Reclaiming the Part of You That Loved to Play

Many of us were given one of two stories when we were younger:

You are good at art — or — you are not good at art.

Both can lead us down very different, and often equally bumpy, paths.

Being told I was “good at art” set me on a road where the end product became the focus. Praise followed results. Approval became linked to outcomes. And slowly, almost quietly, creativity picked up companions it was never meant to carry — pressure, comparison, ranking, and shame.

What started as play became performance.

I learned to create with an audience in mind. I learned to measure my worth against feedback. I learned that being “good” meant continuing to prove it. And somewhere along the way, without realising it at the time, I lost the joy in the process itself.

So I stopped.

Not because I didn’t love art — but because loving it had begun to feel heavy. Conditional. Demanding. The l thing that once offered freedom had become another space where I felt I had to get it right.

And I know now that the opposite story — you are not good at art — can wound just as deeply. It teaches people to disconnect before they ever begin. To abandon curiosity early. To decide that creativity belongs to “others,” not them.

You still hear it today. People in their 30s, 40s, 50s saying, “Ah no, I can’t draw.” But what they usually mean is not that they can’t draw — it’s that they don’t like what the outcome looks like. Or that somewhere along the line, their work was measured against others and ranked lower. And so they decided it wasn’t worth continuing.

But that was never the point.

Creativity was never meant to be about comparison. Or outcome. Or where something sits in relation to something else. It’s about the experience of doing it. The feeling of picking up a pencil, some paint, a scrap of paper, and seeing what happens next. It’s about exploration. Curiosity. Play.

If you’ve ever watched a child show you a drawing they’ve just made, you’ll know this. They are beaming. Proud. Excited. Not because the piece is technically “good,” but because of how much they enjoyed making it. They’re trying to tell you about the colours they chose, the marks they made, the story behind it. The joy lives in the making — not the finished product.

That’s the part I believe many of us are longing to reclaim.

Not to become artists.

Not to be “good at it.”

But to reconnect with that part of ourselves that loved to play — before creativity became something to judge, rank, or abandon.

Different stories. Similar losses.

Both steal play.

The focus became too heavily weighted towards the end product, and slowly I lost the joy. I forgot that the process was where the joy lived in the first place. It took years — and growing older — for me to come back to that realisation. And it’s the reason I now have what I have today. The reason I create. The reason I share. The reason I hold space for others to do the same.

That’s why I want to do this. Why I care so deeply about promoting creativity as play, not performance. It has nothing to do with the finished piece. It never did. It’s about making. About getting curious. About allowing yourself time to play without needing a result at the end of it.