-
Creators Club: The Band
In a Creators Club comprised of my colleagues, I completed a short graphic memoir of a story I’ve been wanting to explore—my experience playing bass in a band while I was in high school.
-
Can AI be Creative?
While generative AI tools are undoubtedly useful in creative work, they are lacking several essential values of humanity necessary to connect this work with its audience. “As far as I know, algorithms don’t feel.” – Nick Cave
-
Creativity and AI at SXSW Sydney
Notes from the best sessions I attended on creativity and AI at SXSW Sydney 2023.
-
My Year of Creativity
My 2022 New Year’s resolution was to do one “creative act” every day. I hoped to establish a daily creativity habit, satisfying my need to express myself and therefore, feel more at peace.
-
Defining Creativity
The thing I do is not performing, painting, animating, or taking photographs. The thing I do is to be creative.
-
Finding Creativity in the Repetition of Theatre
Rehearsal and performance require very different mindsets. How does an actor find creative fulfilment in both modalities?
-
Putting Creativity to Work
You don’t need a “creative role” to be creative at work. There are really no limits to how you can bring your unique, authentic creativity!
-
The Creativity of Voiceover Auditioning
What if a successful audition is defined by the creative satisfaction you get from it?
-
Frank Gehry
“The most important takeaway is to be yourself. And not try to be me or anyone else. You can be inspired by characters like me…but in the end, it’s gotta be you, your conscience, your talent, your mind.” Frank Gehry, Masterclass
-
My first mini-zine
Zines have been on the periphery of my creative world for quite awhile. I’ve bought them, read them, and mused about how my cartoon-making might find an IRL expression in their pages. And whenever Austin Kleon shares his zine-making process, I am reminded to try it out. But it’s never been quite the right time.…
-
Mindful Sketching
I’m sitting next to the pool at my parents’ house, enjoying the first brief moment of relaxation after a busy week. Reading a magazine on my iPad, I am soon disturbed by the unmistakable laugh of the kookaburra.
-
My Title, My Choice
I never really bothered using my title before. But in solidarity with Dr. Biden, to demonstrate my freedom of choice, own my authority, and to be a role model to other women who may want to pursue higher education, I will damn well start using it now.
-
Creativity and alone time in the pandemic
This post has taken me months to write. It’s not like I’ve been slogging over it, crafting every word and rewriting it a hundred times until it’s just so. Rather, it’s been written in short bursts. Just a sentence here, a sentence there, and then a long period of rest until I had time to…
-
Creativity, Instagram, and The Social Dilemma
I didn’t know much about the Netflix film The Social Dilemma before watching it, except I’d heard it would probably make me swear off social media forever. That wouldn’t be hard for me, at this point. There’s this episode of Vanity Fair’s Inside the Hive podcast, entitled “How Evil is Silicon Valley?” that made me…
-
5 ways to encourage creativity
Back when DVDs were a thing, I loved the director’s commentary. Remember? That option on the menu screen, tempting you to sit through the whole movie again and listen to the filmmakers give insider nuggets about shot choices or direction given to actors. I guess I’ve just always been fascinated with how creativity happens.
-
What creativity means to me
I’ve been creative for as long as I can remember. I started piano lessons at age five. Soon afterward, I started ballet, and after-school art classes. And then I was unstoppable. Over the last 35 years, I’ve played saxophone and guitar, taken oil painting lessons, crocheted, cross-stitched, and embroidered, practiced photography and videography, started making…
-
When I got the $20,000 question wrong
I was too embarrassed to tell people, so only my closest friends and family knew I was going to be on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. I wasn’t sure I really wanted them to watch. I didn’t want them to know that literally, I was asked a $20,000 question. And I got it wrong.
-
Being a scanner, and finding an answer to the question: “What do you do?”
After being accosted with the question “what do you do?” one too many times, I ponder the nature of being a jack-of-all-trades and a Scanner.
Tess Needham
Creativity enthusiast
Tess Needham 