Expand Your Creative Capacity (within motherhood): a conversation with Claire Venus

We interview Claire Venus, a Creative Producer and Mentor who invites creative work into her experience of motherhood (and vice versa). We talk about how to embrace presence inside motherhood (through creative practice!), what it means to make creative spaces more accessible, and the intentional practice of balancing boundaries with flexibility.

Find Claire Venus on her website (www.creativelyconscious.co.uk), on instagram, and through her Substack newsletter (of the same name). 

SUBSCRIBE to the UNRAVEL your journey podcast on Substack. Available for free (or for $5 per month).

Transcript

Kati Overmier (00:00:13):
Welcome to the Unravel Your Days podcast.

Kati Overmier (00:00:16):
We're your hosts, Kati Overmier and Alycia Buenger.

Alycia Buenger (00:00:19):
And we're here to bring you thoughtful conversations about unraveling your soul

Alycia Buenger (00:00:23):
self inside everyday life.

Alycia Buenger (00:00:26):
We'll take a critical look at the self-development industry and explore simple,

Alycia Buenger (00:00:30):
powerful practices you can actually incorporate into your days.

Kati Overmier (00:00:34):
We'll define by example our framework for unraveling to help you envision your soul desires,

Kati Overmier (00:00:40):
embody your experiences, and enlighten your next steps.

Alycia Buenger (00:00:45):
Join us right here every week as we question whole body wellness and explore our

Alycia Buenger (00:00:50):
daily experience of unraveling who you are and who you choose to be.

Alycia Buenger (00:00:55):
Thank you so much for being here.

Alycia Buenger (00:00:56):
Let's dive in.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:17):
Welcome back to the podcast and welcome to our first interview with an international guest.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:23):
This feels kind of exciting.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:26):
We are talking with Claire today.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:28):
Claire Venus is a creative producer and mentor.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:31):
She lives with her husband and two children on the Northumberland coast in the UK.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:36):
Claire is passionate about time and nature,

Alycia Buenger (00:01:39):
making space for the slow lived life, and helping people find their authentic voice

Alycia Buenger (00:01:43):
and rekindle their creative flow.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:46):
She supports her clients in using creativity to up-level their well-being.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:50):
During the pandemic,

Alycia Buenger (00:01:52):
Claire's project,

Alycia Buenger (00:01:53):
Creativity Island,

Alycia Buenger (00:01:54):
was funded by Arts Council England and designed specifically for mums.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:59):
The project engaged over 7,000 participants worldwide and helped create a sell-out

Alycia Buenger (00:02:03):
journal to support mums with little ones to capture memories,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:07):
kindle creativity,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:08):
and consider their own well-being.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:11):
So we're going to talk today about this project on the podcast,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:14):
plus Claire's Instagram project,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:16):
The Magical Mundane,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:17):
which is how I found Claire,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:19):
and what it's like to engage in creative business as a mother.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:24):
You can find Claire on her website,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:25):
creativelyconscious.co.uk,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:29):
on Instagram and through her Substack newsletter of the same name.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:33):
And all of these things that I mentioned,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:35):
the website,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:35):
Instagram,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:36):
and the Substack will all be linked in the show notes for you to access easily.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:40):
Welcome to the podcast, Claire.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:43):
Hi, so nice to be here.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:46):
I'm excited that we're having this conversation.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:49):
I've followed your work for a little while through,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:51):
we have a mutual friend who I think we'll also have on the podcast in the future,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:56):
Sarah Shotts,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:56):
who I've mentioned before.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:59):
And I started following your work when you guys collaborated on The Magical Mundane.

Claire Venus (00:03:04):
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Claire Venus (00:03:05):
And I think that's so nice.

Claire Venus (00:03:07):
It's so nice to hear about that connection.

Claire Venus (00:03:08):
And that's what I kind of suspected was the connect.

Claire Venus (00:03:11):
So it's really nice to hear that that's where it comes through.

Claire Venus (00:03:14):
And Sarah is, yeah, an internet friend, a digital friend and a creative mom.

Claire Venus (00:03:19):
And I was so pleased.

Claire Venus (00:03:21):
I've got no idea how we found each other.

Claire Venus (00:03:22):
I should probably ask her that.

Claire Venus (00:03:24):
But we've definitely known each other a couple of years online.

Claire Venus (00:03:27):
And so, yeah, it's great that other people are kind of finding each other, finding our accounts through

Claire Venus (00:03:33):
the work that we're collaborating on together.

Claire Venus (00:03:35):
Yeah.

Alycia Buenger (00:03:35):
Yeah.

Alycia Buenger (00:03:36):
It's fun to actually see you in person or, you know, digitally in person.

Alycia Buenger (00:03:40):
Yeah.

Alycia Buenger (00:03:41):
Brings it to life a bit.

Alycia Buenger (00:03:43):
So I want to take us on a little bit of a journey,

Alycia Buenger (00:03:46):
us meaning like the three of us,

Alycia Buenger (00:03:48):
as well as anyone listening,

Alycia Buenger (00:03:50):
a journey from where you started with this creative work and how your work has

Alycia Buenger (00:03:55):
evolved and also where you're heading,

Alycia Buenger (00:03:58):
what you're working on now,

Alycia Buenger (00:03:59):
because I know you have a new project in the works.

Alycia Buenger (00:04:02):
So can we start talking about how you got started with creative work or Creatively Conscious,

Alycia Buenger (00:04:09):
your business hub,

Alycia Buenger (00:04:12):
and then kind of how your work started to evolve through motherhood?

Claire Venus (00:04:17):
For sure.

Claire Venus (00:04:17):
Yeah, absolutely.

Claire Venus (00:04:18):
So I did a creative degree.

Claire Venus (00:04:21):
And even before that,

Claire Venus (00:04:22):
I just felt like creativity was my lifeblood and I needed to find a way to be

Claire Venus (00:04:27):
working in the creative sector somehow.

Claire Venus (00:04:30):
So I started out really

Claire Venus (00:04:31):
working in theatre and presenting house theatre and theatre productions and that

Claire Venus (00:04:38):
whole kind of summer camp experience,

Claire Venus (00:04:40):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:04:41):
how us Brits like to go over to American summer camps and like plug in there.

Claire Venus (00:04:44):
So that was all really magical.

Claire Venus (00:04:46):
And I really just kind of,

Claire Venus (00:04:49):
followed where the creativity was.

Claire Venus (00:04:52):
So I lived in a big city for a while in Newcastle... and I worked on a

Claire Venus (00:04:57):
children and young people's festival.

Claire Venus (00:04:59):
So the idea behind the festival was that there was work for, by, and with children and young people.

Claire Venus (00:05:06):
So they would be the co-creators.

Claire Venus (00:05:08):
And this was the first time that I'd come across the concept of co-creation.

Claire Venus (00:05:12):
So

Claire Venus (00:05:13):
before that point usually there was an adult team that came up with a concept and

Claire Venus (00:05:18):
then that adult team, that professional team made a thing and presented it to

Claire Venus (00:05:22):
audiences whether that was in visual art or theatre or an alternative art form,

Claire Venus (00:05:27):
video, and the festival was really more about meeting participants where they were

Claire Venus (00:05:31):
at as co-creators, and I just was fascinated with what came out of that, so I kind of

Claire Venus (00:05:37):
adopted that as my practice, that kind of co-creation with my participants and...

Claire Venus (00:05:43):
Yeah, I kind of set myself up as an engagement manager.

Claire Venus (00:05:45):
And I know the term engagement has slightly different connotations now that we all use social media.

Claire Venus (00:05:51):
And it's definitely not that.

Claire Venus (00:05:53):
It's not that kind of social media engagement, commenting and all of that sort of stuff on the socials.

Claire Venus (00:05:57):
It's more just about the depth of engagement for me, like really trying to find...

Claire Venus (00:06:02):
the core of why somebody wants to be creative or why somebody's called to be creative.

Claire Venus (00:06:07):
So my participants over the years have spanned children, young people, like I mentioned.

Claire Venus (00:06:12):
And then when I became a mother myself in 2014, it was like a reawakening of creativity for me.

Claire Venus (00:06:20):
I think, just because you're thrown into this world of sleep deprivation,

Claire Venus (00:06:26):
or definitely for me,

Claire Venus (00:06:27):
not for everybody,

Claire Venus (00:06:28):
but I was very sleep deprived,

Claire Venus (00:06:30):
felt very vulnerable in that,

Claire Venus (00:06:31):
very like I had to kind of wear a mask to show up in the real world,

Claire Venus (00:06:35):
but in spaces that were creative.

Claire Venus (00:06:37):
So art galleries and theatre spaces and...

Claire Venus (00:06:42):
those spaces that felt like home to me,

Claire Venus (00:06:44):
spaces that I'd worked in,

Claire Venus (00:06:46):
I was like,

Claire Venus (00:06:46):
oh,

Claire Venus (00:06:47):
okay,

Claire Venus (00:06:47):
this is where I can come back to myself a bit, and me and my son can actually feel

Claire Venus (00:06:51):
quite relaxed in those spaces.

Claire Venus (00:06:52):
So yeah,

Claire Venus (00:06:54):
so I kind of got interested in babies as participants,

Claire Venus (00:06:58):
mums and babies as a kind of unit of a participant together when I first became a

Claire Venus (00:07:03):
mum in 2014.

Claire Venus (00:07:05):
And then with my second child,

Claire Venus (00:07:07):
Luna,

Claire Venus (00:07:08):
who I was pregnant with for the whole of the pandemic,

Claire Venus (00:07:10):
I knew that I wanted to kind of

Claire Venus (00:07:12):
create the thing that I wished existed when I first became a mum.

Claire Venus (00:07:16):
And that was where Creativity Island came from.

Claire Venus (00:07:18):
So yeah, there's a bit of just a whistle stop of co-creation.

Claire Venus (00:07:22):
I think that it's worth saying, as well that I have a hybrid career.

Claire Venus (00:07:25):
So

Claire Venus (00:07:26):
I think,

Claire Venus (00:07:26):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:07:27):
we've coined the term multi-passionate,

Claire Venus (00:07:29):
but it means basically for me that I take on creative projects with national

Claire Venus (00:07:34):
organizations and with artists.

Claire Venus (00:07:37):
But I also have my own creative practice and the blend of the two things just keep

Claire Venus (00:07:41):
me feeling really inspired and creative myself.

Alycia Buenger (00:07:45):
That's really interesting.

Alycia Buenger (00:07:46):
I didn't know that you did both.

Alycia Buenger (00:07:49):
And I didn't know that you did like, creative work in the public sphere as well as

Alycia Buenger (00:07:53):
creative work in the private space of motherhood [and] in the home.

Claire Venus (00:07:57):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Claire Venus (00:07:58):
So I have a practice which is about fundraising for organizations,

Claire Venus (00:08:03):
for arts organizations,

Claire Venus (00:08:05):
consultancy for arts organizations and working together with teachers and schools

Claire Venus (00:08:11):
and really,

Claire Venus (00:08:13):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:08:13):
bringing people,

Claire Venus (00:08:15):
opportunities to participants that are kind of identified to life so taking

Claire Venus (00:08:20):
participants from rural locations down to London and engaging in in the Tate Modern

Claire Venus (00:08:26):
was a project that was incredible that I worked on a few years ago, so yeah wherever

Claire Venus (00:08:31):
there's room for participants to meet with art, usually people give me a ring and

Claire Venus (00:08:36):
say what are you up to, can we work on something together, can we look at this, so...

Kati Overmier (00:08:42):
Yeah,

Kati Overmier (00:08:45):
especially since the arts are really not,

Kati Overmier (00:08:48):
at least here,

Kati Overmier (00:08:48):
I don't know if it's the same over in the UK,

Kati Overmier (00:08:51):
like the arts are really not prioritized here.

Kati Overmier (00:08:54):
So it's really awesome whenever like, emphasis is placed on that and bringing it to kiddos...

Kati Overmier (00:08:59):
So I love that.

Claire Venus (00:09:00):
Yeah, for sure.

Claire Venus (00:09:01):
And I've picked up on a little bit of that through my conversations with Sarah.

Claire Venus (00:09:05):
And I think Alycia mentioned that,

Claire Venus (00:09:07):
you know, my project was funded through Arts Council.

Claire Venus (00:09:09):
So as a fundraiser, I can write to Arts Council England.

Claire Venus (00:09:13):
I can write to other funders and say, this is what I feel the need is.

Claire Venus (00:09:17):
This is what I feel like the creative community needs.

Claire Venus (00:09:19):
This is what artists could do, and plug into that.

Claire Venus (00:09:22):
And I can design the whole thing and apply for funding.

Claire Venus (00:09:25):
And that's how we work over here.

Claire Venus (00:09:27):
So the majority of us that are

Claire Venus (00:09:30):
employed and have been employed in the arts and cultural sector for the last 20

Claire Venus (00:09:33):
years or so, it's a mix of commissions and funding that we kind of apply for

Claire Venus (00:09:37):
ourselves...

Alycia Buenger (00:09:40):
And is that something... you work as a mentor, I believe?

Alycia Buenger (00:09:44):
Is that something that you offer then with your clients?

Alycia Buenger (00:09:47):
Is that kind of... expertise in that field?

Claire Venus (00:09:49):
Yeah.

Claire Venus (00:09:49):
So I just found that I'd worked on a program with, I think it was about 160 young creatives.

Claire Venus (00:09:57):
So they were kind of between the ages of kind of 16 to 21.

Claire Venus (00:10:01):
And I've been commissioned to do that work and all the training that went alongside with it.

Claire Venus (00:10:05):
And I feel like within that,

Claire Venus (00:10:08):
I just kind of reignited for me what felt really important again,

Claire Venus (00:10:15):
which was just to keep things fresh.

Claire Venus (00:10:17):
And I feel like in our sector, there's such a scarcity mindset that

Claire Venus (00:10:21):
I realized that in keeping things fresh for the young people,

Claire Venus (00:10:25):
for the participants who didn't have those same,

Claire Venus (00:10:28):
I don't know,

Claire Venus (00:10:28):
they hadn't been ground down yet.

Claire Venus (00:10:30):
You know,

Claire Venus (00:10:30):
there was no preconceived ideas about what the arts was like or whether they were

Claire Venus (00:10:34):
going to make a success of it.

Claire Venus (00:10:35):
They just wanted to do it.

Claire Venus (00:10:36):
You know, there was just that passion.

Claire Venus (00:10:38):
And I guess I just wanted to kind of circle back and bring back

Claire Venus (00:10:42):
the reason why we all do it, and the reason why we're all so passionate about it and

Claire Venus (00:10:46):
circle back to creative flow so setting up my mentoring business I really thought,

Claire Venus (00:10:51):
I'll just, I'll set this up, and then all of the artists that I usually commission

Claire Venus (00:10:55):
and work with will be really keen to work with me in that way, and actually it's

Claire Venus (00:11:00):
been less about those people and more about people from kind of left field and from

Claire Venus (00:11:04):
other industries, a lot of wellness industry professionals

Claire Venus (00:11:08):
who kind of see that I have a creative practice and that I do quite cool and quirky projects.

Claire Venus (00:11:13):
And I'm maybe, you know, not scared to try new things.

Claire Venus (00:11:16):
And it's been them that have come through and said,

Claire Venus (00:11:18):
oh,

Claire Venus (00:11:19):
actually,

Claire Venus (00:11:19):
like,

Claire Venus (00:11:19):
let's work together and let's try something.

Kati Overmier (00:11:23):
Awesome.

Kati Overmier (00:11:23):
It's amazing.

Alycia Buenger (00:11:25):
I love that your work is so collaborative, like co-creative.

Claire Venus (00:11:32):
Yeah absolutely it's like I said with them, with Creativity Island for Mums I just

Claire Venus (00:11:37):
had that perfect vision from start to finish so I was hoping the funding would be

Claire Venus (00:11:42):
successful and I would find out towards the end of my pregnancy and that all panned

Claire Venus (00:11:45):
out, and that meant that I could commission the artists while I was still pregnant,

Claire Venus (00:11:51):
and then have some time in the newborn days just to kind of investigate what that

Claire Venus (00:11:55):
meant being a new mum in the pandemic, so it was obviously very, very different to

Claire Venus (00:12:01):
being a mum first time round and very isolating in lots of ways.

Claire Venus (00:12:05):
And it was like, oh, okay.

Claire Venus (00:12:06):
So I am both a participant here and as is my daughter and we are as one unit,

Claire Venus (00:12:12):
but I'm also the creator of this programme.

Claire Venus (00:12:15):
And I think the work really kind of set on fire, because we were all home a lot more,

Claire Venus (00:12:20):
and we were all kind of plugged into the internet.

Claire Venus (00:12:22):
So I was able to try things like,

Claire Venus (00:12:24):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:12:25):
setting up a Google survey and just asking mums how they felt and

Claire Venus (00:12:29):
asking them,

Claire Venus (00:12:29):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:12:30):
when we do go back,

Claire Venus (00:12:31):
if we do go back to real life in person work,

Claire Venus (00:12:34):
like what would that in an ideal world,

Claire Venus (00:12:36):
what would you like to do?

Claire Venus (00:12:37):
Like, what would that look and feel like?

Claire Venus (00:12:40):
And there was quite a lot of cautiousness around that kind of that return to group working.

Claire Venus (00:12:44):
So it meant that I was able to try new things online and then,

Claire Venus (00:12:47):
one of the things that I started to notice a bit of a culture coming through was

Claire Venus (00:12:51):
that feeling of wanting to be held by someone or something.

Claire Venus (00:12:56):
And that's why I created the journal because the journal, Creativity Island for Mums,

Claire Venus (00:12:59):
the journal,

Claire Venus (00:13:00):
which is still on sale,

Claire Venus (00:13:02):
there are still copies of it available,

Claire Venus (00:13:04):
was really about a mum having a place to write down the thoughts,

Claire Venus (00:13:08):
but to feel guided by creativity and wellbeing exercises,

Claire Venus (00:13:11):
mindfulness exercises and

Claire Venus (00:13:13):
for like the first three years, really.

Claire Venus (00:13:15):
So there was a place to kind of write things and maybe put it down for a while and pick it up again.

Claire Venus (00:13:21):
There was a place to kind of record some of the raw feelings around motherhood.

Claire Venus (00:13:25):
Some of those kind of darker times in the middle of the night where you know the

Claire Venus (00:13:30):
sun's going to come up,

Claire Venus (00:13:31):
but it feels like hours between then and the coffee machine going on.

Claire Venus (00:13:36):
And really just test that audience around, is this a time to be creative?

Claire Venus (00:13:40):
Like, I don't know whether you guys have

Claire Venus (00:13:42):
had much of this culture in the states, but there's quite a lot of my friends and

Claire Venus (00:13:46):
peers that when they've become mums, they want to throw everything away that they

Claire Venus (00:13:49):
did before and try new things and maybe not go back to work in the typical sense or

Claire Venus (00:13:54):
they're like you know clambering to work part-time and like what would that look

Claire Venus (00:13:57):
like, and how could I how could I do that you know, after [you've been]

Claire Venus (00:14:01):
following a certain path for so long.

Claire Venus (00:14:03):
So I think a lot of people that work with me come to me because of that,

Claire Venus (00:14:06):
because we have designed quite a different way of doing things in our day to day

Claire Venus (00:14:11):
here in Northumberland.

Alycia Buenger (00:14:15):
It's funny that... I didn't know a lot of what you're saying.

Alycia Buenger (00:14:18):
Like, I didn't know this about you.

Alycia Buenger (00:14:19):
And it just makes so much sense.

Alycia Buenger (00:14:21):
It fits so well with our work and the people that we work with.

Alycia Buenger (00:14:27):
Because one of the challenges that Kati and I have talked about is,

Alycia Buenger (00:14:32):
particularly for me,

Alycia Buenger (00:14:34):
is the desire to kind of collect those creative ideas throughout the day and create

Alycia Buenger (00:14:40):
something with them.

Alycia Buenger (00:14:41):
And sometimes the challenge that I have personally is,

Alycia Buenger (00:14:45):
that I can't always pick and choose when to do that.

Alycia Buenger (00:14:50):
I have to kind of embrace the flow of my life and figure out where those ideas are

Alycia Buenger (00:14:55):
coming from and what to do with them.

Alycia Buenger (00:14:57):
And yeah,

Alycia Buenger (00:14:58):
so I didn't realize that's something that you kind of teach and create with people,

Alycia Buenger (00:15:03):
but it's something that we both are kind of grappling with and figuring out.

Alycia Buenger (00:15:07):
And I think you're right that it's happening more so even now

Alycia Buenger (00:15:13):
post-pandemic or within the pandemic,

Alycia Buenger (00:15:15):
this kind of experience of,

Alycia Buenger (00:15:17):
um,

Alycia Buenger (00:15:19):
we're kind of in this cocoon almost, of motherhood, at the beginning.

Alycia Buenger (00:15:21):
And like, what do you do with that transformation that inevitably happens?

Claire Venus (00:15:27):
Yeah absolutely, I totally align with everything that you say in there, and I think

Claire Venus (00:15:31):
that just almost like holding back like, the outside world and the world that was

Claire Venus (00:15:38):
before and re-emerging from the cocoon as you so articulately said like, what

Claire Venus (00:15:43):
is that re-emergence, because it's not the before like, there is no before, like

Claire Venus (00:15:48):
everything's changed.

Claire Venus (00:15:50):
And that can be terrifying, you know, so we can be kind of clambering for the before.

Claire Venus (00:15:55):
But actually,

Claire Venus (00:15:56):
if we embrace some more of that transformation,

Claire Venus (00:15:58):
there's so much richness in there and there's so much nuance and there's so much of

Claire Venus (00:16:02):
ourselves that we can get to relearn,

Claire Venus (00:16:05):
I guess,

Claire Venus (00:16:06):
and then rekindle through creative means and through spending time with our

Claire Venus (00:16:10):
children and just being kind of in the moment with them,

Claire Venus (00:16:13):
which they force us to do,

Claire Venus (00:16:14):
whether we like it or not.

Claire Venus (00:16:15):
Yeah.

Alycia Buenger (00:16:18):
I like that a lot.

Alycia Buenger (00:16:20):
Can you tell us more about the experience of Creativity Island,

Alycia Buenger (00:16:24):
like what participants were doing and how you kind of guided that?

Claire Venus (00:16:29):
Yeah, for sure.

Claire Venus (00:16:31):
So I wanted to make it really super accessible.

Claire Venus (00:16:33):
So I worked with a collage artist, Josie Brooks, to start with.

Claire Venus (00:16:37):
And one of the ideas Josie came up with was...

Claire Venus (00:16:41):
repurposing the newborn baby cards or birthday cards.

Claire Venus (00:16:44):
So she wanted to give mothers permission to kind of not just keep piles and piles

Claire Venus (00:16:50):
of birthday cards and new baby cards in a drawer and to make art with them.

Claire Venus (00:16:55):
So she came up with a beautiful tutorial whereby she encouraged people to kind of

Claire Venus (00:17:00):
cut out the things that they like and really connect to that

Claire Venus (00:17:03):
It's okay to cut.

Claire Venus (00:17:04):
It's okay to discard.

Claire Venus (00:17:05):
It's okay to recycle, you know.

Claire Venus (00:17:08):
And then she made a series of initials where you could print those and then attach

Claire Venus (00:17:13):
the collage to the initials.

Claire Venus (00:17:14):
So you could make a lovely name place for the door of your little one or an artwork.

Claire Venus (00:17:20):
I put it on a memory box for Luna Jean.

Claire Venus (00:17:22):
So she's got an L and a J and just the actual organization of self.

Claire Venus (00:17:29):
Oh, there's a rainbow.

Claire Venus (00:17:31):
That's beautiful.

Claire Venus (00:17:32):
The organization of self around doing the cutting and keeping the pieces and coming

Claire Venus (00:17:37):
back to it and then you know that creative process where you fall out with the

Claire Venus (00:17:41):
whole thing and you think oh no it's rubbish like I don't want to do it anymore and

Claire Venus (00:17:44):
then you come back to it and you think no it's brilliant this is beautiful, and now

Claire Venus (00:17:48):
when I look at it like, she's not quite two, but when I look at what I created, just

Claire Venus (00:17:53):
two beautiful letters for a memory box out of those cards that...

Claire Venus (00:17:56):
It just feels like a beautiful act towards that reciprocal creative relationship that we had.

Claire Venus (00:18:03):
So for some of the time she was kind of big enough to sit in a high chair, but not eating yet.

Claire Venus (00:18:07):
So I remember doing some of that with her and showing her what I was doing, and

Claire Venus (00:18:11):
talking to her about our cards and all that sort of thing.

Claire Venus (00:18:14):
And some of the beautiful memories from the messages inside, I just keep those in a memory box.

Claire Venus (00:18:20):
But a lot of them I've just let go, because I know having an eight-year-old son as well,

Claire Venus (00:18:24):
There is so much stuff comes into the house,

Claire Venus (00:18:26):
like every year,

Claire Venus (00:18:27):
every birthday,

Claire Venus (00:18:28):
every Christmas,

Claire Venus (00:18:28):
there's so much stuff, and there's a lot of decision-making capacity that creeps in

Claire Venus (00:18:32):
around what to keep and what to discard.

Claire Venus (00:18:34):
So,

Claire Venus (00:18:35):
Now my son is very much involved with that.

Claire Venus (00:18:37):
So he's got his own memory box, which is full.

Claire Venus (00:18:39):
We did the initials together, and he did his collage, which was gorgeous.

Claire Venus (00:18:44):
But yeah,

Claire Venus (00:18:44):
part of the push to do the journal and kind of talk to mums as this kind of like

Claire Venus (00:18:50):
big sister,

Claire Venus (00:18:51):
like I've been through it,

Claire Venus (00:18:52):
like you're in the thick of it,

Claire Venus (00:18:53):
but I've been through some of it, and I'm still in it,

Claire Venus (00:18:57):
was around like,

Claire Venus (00:18:58):
don't feel like you've got to hold on to everything and like...

Claire Venus (00:19:01):
While you've got a little bit of time, while you're a newborn,

Claire Venus (00:19:04):
you might not feel like you do,

Claire Venus (00:19:05):
but you actually do have a little bit of time to kind of rekindle some creativity.

Claire Venus (00:19:09):
So that was one of the first exercises and that was really well received.

Claire Venus (00:19:13):
And I was able... there was a break in the pandemic in the UK in the summer.

Claire Venus (00:19:18):
So I was able to do some in-person workshops with that work,

Claire Venus (00:19:22):
which was really beautiful to see how people responded to it and to see where

Claire Venus (00:19:26):
people were right around bringing their baby with them.

Claire Venus (00:19:29):
But some had actually got childcare to kind of come along to the session and just

Claire Venus (00:19:33):
chat with the mums,

Claire Venus (00:19:34):
drink a hot cup of coffee,

Claire Venus (00:19:36):
create a bit and talk about what else they'd like to do.

Claire Venus (00:19:39):
We then did some like, natural eco-dying.

Claire Venus (00:19:42):
So again,

Claire Venus (00:19:42):
like things that you could find on a foraging walk and things that were really easy

Claire Venus (00:19:46):
to kind of have done,

Claire Venus (00:19:47):
going on in the kitchen while you were kind of being mom as well.

Claire Venus (00:19:51):
And then loads and loads of writing prompts,

Claire Venus (00:19:53):
loads and loads of gratitude prompts, and stuff around mindfulness,

Claire Venus (00:19:57):
stuff around connecting to just your little bit of the world.

Claire Venus (00:20:00):
So I did a lot of push chair walks with my daughter, and

Claire Venus (00:20:04):
sometimes four times a day because it was great for me to get out the house.

Claire Venus (00:20:08):
But also I found that she went to sleep pretty much straight away.

Claire Venus (00:20:12):
And it meant that I could just be outside and just walk in laps of our tiny little

Claire Venus (00:20:18):
block, and seeing so many things that I'd never seen before,

Claire Venus (00:20:23):
which sounds crazy.

Claire Venus (00:20:24):
It's just like, well, how did I not know that person had a red door?

Claire Venus (00:20:27):
Or how did I not know there was this beautiful

Claire Venus (00:20:30):
Lily plant here,

Claire Venus (00:20:31):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:20:31):
so I wove that into the project as well and just reminded people that that's

Claire Venus (00:20:36):
available to us every day for free and created some lovely writing prompts around

Claire Venus (00:20:40):
that and some lovely ideas that people could do around connecting with other mums.

Claire Venus (00:20:46):
And that's really where Sarah and I kind of first really connected and start chatting further.

Claire Venus (00:20:51):
I think she'd sent me some lovely messages earlier.

Claire Venus (00:20:54):
on Instagram around some of the struggles I was having with my son's

Claire Venus (00:20:57):
neurodivergence, and so we chatted at that level and then we also spoke around this

Claire Venus (00:21:02):
kind of exchange between mothers and this way of kind of connecting and feeling

Claire Venus (00:21:08):
like a connect can be something relatively simplistic but can have you feeling so

Claire Venus (00:21:13):
much less alone and so much less like you've just spent the whole day not really

Claire Venus (00:21:18):
achieving anything, you know, this kind of sense of like you want to achieve

Claire Venus (00:21:22):
something or

Claire Venus (00:21:22):
feel like you've done something for yourself.

Claire Venus (00:21:24):
So yeah.

Claire Venus (00:21:25):
So that's where we connected on our project, the magic mundane.

Alycia Buenger (00:21:30):
I'm finding as you talk about this,

Alycia Buenger (00:21:33):
or remembering

Alycia Buenger (00:21:34):
I guess, the kind of difference between wanting that individual connection with

Alycia Buenger (00:21:39):
other moms that you mentioned and the connection with your creative practice and

Alycia Buenger (00:21:43):
the connection with your baby,

Alycia Buenger (00:21:45):
like you want all of these pieces.

Alycia Buenger (00:21:49):
Do you find that your practice

Alycia Buenger (00:21:51):
with Creativity Island or with your creative practice individually,

Alycia Buenger (00:21:56):
do you find that that's what kind of helps you flow in between and with all of

Alycia Buenger (00:22:00):
these different pieces?

Claire Venus (00:22:02):
Yeah,

Claire Venus (00:22:03):
I think for me,

Claire Venus (00:22:04):
I've always been really keen to better understand environments that help with my

Claire Venus (00:22:09):
own personal creative flow.

Claire Venus (00:22:11):
So

Claire Venus (00:22:11):
this summer, we've had like a pop-up teepee space up in our allotment garden, which is over the road.

Claire Venus (00:22:17):
And when we first invested in the teepee last summer,

Claire Venus (00:22:21):
I thought it was going to be like another wellness space for my husband's business.

Claire Venus (00:22:24):
But actually, once I kind of put some nice cushions in there and kind of realized that I could be...

Claire Venus (00:22:31):
in this little cocoon,

Claire Venus (00:22:33):
but still see the garden and hear the birds,

Claire Venus (00:22:35):
I was like,

Claire Venus (00:22:36):
oh,

Claire Venus (00:22:36):
this is a new journaling space.

Claire Venus (00:22:38):
This is where I want to come to journal.

Claire Venus (00:22:40):
This is where I want to come to kind of excavate everything that's going on and

Claire Venus (00:22:43):
that kind of escape from...

Claire Venus (00:22:46):
just the mother load,

Claire Venus (00:22:47):
really like the chores and the laundry and the dinner and the requests for snacks

Claire Venus (00:22:51):
and all of that sort of stuff.

Claire Venus (00:22:52):
Like when I'm in there, nobody really knows I'm there, you know, but I'm still not too far away.

Claire Venus (00:22:57):
So yeah, I think environment's been massively important.

Claire Venus (00:23:00):
So I talked about,

Claire Venus (00:23:01):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:23:02):
those push-chair walks and those kind of mindful sessions throughout each day,

Claire Venus (00:23:06):
just connecting with nature and then

Claire Venus (00:23:08):
the teepee.

Claire Venus (00:23:09):
But previous to that,

Claire Venus (00:23:10):
when my son was really young,

Claire Venus (00:23:12):
I set up a set of creative environments in a theatre space that were all around

Claire Venus (00:23:16):
beautiful lighting.

Claire Venus (00:23:17):
So what I was finding going to the...

Claire Venus (00:23:19):
We have quite a lot of kind of baby and toddler groups over here,

Claire Venus (00:23:22):
which are very loud,

Claire Venus (00:23:24):
stimulating places.

Claire Venus (00:23:25):
My son has...

Claire Venus (00:23:28):
a sensory processing disorder, so as he was my first, I had no idea really what was

Claire Venus (00:23:32):
going on for him, but I know that, knew that both of us felt deeply uncomfortable in

Claire Venus (00:23:37):
the regular spaces that were supposed to be places that you met new mums and

Claire Venus (00:23:42):
connected, to kind of, well there was some creative activity offered, but a lot of

Claire Venus (00:23:47):
it was just like loud, noisy.

Claire Venus (00:23:49):
plastic toys you know, and I just

Claire Venus (00:23:52):
felt physically sick like, after trying and trying and trying, so anyway, so I raised

Claire Venus (00:23:58):
funding to make environments in a local theatre and they were all about that kind

Claire Venus (00:24:02):
of high contrast black and white and spaces to crawl, spaces to play and this kind

Claire Venus (00:24:09):
of beautiful theatrical lighting that just made us all feel like we were, yeah, just

Claire Venus (00:24:14):
a little bit more held, so you know coffee was invited and...

Claire Venus (00:24:19):
To be part of that for the mums,

Claire Venus (00:24:20):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:24:20):
it was like it wasn't one of these toddler groups that was super strict.

Claire Venus (00:24:24):
There was a lot of those.

Claire Venus (00:24:25):
And it was like, bring your coffee, you know, bring your snacks and come as you are.

Claire Venus (00:24:29):
It's all good.

Claire Venus (00:24:30):
And the lighting will be soothing and forgiving,

Claire Venus (00:24:34):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:24:35):
because I think,

Claire Venus (00:24:35):
as I mentioned,

Claire Venus (00:24:36):
I just felt so,

Claire Venus (00:24:37):
so sleep deprived and tired and you don't feel like you want to

Claire Venus (00:24:41):
show up as your kind of perfect self you know, when you feel like that you just want

Claire Venus (00:24:46):
to say I'm really really tired actually, so the low lighting helped, and those

Claire Venus (00:24:51):
environments were really well received, it was a really nice phase of my creative

Claire Venus (00:24:55):
development.

Alycia Buenger (00:24:58):
I love this so much.

Alycia Buenger (00:24:59):
It's something that we don't,

Alycia Buenger (00:25:01):
at least in our community and I think around the States,

Alycia Buenger (00:25:03):
don't have a lot of that kind of space where you can kind of show up as you are.

Alycia Buenger (00:25:10):
And I think a lot of moms right now, a lot of people in general are really struggling with so much.

Alycia Buenger (00:25:16):
The pandemic has been so, so hard, particularly for people who are caregivers to little ones.

Alycia Buenger (00:25:23):
And I think we're not really wanting to,

Alycia Buenger (00:25:27):
I don't know, put on that face where we show up a certain way.

Alycia Buenger (00:25:31):
We're just kind of wanting to be around other people.

Alycia Buenger (00:25:33):
And I don't have that experience in this community unless I create it.

Alycia Buenger (00:25:38):
So the fact that you're like, out there creating these spaces, it just sounds like mind-blowing.

Alycia Buenger (00:25:43):
I can't even imagine that in our community, but would love to physically experience something like that.

Claire Venus (00:25:49):
Yeah.

Claire Venus (00:25:49):
And I wonder whether there's more invitation around

Claire Venus (00:25:55):
the simplicity of that.

Claire Venus (00:25:56):
So obviously,

Claire Venus (00:25:57):
yes,

Claire Venus (00:25:57):
like I raised funding and I bought things in ,and there was a kind of a method and a

Claire Venus (00:26:02):
formula to that.

Claire Venus (00:26:03):
But actually, the bones of it are really simplistic.

Claire Venus (00:26:06):
The bones of it are just about non-overwhelming spaces,

Claire Venus (00:26:09):
spaces that feel really good and transformation of spaces so that the people

Claire Venus (00:26:15):
engaging in them feel

Claire Venus (00:26:17):
held and cocooned, and it was actually called creative cocoon, the project, the theater project.

Claire Venus (00:26:22):
So yeah, there was that cocoon word again.

Claire Venus (00:26:25):
Um,

Claire Venus (00:26:26):
so I wonder sometimes,

Claire Venus (00:26:27):
and there is,

Claire Venus (00:26:28):
there's a real culture of this in the arts of, we make a thing,

Claire Venus (00:26:31):
whether it's a theater thing or we do a thing, and then it disappears and nobody

Claire Venus (00:26:35):
knows about it.

Claire Venus (00:26:36):
So I'm a real advocate for sharing practice and sharing evaluation and sharing methodology.

Claire Venus (00:26:43):
We are notoriously bad at doing that in the UK.

Claire Venus (00:26:46):
And I think a lot of it comes from this place of scarcity and competition with the funders,

Claire Venus (00:26:51):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:26:52):
because people want to get their kind of bit of the pie.

Claire Venus (00:26:55):
But actually,

Claire Venus (00:26:56):
we can make much richer experiences and have many more people access the arts if we

Claire Venus (00:27:00):
share what we're doing.

Claire Venus (00:27:01):
So I'm all for that.

Claire Venus (00:27:03):
I'll have to think about that some more.

Claire Venus (00:27:04):
Yeah.

Alycia Buenger (00:27:06):
Yeah, I really love that kind of perspective.

Alycia Buenger (00:27:09):
There's a lot of spaces, I think, that you're talking about

Alycia Buenger (00:27:13):
the kind of loud spaces.

Alycia Buenger (00:27:14):
I'm even thinking of our local public library,

Alycia Buenger (00:27:16):
which I really loved as a ki,d because it was a quiet space for someone who doesn't

Alycia Buenger (00:27:20):
like loud things.

Alycia Buenger (00:27:22):
And now it's different.

Alycia Buenger (00:27:25):
Our local library has all of these toys that kids can play with, which is really great for some people.

Alycia Buenger (00:27:29):
And it's also a very loud space now.

Alycia Buenger (00:27:32):
So it's just a different energy.

Alycia Buenger (00:27:34):
And I wonder if what I'm looking for at the library is actually maybe not found there.

Alycia Buenger (00:27:39):
Maybe it's found creating this other...

Claire Venus (00:27:42):
Yeah, it could be like more of a pop-up space somehow, wouldn't it?

Claire Venus (00:27:48):
Like a collaborative pop-up space for mums.

Claire Venus (00:27:50):
I think in the digital space as well, just to touch on my project with Sarah.

Claire Venus (00:27:55):
So she shared with me,

Claire Venus (00:27:57):
and I can't remember the name of the artist,

Claire Venus (00:27:59):
but we can link to them in the show notes.

Claire Venus (00:28:01):
But she shared with me there [were] two artists that exchanged photos every day for I think it was a year.

Claire Venus (00:28:08):
And they made...

Claire Venus (00:28:10):
a series of contrasting kind of collage with those photos and kind of shared them.

Claire Venus (00:28:15):
And I think there might have been an exhibition connected to it.

Claire Venus (00:28:18):
But they lived, I think they were both in the States.

Claire Venus (00:28:20):
They lived quite far away.

Claire Venus (00:28:21):
You guys are obviously a huge country.

Claire Venus (00:28:23):
And I said to Sarah, I'd love to do something like that.

Claire Venus (00:28:26):
Like, maybe we could do something around motherhood.

Claire Venus (00:28:29):
Like, what would we do?

Claire Venus (00:28:30):
What would we call it?

Claire Venus (00:28:31):
And so...

Claire Venus (00:28:32):
We just went back and forth a bit.

Claire Venus (00:28:34):
And the parameters really were around sharing a photo or a snippet of video from our day.

Claire Venus (00:28:39):
So sometimes involving our little one,

Claire Venus (00:28:42):
sometimes involving something we were doing as mums,

Claire Venus (00:28:45):
sometimes involving something we were doing for our creative practice,

Claire Venus (00:28:47):
but just a snippet.

Claire Venus (00:28:48):
And it just goes, we found the easiest way to do it was over WhatsApp.

Claire Venus (00:28:52):
So we literally just share whenever the moment takes us in the day.

Claire Venus (00:28:57):
It can be any time.

Claire Venus (00:28:58):
Sometimes I wake up to a message from Sarah or vice versa

Claire Venus (00:29:01):
with the time difference.

Claire Venus (00:29:03):
And then we started curating them weekly on Instagram, and we tried using reels.

Claire Venus (00:29:09):
And then we've taken a step back over summer for various different reasons.

Claire Venus (00:29:12):
We're still doing the daily exchange,

Claire Venus (00:29:14):
but we're kind of questioning how we want to share these beautiful moments, because

Claire Venus (00:29:18):
the whole reason we do it is because it brings so much lightness to our day.

Claire Venus (00:29:23):
And it's really nice connect.

Claire Venus (00:29:24):
Even if we're having a busy day,

Claire Venus (00:29:25):
it's still one of the highlights of my day getting that photograph of Sarah and

Claire Venus (00:29:30):
her little boy or whatever they're doing, and then sharing what we've been up to.

Claire Venus (00:29:35):
So, yeah, so the essence of being able to kind of slow down enough to capture something in the moment.

Claire Venus (00:29:41):
I missed one this morning

Claire Venus (00:29:42):
actually,

Claire Venus (00:29:42):
my daughter was playing with a bike at my son's school, and they were the most

Claire Venus (00:29:46):
gorgeous shadows cast with her just kind of playing with the pedals of this

Claire Venus (00:29:50):
oversized bike and the colors were beautiful.

Claire Venus (00:29:52):
But the fact that I can see that is because of this project.

Claire Venus (00:29:55):
You know,

Claire Venus (00:29:56):
the fact that I'm not going,

Claire Venus (00:29:57):
oh,

Claire Venus (00:29:57):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:29:57):
we've got to get back in the car, because I've got work, and I've got to hand over to

Claire Venus (00:30:01):
my husband.

Claire Venus (00:30:01):
The fact that I've slowed down enough now to kind of have that visual filter,

Claire Venus (00:30:06):
even though I'd left my phone in the car,

Claire Venus (00:30:08):
that to me is what the magic mundane is.

Claire Venus (00:30:10):
You know, it's something and nothing.

Claire Venus (00:30:12):
It's everything,

Claire Venus (00:30:12):
slowing down enough to breathe into what this like fleeting few years of motherhood

Claire Venus (00:30:18):
is where this tiny little person transforms so much right in front of your eyes,

Claire Venus (00:30:22):
but you kind of miss it.

Claire Venus (00:30:23):
It's like, how did that happen?

Claire Venus (00:30:24):
You know?

Claire Venus (00:30:25):
And I speak about that because I've got an eight year old,

Claire Venus (00:30:27):
because there is a moment where you go,

Claire Venus (00:30:30):
how did that happen?

Claire Venus (00:30:31):
You know, like with a near two year old and an eight year old, the contrast is big enough to kind of go,

Claire Venus (00:30:36):
it is so fast and it's so cliche, but it's so fast.

Claire Venus (00:30:39):
And so, yeah, so it really slows me down and connects me and it's beautiful.

Claire Venus (00:30:43):
And Sarah and I would really like to build on the fact we've put the hashtag out

Claire Venus (00:30:48):
there and just maybe like partner some mums up or find a way to do that like

Claire Venus (00:30:52):
worldwide and just invite people to exchange somehow,

Claire Venus (00:30:56):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:30:56):
and...

Claire Venus (00:30:57):
For Sarah and I,

Claire Venus (00:30:59):
it's created a real depth of friendship, because we have talked about lots of things

Claire Venus (00:31:03):
in that time.

Claire Venus (00:31:04):
It's just come really naturally.

Claire Venus (00:31:06):
And there's no expectation from either side to update each other,

Claire Venus (00:31:10):
but we have just ended up talking about lots of different things,

Claire Venus (00:31:14):
lots of different life challenges.

Claire Venus (00:31:15):
So it's been really beautiful.

Claire Venus (00:31:16):
So I think watch this space on that one.

Claire Venus (00:31:18):
We're committed to do it for a year,

Claire Venus (00:31:20):
but we really want to try and encourage other mothers in this space and try and

Claire Venus (00:31:23):
articulate how magical it's been for us.

Alycia Buenger (00:31:27):
Can you talk a bit about social media?

Alycia Buenger (00:31:31):
You mentioned it briefly,

Alycia Buenger (00:31:33):
but like social media and that kind of... how it supports your creative practice,

Alycia Buenger (00:31:37):
how it supports the magical mundane,

Alycia Buenger (00:31:39):
and also how it can detract from that experience.

Alycia Buenger (00:31:43):
And like, how do we balance that?

Alycia Buenger (00:31:46):
How do we connect with other moms across the internet and share our creative

Alycia Buenger (00:31:49):
practice on the internet and also not just

Alycia Buenger (00:31:54):
live there... and also, you know, be present.

Alycia Buenger (00:31:57):
It sounds like your creative practice is like, the filter that you kind of,

Alycia Buenger (00:32:02):
or maybe the lens that you see the world through that allows you to be more present.

Alycia Buenger (00:32:08):
So how do we do that kind of dance?

Claire Venus (00:32:11):
Yeah.

Claire Venus (00:32:11):
I just feel like,

Claire Venus (00:32:12):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:32:13):
especially with Instagram,

Claire Venus (00:32:14):
I don't know whether you ladies have used Instagram for like a good few years or like,

Claire Venus (00:32:19):
have you seen it go through the changes and stuff?

Alycia Buenger (00:32:25):
Kati does not use Instagram at all.

Claire Venus (00:32:27):
Well done, Kati.

Kati Overmier (00:32:28):
Yay.

Kati Overmier (00:32:30):
Thanks.

Kati Overmier (00:32:32):
I used it when it first came out, like, forever,

Kati Overmier (00:32:36):
forever ago now, and back when it was literally just photos.

Kati Overmier (00:32:40):
Yeah.

Kati Overmier (00:32:41):
I took a really big step away from all social media and you...

Kati Overmier (00:32:46):
Thanks.

Kati Overmier (00:32:46):
Alycia and I,

Kati Overmier (00:32:48):
it's funny that Alycia pulled this piece out, because I pulled this piece out of

Kati Overmier (00:32:51):
what you said, too,

Kati Overmier (00:32:52):
because Alycia and I have had conversation after conversation about,

Kati Overmier (00:32:56):
social media and how and when we want to use it in our business.

Kati Overmier (00:33:01):
Because we're both kind of, we both feel very similarly about social media.

Kati Overmier (00:33:05):
So it was interesting that you said,

Kati Overmier (00:33:07):
you know,

Kati Overmier (00:33:07):
that you and Sarah were kind of curating this,

Kati Overmier (00:33:12):
art piece on Instagram,

Kati Overmier (00:33:13):
but you've taken a step back.

Kati Overmier (00:33:15):
So I'm kind of curious to hear about like, what prompted that step back.

Claire Venus (00:33:20):
Yeah.

Kati Overmier (00:33:21):
Yeah.

Claire Venus (00:33:22):
I think,

Claire Venus (00:33:23):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:33:23):
in the old Instagram days,

Claire Venus (00:33:24):
what I'd say is like,

Claire Venus (00:33:25):
creativity loves restraint,

Claire Venus (00:33:27):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:33:28):
so that little bit of like,

Claire Venus (00:33:29):
okay,

Claire Venus (00:33:29):
there's this one place I can post a photo,

Claire Venus (00:33:32):
there's like seven filters or whatever they used to be,

Claire Venus (00:33:34):
and I can type something, and I kind of missed that it was a public space.

Claire Venus (00:33:38):
Like,

Claire Venus (00:33:39):
I didn't ever feel comfortable around speaking to strangers on the internet,

Claire Venus (00:33:43):
like in my early motherhood days,

Claire Venus (00:33:44):
that just seemed bonkers to me.

Claire Venus (00:33:46):
That came a lot later.

Claire Venus (00:33:48):
I think it came, listening to podcasts and listening to people speak about Instagram and how they used it.

Claire Venus (00:33:54):
And I was like,

Claire Venus (00:33:55):
oh,

Claire Venus (00:33:55):
okay,

Claire Venus (00:33:55):
like this is different to what I was doing where I was just sort of putting a

Claire Venus (00:33:59):
photograph of my coffee on or like me and my husband.

Claire Venus (00:34:02):
So...

Claire Venus (00:34:03):
I feel like when I really kind of pivoted my business and started Creatively Conscious,

Claire Venus (00:34:08):
so I've always been self-employed and over the majority of my career,

Claire Venus (00:34:12):
I've been self-employed,

Claire Venus (00:34:12):
but starting Creatively Conscious was like a step towards, if I show up for myself

Claire Venus (00:34:17):
wholeheartedly and I stick to my values,

Claire Venus (00:34:20):
like

Claire Venus (00:34:20):
what does that look like?

Claire Venus (00:34:21):
What, what, what does it look like... differently... to constantly being commissioned to do things for clients?

Claire Venus (00:34:27):
And I really wanted a separation between those two things.

Claire Venus (00:34:29):
So I decided not to really speak about my creative producer work and my commissioned work.

Claire Venus (00:34:34):
I would just speak about my mentoring and all of the other kind of sides of me,

Claire Venus (00:34:39):
really like the fact that we're super passionate about the slow lived life and the

Claire Venus (00:34:42):
dark skies and permaculture and just try and sort of see where that landed.

Claire Venus (00:34:48):
And I remember lots of people talking about,

Claire Venus (00:34:50):
oh,

Claire Venus (00:34:51):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:34:51):
once you find your tribe and I was like,

Claire Venus (00:34:53):
I don't,

Claire Venus (00:34:53):
I don't think they're there.

Claire Venus (00:34:54):
I don't know that they're there.

Claire Venus (00:34:55):
I think it's really just me.

Claire Venus (00:34:57):
And,

Claire Venus (00:34:58):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:34:58):
I know my husband's there,

Claire Venus (00:34:59):
but like,

Claire Venus (00:35:00):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:35:00):
we talk to each other on the Instagram and all that.

Claire Venus (00:35:02):
It's just quite funny.

Claire Venus (00:35:04):
But yeah,

Claire Venus (00:35:05):
it just took ages,

Claire Venus (00:35:06):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:35:07):
and I just,

Claire Venus (00:35:07):
I didn't really mind because what I was finding were there were these huge beacons

Claire Venus (00:35:12):
of creativity and these huge beacons of motherhood that I was just obsessed with.

Claire Venus (00:35:16):
I was just like, wow, like,

Claire Venus (00:35:19):
the female voice is just like unfiltered.

Claire Venus (00:35:22):
The female creative expression is unfiltered.

Claire Venus (00:35:25):
And that's what I loved.

Claire Venus (00:35:26):
I just loved the fact that people were being brave and showing up on there.

Claire Venus (00:35:30):
And yeah, I just got a bit addicted to it, I think.

Claire Venus (00:35:32):
And I just wanted to follow how that all was.

Claire Venus (00:35:35):
And then using it as a creative tool came much later.

Claire Venus (00:35:39):
So it came from a place of like, actually like,

Claire Venus (00:35:43):
my profile's buildin,g and this is a place I can have conversation and this is a

Claire Venus (00:35:47):
place that I can kind of step out of boxes that I might have been put in for work

Claire Venus (00:35:52):
and show what I want to show and curate that.

Claire Venus (00:35:55):
So I still use it like that.

Claire Venus (00:35:57):
I think that I've got a bit of a flow with kind of when I post and when I show up

Claire Venus (00:36:02):
and I run something called Creative Content Club,

Claire Venus (00:36:05):
which is all around creating content for the internet.

Claire Venus (00:36:08):
So

Claire Venus (00:36:09):
for a lot of my members,

Claire Venus (00:36:10):
they do want to create on Instagram,

Claire Venus (00:36:12):
but I always remind them there are all of these other platforms and all of these

Claire Venus (00:36:15):
other ways of reaching your community and reaching your kind of participants and

Claire Venus (00:36:20):
your people.

Claire Venus (00:36:20):
So yeah, I feel like, um,

Claire Venus (00:36:24):
I do relatively well.

Claire Venus (00:36:25):
Like I have an hour-long timer that like notifies me on my phone.

Claire Venus (00:36:29):
If I've spent an hour on Instagram, it'll like shut me out.

Claire Venus (00:36:32):
That's good.

Claire Venus (00:36:33):
So it's like,

Claire Venus (00:36:33):
okay,

Claire Venus (00:36:34):
so if that's gone off, and I've done a post and I've had like some lovely chats,

Claire Venus (00:36:38):
it feels like that's enough,

Claire Venus (00:36:39):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:36:40):
that's,

Claire Venus (00:36:40):
that's done now.

Claire Venus (00:36:41):
And I think that it is,

Claire Venus (00:36:43):
it is just this bottomless pit,

Claire Venus (00:36:45):
especially since the algorithm kicked in and it's trying to sort of push it into

Claire Venus (00:36:49):
creating more of what it wants to roll out.

Claire Venus (00:36:52):
So yeah,

Claire Venus (00:36:53):
I think just having some firm boundaries around it really, and when I'm with my

Claire Venus (00:36:57):
little girl, I don't post in the moment so if I'm if the stories come up um and it

Claire Venus (00:37:03):
looks like we're together that's never in the moment of us being together, that's

Claire Venus (00:37:07):
always afterwards, so that's always just um photos and videos I've taken on my phone

Claire Venus (00:37:11):
through the day, and then I'll share them afterwards maybe when she's napping or

Claire Venus (00:37:14):
something, yeah I don't think I would do so well at like being able to like,

Claire Venus (00:37:20):
have that sharing filter and then be with her and make sure she didn't sort of run

Claire Venus (00:37:25):
off and do mad things.

Claire Venus (00:37:26):
So yeah.

Claire Venus (00:37:28):
And I think the kind of move over to Substack for me has been such a breath of fresh air.

Claire Venus (00:37:34):
So finding that platform back in March and just being quietly curious about what

Claire Venus (00:37:39):
long-form writing could feel like,

Claire Venus (00:37:42):
because I really fell out with my blog,

Claire Venus (00:37:44):
my WordPress blog,

Claire Venus (00:37:45):
because it just takes so long to get

Claire Venus (00:37:48):
everything the way it should be, and then it still looks not how I want it to look,

Claire Venus (00:37:52):
and I just was like... so I just kind of kept blogging to a bare minimum whereas

Claire Venus (00:37:56):
actually I think I probably am much more of a long-form sharer than I am a kind of

Claire Venus (00:38:00):
snippet sharer, so finding Substack and just breathing into that long-form place of

Claire Venus (00:38:06):
connection again was yeah, it was really magical and I feel like now Substack's what

Claire Venus (00:38:11):
I'm addicted to, I just want to spend time on there and um and find all the creators

Alycia Buenger (00:38:17):
It kind of changes the game when you're used to like short

Alycia Buenger (00:38:23):
little paragraphs on Instagram to essays on Substack

Claire Venus (00:38:29):
I feel like it's just, there's so much richness there and like

Claire Venus (00:38:33):
even with Sarah, who I've, you know, definitely followed her for a good couple of years.

Claire Venus (00:38:37):
Like when she does a Substack,

Claire Venus (00:38:39):
I can't wait to read what she's got to say,

Claire Venus (00:38:41):
even though we're in touch every day.

Claire Venus (00:38:42):
Like there's just something,

Claire Venus (00:38:44):
there's something more behind the scenes,

Claire Venus (00:38:46):
either something more like open and honest about what people want to write on there.

Claire Venus (00:38:51):
I think it's just,

Claire Venus (00:38:53):
yeah,

Claire Venus (00:38:54):
there's more of a generosity,

Claire Venus (00:38:55):
I think,

Claire Venus (00:38:56):
with how people are choosing to show up on that platform.

Claire Venus (00:38:59):
We'll see how it goes.

Claire Venus (00:39:00):
But yeah, I mean, it's a really nice place

Claire Venus (00:39:03):
to spend time and it feels easy to use, which I'm a big advocate for.

Alycia Buenger (00:39:09):
I think there's a different level of connection there as well.

Alycia Buenger (00:39:12):
And I'm thinking about this because I read your Substack this morning.

Alycia Buenger (00:39:18):
And then I talked to you on the podcast, and you mentioned in your essay or your

Alycia Buenger (00:39:22):
Substack about the teepee that you have in your backyard,

Alycia Buenger (00:39:25):
so when you're talking about it here, I'm like, I can visualize that.

Alycia Buenger (00:39:27):
Like I can picture that because I

Alycia Buenger (00:39:30):
have like, connected with you in a different way versus Instagram.

Alycia Buenger (00:39:32):
I think sometimes it just gets lost in there.

Claire Venus (00:39:35):
It gets lost in whatever else is going on for sure.

Claire Venus (00:39:37):
Yeah.

Claire Venus (00:39:38):
And I think that kind of questioning yourself of how much to repeat information.

Claire Venus (00:39:44):
Like, I mean, it's just, it's such a skillset, isn't it?

Claire Venus (00:39:47):
[To be] a content creator is such a skillset,

Claire Venus (00:39:50):
like to know how much to mention a thing without feeling like you've just talked it...

Claire Venus (00:39:54):
Like to the end of, you know, it being anything interesting is really difficult.

Claire Venus (00:39:59):
But more and more people in real life will say, oh, well, I didn't know that.

Claire Venus (00:40:03):
And I think, oh, well, I have shared about that quite a lot or I thought I had.

Claire Venus (00:40:06):
So, yeah, I think it's a dance, isn't it?

Claire Venus (00:40:09):
It's definitely a dance of creating and sharing and reciprocal kind of feedback and then sharing again.

Claire Venus (00:40:16):
I want to circle back a little bit to...

Alycia Buenger (00:40:19):
I think it kind of plays into some of the other things that you've said,

Alycia Buenger (00:40:23):
but you recently talked about,

Alycia Buenger (00:40:25):
I think,

Alycia Buenger (00:40:26):
like choosing to home educate your kids or one of your kids.

Alycia Buenger (00:40:30):
Is that true?

Claire Venus (00:40:32):
So yeah, because of the pandemic.

Claire Venus (00:40:34):
So in the UK,

Claire Venus (00:40:36):
like homeschool,

Claire Venus (00:40:37):
we called it homeschool over here because it was school at home,

Claire Venus (00:40:41):
but it was like a level of intensity of like,

Claire Venus (00:40:44):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:40:45):
zoom classrooms and Google documents and just, just madnesses.

Claire Venus (00:40:49):
And my son was, um, okay.

Claire Venus (00:40:52):
I want to say five.

Claire Venus (00:40:55):
Yeah.

Claire Venus (00:40:56):
Five, I think nearly six.

Claire Venus (00:40:57):
Um,

Claire Venus (00:40:59):
And he always really struggled with going to school.

Claire Venus (00:41:01):
So for us, it was a real opportunity to see what being home all together would feel like.

Claire Venus (00:41:07):
And actually,

Claire Venus (00:41:08):
at that point,

Claire Venus (00:41:09):
like it was still really only just learning to write,

Claire Venus (00:41:13):
really only just learning to read.

Claire Venus (00:41:15):
He was really interested in what he was interested in.

Claire Venus (00:41:18):
So animals and Pokemon, really.

Claire Venus (00:41:20):
So for us, it was like, OK, so

Claire Venus (00:41:24):
what do we do?

Claire Venus (00:41:25):
Like, how do we spend this time together as a family?

Claire Venus (00:41:28):
And how do we cut out all the noise of everybody stressing and worrying about what

Claire Venus (00:41:33):
homeschool should be and not having done enough and all of that sort of thing.

Claire Venus (00:41:37):
But we'd always wanted to home educate.

Claire Venus (00:41:39):
We'd always wanted to try it.

Claire Venus (00:41:42):
I think for the most part, it was frustrating for all of us.

Claire Venus (00:41:46):
I think that we worked well as a family when we got out in nature, and we worked

Claire Venus (00:41:50):
less well when I was trying to kind of follow a formula that teachers had said that

Claire Venus (00:41:54):
I found really difficult and boring.

Claire Venus (00:41:57):
And, you know, it was just, it was hard.

Claire Venus (00:42:00):
And then I had really bad morning sickness when I was pregnant with Luna.

Claire Venus (00:42:04):
So

Claire Venus (00:42:06):
my son would just,

Claire Venus (00:42:08):
I remember him just coming, and I was like laying on the sofa, and he was like,

Claire Venus (00:42:11):
are you going to come and read?

Claire Venus (00:42:13):
And I was like, I just really need sleep, you know?

Claire Venus (00:42:15):
So then it was about more like, okay, well, what do we, what do we want to do,

Claire Venus (00:42:22):
spend time doing, so I remember we put this huge four-man tent on the driveway, and

Claire Venus (00:42:26):
like set up this huge train track and this was when he wasn't allowed to play with

Claire Venus (00:42:30):
any of his friends, so he's got around about six friends that just live all the same

Claire Venus (00:42:34):
like, all on our terrace, and you know he could see them but he couldn't play with

Claire Venus (00:42:38):
them, and that like, was just crushing you know, so being able to like, get down on the

Claire Venus (00:42:44):
floor and just play trains with him and like create worlds with him like, that's

Claire Venus (00:42:47):
what home education ended up being for us.

Claire Venus (00:42:51):
And with Luna, we made the decision to pull her out of nursery.

Claire Venus (00:42:54):
So she did start nursery back in March,

Claire Venus (00:42:57):
but because she was bringing so many bugs home because she,

Claire Venus (00:43:01):
being a pandemic baby,

Claire Venus (00:43:02):
didn't have her first cold until she was 14 months.

Claire Venus (00:43:05):
So usually the babies,

Claire Venus (00:43:06):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:43:07):
there's a little bit of their immune system starts building up when they're really small.

Claire Venus (00:43:10):
They meet lots of people, things happen, but she just, she didn't have anything.

Claire Venus (00:43:14):
And so nursery was just, I mean, it was traumatic really.

Claire Venus (00:43:18):
And then when we re-evaluated everything over summer,

Claire Venus (00:43:21):
myself and my husband were just like,

Claire Venus (00:43:23):
I think we've just been going through those motions thinking that that's what we've

Claire Venus (00:43:27):
got to do to be able to get anything done.

Claire Venus (00:43:29):
But it's had the opposite effect.

Claire Venus (00:43:30):
So we decided just to keep Luna with us for the meantime and just see how that goes.

Claire Venus (00:43:38):
And so we're just fathoming out that balance.

Claire Venus (00:43:40):
So we've been doing that for a couple of months now.

Claire Venus (00:43:42):
And just when she's with me, you know, he might work.

Claire Venus (00:43:48):
When he's with her, I might work, and then we're trying to blend some family time in between.

Claire Venus (00:43:52):
So yeah, I hope that answers your question.

Alycia Buenger (00:43:55):
Yeah.

Alycia Buenger (00:43:55):
Can you talk more about like, that kind of,

Alycia Buenger (00:43:58):
I feel like this is another dance,

Alycia Buenger (00:43:59):
this,

Alycia Buenger (00:44:00):
this other balance with having your daughter home from nursery.

Alycia Buenger (00:44:04):
And also you had talked previously about your husband's like, post-COVID fatigue

Alycia Buenger (00:44:10):
that also kind of plays into that,

Alycia Buenger (00:44:12):
you know,

Alycia Buenger (00:44:13):
how much you can kind of back and forth the childcare and the,

Alycia Buenger (00:44:18):
I don't know,

Alycia Buenger (00:44:18):
you both,

Alycia Buenger (00:44:19):
it sounds like your husband also has a business.

Alycia Buenger (00:44:21):
You kind of both work more flexibly than maybe the nine to five.

Alycia Buenger (00:44:26):
Like,

Alycia Buenger (00:44:26):
what does that kind of feel like,

Alycia Buenger (00:44:29):
especially as someone who kind of has this awareness of the creative process?

Alycia Buenger (00:44:34):
It's very fluid.

Alycia Buenger (00:44:35):
And what does that kind of look like, I guess?

Claire Venus (00:44:39):
Yeah, I think that we both work very differently.

Claire Venus (00:44:43):
So he sees clients at set times and then he always has ambitions to like, write the

Claire Venus (00:44:49):
Substack,

Claire Venus (00:44:49):
do the newsletter,

Claire Venus (00:44:50):
do the online product,

Claire Venus (00:44:51):
but doesn't quite ever get around to like the launch.

Claire Venus (00:44:54):
Whereas I'm like,

Claire Venus (00:44:56):
I'm working on this launch, and then I'm going to do a relaunch and then I've got

Claire Venus (00:44:58):
this project.

Claire Venus (00:44:59):
So I am like a real plate spinner.

Claire Venus (00:45:01):
Like there's always multiple plates being spun at any one time.

Claire Venus (00:45:05):
And I feel like

Claire Venus (00:45:06):
I took to motherhood quite well in that way that like,

Claire Venus (00:45:09):
okay,

Claire Venus (00:45:10):
I'm in the motherhood zone, and now I'm out again and I'm working.

Claire Venus (00:45:13):
I've got to work for this client.

Claire Venus (00:45:14):
I've got to see what happens here.

Claire Venus (00:45:15):
Um,

Claire Venus (00:45:16):
so my husband,

Claire Venus (00:45:18):
Dave really slows me down, because I think that I would like spin so many plates

Claire Venus (00:45:23):
that I would like drop them all.

Claire Venus (00:45:24):
Like if I was left to my own devices.

Claire Venus (00:45:26):
So he is very measured.

Claire Venus (00:45:29):
He's very thoughtful, and

Claire Venus (00:45:32):
there's always time for like another cup of tea with Dave, like even if we're

Claire Venus (00:45:35):
getting ready to leave the house, he's like well should we just have another tea

Claire Venus (00:45:38):
first?

Claire Venus (00:45:39):
I'm like well we could you know, whereas when we first met I was like, what do

Claire Venus (00:45:42):
you mean, why would we drink more tea, like we're going now, so yeah, so there's been

Claire Venus (00:45:47):
this dance in our relationship anyway of like him really showing me what it is like

Claire Venus (00:45:53):
to like you know, look after the garden and and to then like, invest in hot

Claire Venus (00:45:58):
composting and permaculture principles and stuff, and so

Claire Venus (00:46:02):
at the start of the pandemic,

Claire Venus (00:46:03):
like, I made this decision when I fell pregnant that I didn't want to kind of go off

Claire Venus (00:46:07):
driving and seeing clients all over the County of Northumberland.

Claire Venus (00:46:10):
So I was doing like 45 minute drives, hour-long drives, you know, and back again.

Claire Venus (00:46:15):
And I, and I said to him, I just want to be here.

Claire Venus (00:46:18):
You know, I just, I really feel that like, I just feel like it's, it's time to be here and work that out.

Claire Venus (00:46:25):
And I think part of that was,

Claire Venus (00:46:28):
I could go out and do my work.

Claire Venus (00:46:29):
And then when I came back,

Claire Venus (00:46:30):
it was kind of done,

Claire Venus (00:46:31):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:46:32):
so I knew that I would be at home, and I would be like mum and wife and,

Claire Venus (00:46:37):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:46:38):
like do all of that stuff that needs to happen at home.

Claire Venus (00:46:42):
And I think the real shift around being able to be motivated enough to do

Claire Venus (00:46:46):
everything at home and to have this creative practice at home came from just really,

Claire Venus (00:46:51):
really like dropping anchor and going,

Claire Venus (00:46:53):
you know what,

Claire Venus (00:46:54):
like,

Claire Venus (00:46:55):
actually the environment doesn't need me to be driving all over the County of Northumberland.

Claire Venus (00:46:59):
And there are loads of people here and online that can benefit from the work that I do.

Claire Venus (00:47:04):
So that shift,

Claire Venus (00:47:06):
I think was like an internal shift of like,

Claire Venus (00:47:09):
like I described,

Claire Venus (00:47:10):
like dropping anchor and being like,

Claire Venus (00:47:11):
okay,

Claire Venus (00:47:11):
like I'm going to be here.

Claire Venus (00:47:12):
I'm going to do that.

Claire Venus (00:47:14):
But then that meant that we were both home.

Claire Venus (00:47:17):
So we were trying to sort of work out,

Claire Venus (00:47:19):
okay,

Claire Venus (00:47:20):
well,

Claire Venus (00:47:20):
who does what and when,

Claire Venus (00:47:22):
and when I was pregnant with my daughter,

Claire Venus (00:47:24):
and my son was here at home,

Claire Venus (00:47:26):
it was really interesting how we kind of found that balance and like work that through.

Claire Venus (00:47:31):
And I think it is just a practice.

Claire Venus (00:47:33):
Like I don't think there's like a one size fits all and definitely not with chronic

Claire Venus (00:47:37):
fatigue, because it flares up and it goes away again.

Claire Venus (00:47:41):
And so for the last little while, like definitely the last year, I felt like I was like

Claire Venus (00:47:49):
just being able to breathe easy and thinking, okay, it's all good.

Claire Venus (00:47:54):
We're settling into a routine, and Dave's been quite well for a few weeks.

Claire Venus (00:47:58):
And then out of nowhere, he would just be sick again.

Claire Venus (00:48:00):
So we've just had probably about four days of him being really unwell.

Claire Venus (00:48:05):
But...

Claire Venus (00:48:07):
the world didn't fall apart.

Claire Venus (00:48:08):
Like we just managed it.

Claire Venus (00:48:10):
So yeah,

Claire Venus (00:48:12):
I feel like for me personally,

Claire Venus (00:48:14):
it's been about building more boundaries and more flexibility into my working week

Claire Venus (00:48:18):
and working schedule.

Claire Venus (00:48:20):
It's been around topping up my wellbeing and making sure that I feel like,

Claire Venus (00:48:24):
uh,

Claire Venus (00:48:25):
yeah,

Claire Venus (00:48:26):
that I'm as well as I can be and that I feel is kind of connected.

Claire Venus (00:48:30):
Um, I think this time of year is a tricky time of year because, um,

Claire Venus (00:48:33):
it gets quite cold here.

Claire Venus (00:48:34):
It gets dark early.

Claire Venus (00:48:36):
There's a lot more inside the home time.

Claire Venus (00:48:39):
So we've really been making the most of the lighter nights and kind of charging up that way.

Claire Venus (00:48:46):
And yeah, I think just the balance is a practice is what I'd say.

Claire Venus (00:48:50):
I really feel that that's the way that I want to kind of share that and answer that.

Alycia Buenger (00:48:58):
So this is deeply relatable to me because we have talked previously on the podcast

Alycia Buenger (00:49:03):
about my husband [who] also has chronic illness and it's not fatigue-based,

Alycia Buenger (00:49:07):
but it's a kind of ongoing...

Alycia Buenger (00:49:10):
Sometimes he's sick, sometimes he's not.

Alycia Buenger (00:49:12):
And I have to kind of, you know, create those balance elements,

Alycia Buenger (00:49:15):
those boundaries as well as the flexibility.

Alycia Buenger (00:49:18):
And I think there are a lot of more people like us going through this kind of

Alycia Buenger (00:49:23):
balancing, more of us than there are not.

Alycia Buenger (00:49:27):
I think there's a lot of people who are kind of trying to figure out how to make

Alycia Buenger (00:49:33):
work-life balance possible with a lot of kind of restrictions and limitations like

Alycia Buenger (00:49:40):
this one.

Alycia Buenger (00:49:40):
And so how do you do that?

Alycia Buenger (00:49:41):
I think it is a

Alycia Buenger (00:49:43):
practice.

Alycia Buenger (00:49:43):
And it's like that sort of piece of that you and I have talked about Kati,

Alycia Buenger (00:49:48):
that kind of devotion to the practice.

Alycia Buenger (00:49:51):
I think we're devoted to our families.

Alycia Buenger (00:49:55):
And so what does that look like in practice?

Alycia Buenger (00:49:58):
I think it changes.

Claire Venus (00:50:00):
Yeah, absolutely.

Claire Venus (00:50:00):
I think it changes, and it changes seasonally.

Claire Venus (00:50:03):
Like I never used to like the word resilient...

Claire Venus (00:50:05):
So schools in the UK use this word resilient a lot, like we're creating resilience.

Claire Venus (00:50:10):
And I felt like for my son, that was almost like

Claire Venus (00:50:14):
asking him to just bury all of his sensitivities like, deep inside himself and just

Claire Venus (00:50:18):
mask up,

Claire Venus (00:50:19):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:50:19):
like,

Claire Venus (00:50:19):
so I never used to like it.

Claire Venus (00:50:21):
And now I almost feel proud at this new resilience that I've kind of fostered to be able to still

Claire Venus (00:50:29):
like, be crying on the way to like Starbucks, and then sit in Starbucks and write

Claire Venus (00:50:34):
like, a beautiful blog post and be like,

Claire Venus (00:50:36):
okay,

Claire Venus (00:50:36):
I'm fine now.

Claire Venus (00:50:37):
Like, you know, it's like, it's not a weakness.

Claire Venus (00:50:40):
It's just this kind of human experience of this is what we've been given.

Claire Venus (00:50:44):
You know, this is what we've been given to work with.

Claire Venus (00:50:46):
And, and actually like, like I said, children do, do not let you kind of just go anywhere.

Claire Venus (00:50:53):
Like you just, you're just in the present moment all the time with them.

Claire Venus (00:50:56):
So I feel like for them,

Claire Venus (00:50:59):
I don't want to be sad about what existed pre-COVID.

Claire Venus (00:51:03):
And I am sometimes sad about what existed pre-COVID.

Claire Venus (00:51:06):
You know, my husband climbed mountains for fun.

Claire Venus (00:51:09):
Like that was what he did.

Claire Venus (00:51:10):
And he can't do that now.

Claire Venus (00:51:11):
And there's a loss there.

Claire Venus (00:51:12):
There's a grief there.

Claire Venus (00:51:13):
And I really recognize that,

Claire Venus (00:51:16):
but kind of staying in the light, I guess, and staying really positive when he does feel really unwell.

Claire Venus (00:51:23):
And if he goes into any sort of spiral,

Claire Venus (00:51:25):
because he's not used to being unwell either,

Claire Venus (00:51:27):
like it's been nearly two years,

Claire Venus (00:51:28):
but that's still only two years.

Claire Venus (00:51:29):
Like before that, he could do anything.

Claire Venus (00:51:31):
You know, he could have run a marathon if he fancied it.

Claire Venus (00:51:33):
Like he was just built that way.

Claire Venus (00:51:36):
So it's kind of cruel in the way that light and dark can feel cruel,

Claire Venus (00:51:41):
but it's also like a huge awakening around

Claire Venus (00:51:44):
what do you want to spend your days doing?

Claire Venus (00:51:46):
Because there's that quote, isn't there?

Claire Venus (00:51:47):
Like the way you spend your days is the way you spend your life.

Claire Venus (00:51:50):
And I think never has it felt more true than like now,

Claire Venus (00:51:53):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:51:53):
in the here and now,

Claire Venus (00:51:54):
I just feel like, that the decisions we make now and the decisions we make in the

Claire Venus (00:51:59):
next little while around whether he can come out of this,

Claire Venus (00:52:03):
because there are people coming out of long-COVID fatigue...

Claire Venus (00:52:06):
So it's called various different things.

Claire Venus (00:52:08):
I've followed a lot of Twitter threads around it.

Claire Venus (00:52:11):
And some of those have been super helpful,

Claire Venus (00:52:14):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:52:15):
and there's this kind of,

Claire Venus (00:52:16):
OK,

Claire Venus (00:52:16):
like with any sort of chronic fatigue or chronic situation,

Claire Venus (00:52:20):
you can work your way out of it.

Claire Venus (00:52:22):
But we don't know whether that is going to be the case for Dave.

Claire Venus (00:52:25):
So planning what we want our children's childhood to be like, you know.

Claire Venus (00:52:32):
Like, it's a really important consideration.

Claire Venus (00:52:35):
You know, do we want to be here?

Claire Venus (00:52:36):
Like, do we want to rent the house out and go travel?

Claire Venus (00:52:39):
Like,

Claire Venus (00:52:39):
do we want to live in a different country where the sun shines a bit hotter and a

Claire Venus (00:52:43):
bit brighter and a bit longer?

Claire Venus (00:52:45):
You know, there's all of those things.

Claire Venus (00:52:47):
We're sort of working it all through.

Alycia Buenger (00:52:48):
Mm-hmm.

Alycia Buenger (00:52:51):
I think the beautiful thing that you kind of touch on is that piece of the creative

Alycia Buenger (00:52:57):
process where even when it feels like we're in that kind of dark void where

Alycia Buenger (00:53:03):
nothing's possible and you almost,

Alycia Buenger (00:53:05):
you can get lost in that spiral of like,

Alycia Buenger (00:53:07):
this is just where I live forever.

Alycia Buenger (00:53:08):
Now I will never,

Alycia Buenger (00:53:10):
get to the other side.

Alycia Buenger (00:53:11):
I will never get to lightness.

Alycia Buenger (00:53:12):
I think in a lot of ways, that's where the creative pieces that we're gifted come from.

Alycia Buenger (00:53:20):
It's like where they grow.

Alycia Buenger (00:53:21):
And so there is this kind of both / and depth of your sadness on the way to Starbucks.

Alycia Buenger (00:53:26):
And then you create something really beautiful from it.

Alycia Buenger (00:53:28):
I think it's, yeah, it's part of that cycle.

Claire Venus (00:53:31):
Yeah, definitely.

Claire Venus (00:53:32):
I agree.

Claire Venus (00:53:33):
And like, I didn't have that before.

Claire Venus (00:53:35):
Like, so I have to be...

Claire Venus (00:53:36):
Well, I don't have to be,

Claire Venus (00:53:37):
I choose to be grateful for that.

Claire Venus (00:53:39):
Like,

Claire Venus (00:53:39):
I think one of my Substack posts I'd written in response to how sad I felt that

Claire Venus (00:53:44):
Dave's birthday wasn't the birthday that we both wanted it to be for him, because he

Claire Venus (00:53:47):
was unwell,

Claire Venus (00:53:48):
you know,

Claire Venus (00:53:48):
but I felt like it was some of my best writing.

Claire Venus (00:53:50):
I was like, wow, like,

Claire Venus (00:53:52):
the pressure really creates diamonds somehow, doesn't it, like in all of that, and I

Claire Venus (00:53:57):
wouldn't necessarily have considered myself a writer, but I think, by the very token

Claire Venus (00:54:02):
that I like to write and people like to read it, like I'm already a writer, and

Claire Venus (00:54:06):
that's great, and lots of other people can be too, so yeah I think, the blend of the

Claire Venus (00:54:10):
creative process around writing self-expression, creativity, and finding those kind

Claire Venus (00:54:17):
of daily acts of being creative and being in creative flow and

Claire Venus (00:54:21):
all kind of make for a nicer way of being able to cope I think if things feel difficult

Alycia Buenger (00:54:27):
I like that perspective

Alycia Buenger (00:54:33):
Can you talk,

Alycia Buenger (00:54:34):
this is our last question,

Alycia Buenger (00:54:35):
the last question I have,

Alycia Buenger (00:54:36):
I guess,

Alycia Buenger (00:54:37):
about what you're working on now and maybe how your creative vision is transforming

Alycia Buenger (00:54:44):
as you kind of move forward?

Claire Venus (00:54:46):
Yeah, for sure.

Claire Venus (00:54:47):
So I wanted in the pandemic to set up a few projects,

Claire Venus (00:54:52):
different channels of diversification of my income.

Claire Venus (00:54:55):
So I've been really kind of working at putting that into place and having streams

Claire Venus (00:55:00):
of income that can kind of support us a little bit so that, if Dave has to take time

Claire Venus (00:55:04):
off work,

Claire Venus (00:55:05):
or obviously because I'm like,

Claire Venus (00:55:07):
I'm only working part time,

Claire Venus (00:55:09):
and I might choose to do that for quite a few years in the future as well.

Claire Venus (00:55:13):
So that feels like something that I'm always giving energy and time to, and I'm always curious about.

Claire Venus (00:55:19):
So

Claire Venus (00:55:20):
the other week,

Claire Venus (00:55:21):
like, I created a T-shirt shop, and I was like,

Claire Venus (00:55:24):
OK,

Claire Venus (00:55:24):
like I'm going to put my T-shirt shop live,

Claire Venus (00:55:26):
which was really random and left field.

Claire Venus (00:55:29):
But I just wanted to put a Mary Oliver quote on a T-shirt and get it printed.

Claire Venus (00:55:32):
So I did.

Claire Venus (00:55:33):
So there was that.

Claire Venus (00:55:35):
And there are those kind of streams of income and that kind of push to connect with

Claire Venus (00:55:39):
more people across the world as well.

Claire Venus (00:55:41):
So I really want to share that,

Claire Venus (00:55:42):
my expertise around creativity and the work that I do,

Claire Venus (00:55:46):
but also like my life expertise,

Claire Venus (00:55:49):
I guess,

Claire Venus (00:55:49):
as well.

Claire Venus (00:55:49):
And just kind of some of the more holistic ways of setting things up.

Claire Venus (00:55:53):
So that's there.

Claire Venus (00:55:55):
And then I've just received funding to do a piece of work around 360 video.

Claire Venus (00:56:00):
So I'm really excited about this.

Claire Venus (00:56:01):
So I'm going to artist studios and working with them to create short snippets of

Claire Venus (00:56:06):
360 video and surveying,

Claire Venus (00:56:10):
people with chronic health conditions and also parents of children with

Claire Venus (00:56:16):
neurodivergence to see if having this connection to artists in their studio gives

Claire Venus (00:56:21):
them a deeper connect or a deeper interest in what's happening in the studio.

Claire Venus (00:56:25):
So it's a pilot project, and it's just really about research and development of both

Claire Venus (00:56:31):
the participants and kind of hearing from them and then also like the artists and

Claire Venus (00:56:36):
sort of hearing from them and

Claire Venus (00:56:37):
seeing if that helps raise that profile as well, so yeah that's quite a, probably be

Claire Venus (00:56:42):
finished about February time, and I'm sharing that on my website, blog, so people can

Claire Venus (00:56:46):
kind of follow along.

Claire Venus (00:56:47):
I'm learning it from scratch, so yeah it's quite, I'm trying

Claire Venus (00:56:51):
to be quite, sort of jovial about it, because I'm not like massively into tech, but I

Claire Venus (00:56:58):
just think that tech can really help the creative process so...

Claire Venus (00:57:02):
So that's there.

Claire Venus (00:57:03):
And then I've got a brand new journal that I've launched today.

Claire Venus (00:57:07):
So yeah, so mid-September was my aim and I've kind of got there somehow.

Claire Venus (00:57:12):
It's called My Beautiful Reality, and it's really about day-to-day.

Claire Venus (00:57:18):
So it's about what we've talked about this whole podcast.

Claire Venus (00:57:20):
It's about the day-to-day magic and making space to notice that.

Claire Venus (00:57:24):
It's about kind of weekly gratitudes and kind of tuning in to that.

Claire Venus (00:57:28):
Okay, we made it through another week.

Claire Venus (00:57:29):
How's that been?

Claire Venus (00:57:30):
And it's also about those big embodied dreams.

Claire Venus (00:57:34):
So when I kind of speak about moving abroad or living life in a different way,

Claire Venus (00:57:39):
it's like staying connected to that because life can just pass you by,

Claire Venus (00:57:42):
can't it?

Claire Venus (00:57:43):
So I've tried to create a creative space in a journal format where people can

Claire Venus (00:57:47):
really connect to their soul whispers and really tune into like,

Claire Venus (00:57:51):
okay,

Claire Venus (00:57:52):
what is it?

Claire Venus (00:57:53):
What is nudging me?

Claire Venus (00:57:54):
Like, where's it nudging me?

Claire Venus (00:57:55):
And where could I go?

Claire Venus (00:57:57):
So, yeah, so that went out on pre-order today.

Claire Venus (00:58:00):
So that'll be going out before Christmas.

Claire Venus (00:58:04):
And yeah, I'm doing some consultancy for a local theatre on them engaging...

Claire Venus (00:58:10):
They want to, you know, they really want to kind of transform people's perceptions of that space.

Claire Venus (00:58:14):
So I'm working on that with them.

Claire Venus (00:58:16):
And that's a really lovely piece of work.

Claire Venus (00:58:17):
And again, into that kind of hybrid way of working.

Claire Venus (00:58:20):
And that's really nice to connect in with teachers and see how they're all doing,

Claire Venus (00:58:24):
because I think they've got a tough job.

Claire Venus (00:58:27):
And then all my one-to-one stuff.

Claire Venus (00:58:29):
So I absolutely adore working with one-to-one clients.

Claire Venus (00:58:32):
I did one on Zoom this morning.

Claire Venus (00:58:33):
So yeah, I'm weaving that in and doing some of that.

Claire Venus (00:58:38):
And our teepee is going to stay up until the end of October, as long as there are no high winds.

Claire Venus (00:58:43):
So it means that people can come and meet me in the teepee if they're local, and we

Claire Venus (00:58:46):
can do some creativity and wellbeing sessions together.

Claire Venus (00:58:49):
We can do some forecasting together.

Claire Venus (00:58:51):
We can get into the nuts and bolts of that company of one, whatever they want to do.

Claire Venus (00:58:55):
So,

Claire Venus (00:58:55):
yeah,

Claire Venus (00:58:56):
so a fair few options before Christmas in terms of ways to work with me,

Claire Venus (00:59:00):
but also quite a lot of different things like coming online at once.

Claire Venus (00:59:05):
So,

Claire Venus (00:59:05):
yeah,

Claire Venus (00:59:05):
it's really about finding the balance and working enough time in so that I feel

Claire Venus (00:59:11):
like I'm not working at a pace that doesn't serve me.

Alycia Buenger (00:59:18):
I feel really inspired by your ability or like, choice maybe, to pursue these

Alycia Buenger (00:59:26):
creative ideas that you have.

Alycia Buenger (00:59:28):
Like, step into what seems like constraints,

Alycia Buenger (00:59:31):
like things that really could be constraining your creative time and your creative

Alycia Buenger (00:59:36):
energy and you just step into them.

Alycia Buenger (00:59:38):
And do the thing that you, you know, have vision...

Alycia Buenger (00:59:42):
I think it's really cool to hear you talk about it and also kind of inspiring to

Alycia Buenger (00:59:46):
kind of imagine what's possible.

Claire Venus (00:59:49):
Yeah, thank you.

Claire Venus (00:59:51):
And I feel like for me,

Claire Venus (00:59:52):
like,

Claire Venus (00:59:52):
and I joke about this with my husband as well,

Claire Venus (00:59:54):
because he's got so many different interests within holistic wellness.

Claire Venus (00:59:58):
And I've got so many interests in what creativity can do,

Claire Venus (01:00:02):
and especially what it can do for our well-being,

Claire Venus (01:00:04):
that I think that

Claire Venus (01:00:06):
we joke a lot, like we could never get bored.

Claire Venus (01:00:08):
Like we just, there is just, it isn't boring.

Claire Venus (01:00:11):
Like work is never boring.

Claire Venus (01:00:12):
So it's always exciting.

Claire Venus (01:00:15):
Sometimes like a little bit scary,

Claire Venus (01:00:16):
but often I think because the process of research and development then kind of

Claire Venus (01:00:21):
informs what I create that feels safe.

Claire Venus (01:00:24):
Like, so yeah,

Claire Venus (01:00:26):
Yeah,

Claire Venus (01:00:26):
I've been doing it for 20 years now, and I just love that kind of research and development,

Claire Venus (01:00:31):
co-creation,

Claire Venus (01:00:32):
understanding process to then the creative process and then the reviewing.

Claire Venus (01:00:36):
So I kind of follow that formula and it does seem to really serve my work and serve

Claire Venus (01:00:42):
those that work with me.

Claire Venus (01:00:43):
So I do feel grateful for that.

Claire Venus (01:00:45):
And I'm hoping that I do another ask to Arts Council for like a year-long project,

Claire Venus (01:00:51):
like I did with Creativity Island,

Claire Venus (01:00:52):
but I'm really interested in

Claire Venus (01:00:54):
working with young people who are transitioning from, we have primary school over here.

Claire Venus (01:00:59):
So like, the little school to the big school, because those transitions are huge for our children.

Claire Venus (01:01:05):
And I think it's really fascinating in terms of where I am and how I understand the

Claire Venus (01:01:10):
world digitally and how they understand the world digitally at like 10,

Claire Venus (01:01:14):
11 years old.

Claire Venus (01:01:15):
I just find the meeting of those two worlds fascinating.

Claire Venus (01:01:18):
And, you know, I'm not striving to be a cool mum by any means, but I know that I'm like,

Claire Venus (01:01:24):
really out of it you know, in terms of like, how they experience the world, so I'd

Claire Venus (01:01:28):
really like to look at that for 2023, so we'll see what happens.

Claire Venus (01:01:32):
I'm excited to kind

Claire Venus (01:01:33):
of follow along and see what transpires yeah, and you'll have to let me know if I

Claire Venus (01:01:37):
need to share more, because I think it's been really insightful for me to hear you

Claire Venus (01:01:42):
say, oh like I didn't know that, and oh that was interesting, you know, and I feel like

Claire Venus (01:01:46):
I'm sharing it all, but actually I don't know, like maybe there's more I can do,

Claire Venus (01:01:50):
because I really want to share as much as I can, you know that...

Claire Venus (01:01:53):
as long as it's interesting.

Alycia Buenger (01:01:56):
Yeah.

Alycia Buenger (01:01:56):
You have a lot of moving pieces.

Alycia Buenger (01:01:58):
So I think there's plenty more that you could bring [...]

Alycia Buenger (01:02:06):
Well, thank you so much for taking an hour of your time to talk with us.

Alycia Buenger (01:02:11):
It's been really fun.

Claire Venus (01:02:13):
Yeah.

Claire Venus (01:02:13):
Thanks so much for having me.

Claire Venus (01:02:15):
I feel like it's been really lovely to express where I'm at in the here and now and

Claire Venus (01:02:19):
reflect on some of the stuff that happened in the pandemic.

Claire Venus (01:02:22):
Like I feel like for all of us,

Claire Venus (01:02:24):
you know,

Claire Venus (01:02:24):
there's still so much reflection to do around how we responded to the pandemic and

Claire Venus (01:02:28):
how our creative and wellbeing practices responded to the pandemic.

Claire Venus (01:02:32):
And I feel we learned a lot, you know, we learned a lot about what we need over here in the UK.

Claire Venus (01:02:37):
We had this like, daily walk that we were allowed to do and,

Claire Venus (01:02:41):
we live in rural Northumberland,

Claire Venus (01:02:42):
so we could,

Claire Venus (01:02:43):
you know,

Claire Venus (01:02:43):
be outside more,

Claire Venus (01:02:45):
but for a lot of people,

Claire Venus (01:02:46):
it was like 30 minutes a day and that was it,

Claire Venus (01:02:48):
you know,

Claire Venus (01:02:48):
like if they lived in a flat or a high rise,

Claire Venus (01:02:51):
it was 30 minutes of outside time, and that was it.

Claire Venus (01:02:53):
So, but that was a gift and continues to be.

Claire Venus (01:02:57):
And I think that,

Claire Venus (01:02:58):
yeah,

Claire Venus (01:02:58):
there's,

Claire Venus (01:02:59):
there's so much more that we can dig into around what makes us feel good and what

Claire Venus (01:03:02):
makes us question what society is setting us up to do,

Claire Venus (01:03:05):
you know,

Claire Venus (01:03:06):
like,

Claire Venus (01:03:06):
do we have to be at our desk for this long?

Claire Venus (01:03:09):
And does that, you know,

Claire Venus (01:03:11):
does that serve us longer term and the companies we work for longer term,

Claire Venus (01:03:14):
or can we be more flexible and building more wellbeing into that?

Alycia Buenger (01:03:22):
Yeah.

Alycia Buenger (01:03:23):
I'm excited to see what we, how we reflect back over the last...

Claire Venus (01:03:27):
Yeah.

Claire Venus (01:03:28):
That's what we need to do

Claire Venus (01:03:29):
don't we?

Claire Venus (01:03:29):
We need to be almost saying like,

Claire Venus (01:03:31):
we've learned this about ourselves now as a kind of,

Claire Venus (01:03:34):
as,

Claire Venus (01:03:34):
as humans and as humans in this kind of modern world.

Claire Venus (01:03:37):
And this is what we need, like the same way a garden is,

Claire Venus (01:03:41):
needs the things it needs like we kind of we kind of know a bit more now don't we

Claire Venus (01:03:45):
about what we need, so yeah, we need to keep championing that I think, yeah yeah,

Claire Venus (01:03:51):
well I'm really excited to follow your guys' journey online as well, so um I'll stay

Claire Venus (01:03:56):
connected, and then some of the ideas that bubbled up over the podcast I'd really

Claire Venus (01:04:00):
like to chat to you both more about, so we'll see where that goes and and yeah what

Claire Venus (01:04:05):
we can connect on yeah...

Kati Overmier (01:04:10):
That sounds great.

Kati Overmier (01:04:11):
You can always join our community.

Alycia Buenger (01:04:12):
Yeah.

(01:04:18):
All right.

Kati Overmier (01:04:24):
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Alycia Buenger (01:05:34):
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