The Artists Way Programme Reflection - Week 1

There is something quite tender about beginnings, a mix of excitement, uncertainty and hope. The start of our Artist’s Way programme was exactly this but yet, it didn’t feel like a launch but rather a gathering. Faces appearing on screen from London, Birmingham, Nairobi, Essex, Norway - different time zones, different disciplines, different seasons of life. Multi-disciplinary artists. Photographers. Poets. Event organisers. Producers. People who have started The Artist’s Way before and never finished. People who are returning. People beginning for the first time. However what connected everyone was a shared longing for renewal, consistency and most importantly permission to prioritise the creative self again.

As someone also walking through the book with the cohort, I felt the relief of not doing this alone. The Artist’s Way can feel intense, somewhat confrontational but yet still so expansive. To move through it collectively shifts the energy from self-interrogation to shared witnessing, something that Julia Cameron herself describes the process to be. There was relief in hearing others articulate thoughts I’d carried privately: I start things but don’t finish. I want structure. I want to believe creativity is part of my life, not something squeezed around it. Naming these truths together softened them and gently remind me/us that the creative struggle is not a personal failure, but a shared human experience.

Week 0 was about orientation and establishing the rhythm of our 12 weeks. From our Saturday morning sessions to daily morning pages, weekly artist dates and a final zine that will gather the fragments of our journey in reflection to the theme 'How we use creativity for care'. But the key focus of our first session is that we were giving ourselves permission to begin.

And then came Week 1, after the introduction chapter invites us to see creativity as a spiritual practice, Week 1 asks something more vulnerable: Do you feel safe enough to begin?

“Recovering a Sense of Safety” is an unassuming chapter title for work that can feel deeply exposing. The book asks us to tend to the inner artist child - the part of us that learned early on, that it was safer to be quiet and/or palatable. Through conversation and reflection, a pattern emerged. Despite our different backgrounds, so many of us carried the same quiet fears: I’m not good enough. I have to be perfect. I’m undisciplined. I’m cringe. Seeing these “enemy within” beliefs appear collectively (rather than privately) was unexpectedly comforting. However, there was a shared embrace for all the inner artist child's who may have pushed to the side and subjected to words, thoughts and limiting beliefs that we wouldn't dare utter to a friend or sibling.

But in the spirit of recovery, one of the most grounding moments came through positive affirmations, for ourselves and the group. By identifying an “ally within” to counter the inner critic, the session opened up to allow simple phrases spoken aloud to land with surprising weight: I was already good enough. Trying is still moving. I don’t need to quantify. I am free to explore. Hearing and witnessing these shared within the group helped to serve as counterweights to long-held narratives that the programme/book calls us to release.

The conversation around creativity as a spiritual practice also stayed with me. Julia Cameron’s framing of creativity as a natural order of life, as something that flows through us rather than from us, took pressure off the act of making. As one participant reflected, it allowed them to see themselves not as the source of creativity, but as a conduit. That shift alone felt like healing.

Elsie’s (Founder of ourppls) reflection lingered too: that creativity isn’t only about art, but about shaping the life we want to live. Our values, our environments, our visions. That creativity can look like imagining a different future and slowly, bravely, making room for it.

As both facilitator and participant, what struck me most across these first weeks was the gentleness of the work. There was no rush to “produce” or pressure to perform. Instead, there was encouragement to be kind. To notice any internal resistance without judgement. To trust that creativity moves in seasons, just like life.

This programme is not about becoming a “better” artist. It’s about becoming a safer home for the artist that already exists within us. Isn't that just beautiful? That’s the real work of these early weeks, remembering that we don’t need permission to begin. We just need space, time and each other. To our participants, thank you for being open to the process and showing up each week.

If you doing the book in community is something that you are interested in, you don't have to be part of our programme to benefit from the experience of bearing witness to the transformation of life through acts of creativity in community. Julia Cameron offers a 'Creative Clusters Guide' in the book with how you can gather with friends, family or colleagues to journey the book together.