Many people around me have a pretty good artistic side: Music, painting… they are crafters of all sorts, they can truly create things out of thin air!

As for me? Well, I’m not a gifted artist. I shouldn’t be allowed to sing outside my shower and I still struggle to draw a smiley face.

For a while, I thought the artistic road wasn’t something for me, period. Yet, the thing is, even though I can’t create very much, I still have pretty strong opinions about what I like.

Curating creativity

It took me a long time to realize that I didn’t need to create to be happy with creativity. Curation works, too. I know it’s not new; people have always loved curating content. Scrapbooking/book clubs have been around for a while, for example.

If the Internet made it easy for people to create content (think about how Instagram turned everyone into photographers), it has helped curators take over as well.

Up to 80% of Pinterest’s Pins are repins, and Tumblr nurtures what they call Fandoms.

So, with my buddy Amaury, I started a pet project in 2014 we call “Oh I Like Art”. Four times a day, we share cool art we love!

Several hundred people have been kind enough to follow us and do their own curation from our selection. Additionally, a handful of artists have agreed to honour us with their original creations.

With the help of a nice team and some clever tools, our workload is >2 hours per week, in a one-off session.

I spend time browsing dozens of blogs to find cool art, and I simply love it!

There’s no notion of “good” or “bad,” it’s just about picking what makes me happy at any given time: aesthetics, colors, shapes or a message. The best word I have for it is “satisfying.”

My weekly creativity routine

I discovered that creativity is something that I wish to exercise regularly. Just like the people who go to the gym to get fit, I want to have my weekly creativity workout!

Now that we’ve done it for the past few months, it feels just like exercising.

It’s a weekly routine which involves others. It’s given me the opportunity to meet plenty of cool people and when I’m finished, I feel exhausted and happy. I’m even grumpy when I don’t do it—it’s simply rewarding as a process and not as an achievement. I feel the same way towards meditation.

Practicing creativity is now a critical part of my week, something I truly look forward to and that makes me happy.

How do you exercise your creativity? How will you practice creativity this week?

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Image credit: Iryna (Ukraine)

Rodolphe Dutel - Page 2

Why I Built A Weekly Creativity Routine