Live Creative by Liz Manning

It’s the new TV season and some of my favourite shows are back: Strictly, Celebrity Masterchef, The Great British Bake Off. I love watching people demonstrate their developing skills to produce something wonderful.

I’m a sucker for anything whose title starts ‘The Great…’ – Interior Design Challenge, Pottery Throw Down, Sewing Bee – let alone Sky Arts Portrait or Landscape Artists of the Year or The Victorian House of Arts and Crafts. I have a particular soft spot for judge, Keith Brymer Jones, for whom beautiful results reduce him to tears. 


In America, 14^th September is designated Live Creative Day (it’s also National Filled Donut Day but that’s another story!). It’s a time to practise, share, and teach the creative arts, a day I feel that is made for writers and Christian writers in particular.


Why? Well, for a start, the Bible is full to bursting with creativity. 


There’s the overriding theme of God’s own creativity:


 ‘O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.’ (Ps 104.24)


 ‘The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.’ (Ps 19.1)


And alongside this is the call to imitate the One in whose image we are made, who gave us similar skills:


‘Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them’ (Rom 12.6)


‘According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it.’ (1 Cor 3.10)


And have you ever stopped to count the number of craft skills valued in the Bible?

Some you may have thought of easily – the music of the Psalms; God’s message to Jeremiah through the potter’s work; the gardening knowledge in Jesus’ stories of the Sower and the Vine. But have you noticed the references to design, metalwork, stonemasonry, woodcarving, engraving, embroidery, or weaving*? Or what about poetry, entrepreneurialism, and literature**? 

     

Not too far from where I live and work is Watts Gallery (wattsgallery.org.uk/), where GF and Mary Watts set up their Arts & Crafts home and studios. Their philosophy meant their art was deeply entwined with the local community, with Mary’s pottery classes providing key contributions to the Watts Chapel and the later formation of the Compton Pottery, taking commissions from Liberty & Co, Gertrude Jekyll, and Clough Williams-Ellis for Portmerion. 

Their example seems to me to be a lifelong version what Live Creative Day aims for.


And I wonder, looking at our spiritual inheritance of creativity as Christian writers, how we might too take inspiration from Live Creative or the Victorian Arts and Crafts movement? How might we use our writing to benefit others, point them to God the Great Artist and Editor, encourage them to discover ‘whatever is true…noble…right…pure…lovely…admirable…excellent or praiseworthy’ through their own creativity, whatever form that takes?


*Exodus 31 and 35

**Ephesians 2.10, Matt 25.16, and Daniel 1.17 respectively

Liz Manning fits writing around being an Occupational Therapist, BB captain, wife, and mum to two adult sons. Or perhaps it's the other way round. She blogs regularly at https://thestufflifeismadeofblog.wordpress.com/