Art is everywhere, and we love it

Where does inspiration come from?

The simple answer is: absolutely everywhere.

Young people today are surrounded by an incredible mixture of creative influences. Their ideas might come from an artist they have discovered online, a computer game, a favourite film, a comic, an album cover—or an ice cream cone that suddenly becomes the starting point for an anime character. And why not?

One of the things I love most about working with young people is that I can never quite predict what will inspire them. Something I might walk past without a second thought can become a character, a costume, a strange imaginary world or the beginning of an entire story in somebody else’s mind.

We sometimes think that artistic inspiration has to be serious. We imagine galleries, sketchbooks, great masters and people looking thoughtfully at paintings with their hands behind their backs. All of those things have their place, of course, but creativity is much less well behaved than that.

It appears in packaging, street art, nature, fashion, buildings, cartoons, food, music videos and the odd little objects we collect because we simply like the look of them. It can begin with the colours on a sweet wrapper, the shape of a cloud, the pattern on a moth’s wing or a photograph taken by accident.

The important thing is learning how to look.

When we encourage young people to notice shapes, colours, textures, expressions and unusual combinations, the everyday world becomes a huge collection of possibilities. There is no “wrong” source of inspiration. If something catches your attention and makes you want to draw, paint, stitch, build, photograph or invent, then it has already done its job.

That is one of the reasons we don’t expect everyone at Artish to create the same thing. Give ten young people the same starting point, and you may end up with ten completely different outcomes—and that is exactly as it should be.

Art is not confined to a frame, a gallery or an art lesson. It is already all around us, waiting to be noticed.

Sometimes, all we need to do is look at the world a little differently.