Walking for Creative Recovery A handbook for creatives, with insights and ideas for supporting your creative life

Sooner or later, most of us get stuck. Feel stuck. Our creativity in crisis… lost, blocked, overwhelmed by work, family, illness. How to find or recover that creative edge? How to get unstuck? For the authors, it began with cancer and stretched into the pandemic. One primarily a writer and the other a painter, they decide to walk together, to talk, write, feed back, reflect and repeat, again and again. They explore trust, openness, motherhood, their willingness to take risks and be exposed, and the particular insights they bring as women. Along the way, they walk and map their way back to creative life. This is their story, but more than that—it’s a map and a handbook for anyone who is feeling stuck. Whether or not you have had a creative practice before (writing/ painting/ making/ crafting), this book will help you find your way into creative expression. The authors offer creative tasks and suggestions in each chapter, and ideas and structures to get you going. But most important, they offer warmth, friendship, and inspiration from their own shared vulnerability, struggle, setbacks, and muddy walking.

Dr. Christina Reading is an independent artist and researcher who works on a variety of interdisciplinary and collaborative creative research projects with undergraduates, postgraduates, and the wider community. Her work is united by an interest in, and commitment to, developing her and other people’s creative learning and practice. She lives and works in Brighton with her family and continues to walk, make, and write whenever she can. Dr. Jess Moriarty is Principal Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Brighton where she is co-director for the Centre of Arts and Wellbeing. She has published on autoethnography, Creative Writing pedagogy, and community engagement. Jess lives in Brighton with her family and continues to walk every day.

Introduction: Our Own Creative Recovery Chapter 1: Why are we doing this? Walk 1: Stanmer Park to Chattri Memorial and back Looking back Chapter 2: Accepting Fear Walk 2: Brighton Marina to the Palace Pier and back Our Personal Creativity Inspiration and Play: Enticing your creativity back into the open Chapter 3: New Intentions Walk 3: Chanctonbury Ring – The Return Using your personal archives to reconnect with your creativity Chapter 4: Embracing Uncertainty Walk 4: Balcombe Circular via Ardingly Reservoir Whose voice is it anyway? Accepting our inner critic Skipping past the inner critic: Image making and re-imagining Chapter 5: Covid Diaries Reclaiming Stories Chapter 6: Passing Clouds – Keeping Creativity Moving Final walk: Devil’s Dyke to Ditchling Beacon and back In Conversation – Why does this matter? Conclusion: The possibility of change Creative Recovery