANT ART, that was designed to still our judgemental minds while we make art. We brought together a number of people from a really wide age range (3 to 83); we gave each of them a board 1.2 metres square, and there was a communal set of household paint pots and a range of domestic implements.

The exercise was to use any of the available implements – which included spoons, syringes, sponges, hosepipes etc., to put any of the available paints onto their board, and to observe the process. It was emphasised that no-one is trying to paint a likeness of anything – I just wanted them to respond to the paint.

Every time I tried this (we did it a number of times in the UK and Spain), we had a lot of fun; we made a lot of mess, and inevitably everyone made something that they would never otherwise have made – and which they didn’t know they had the ability to make.

 For me the most interesting outcome was on the first evening when the artists had invited friends and family to come and see the work. None of the work was labelled; no-one had created work like this before, and yet the nearest and dearest could always pick which painting had been done by their loved one. The character of the individual was reflected in their choice of paints and implements and application. In a sense, each painting was a self portrait and yet how different the outcome would have been if the brief had been to paint a self-portrait!

 These are my reflections on creativity. It is important that creativity comes from within each of us. We might be stimulated by things or events outside, but our particular creativity is very individual to us – it is our still small voice. Accessing creativity is difficult and takes openness and vulnerability.