Building a shoebox pagoda and other creative urges...

By Alison Powell

Happiness is...watching the sun set into the sea

I’ve just sorted the bottom of my daughter’s wardrobe. It was beginning to resemble the back room of John Lewis shoe department where the sales assistants disappear to and, frankly look like they wish they could stay in, during the late August back to school shoe scramble. It’s wholly my fault.

As my first born I’ve been very sentimental about her first shoes, first party shoes, first trainers, first school shoes, first shoes with lights, first... well you get my drift. Thankfully I’m still a way off the tiny skirts and hollering, “You’re not going out like that!” so as her trousers get longer and her shoe boxes get higher, something had to give.

Special ‘firsts’ remained but an impressive collection of boxes stood in the utility room ready for recycling. However, they soon began appearing in rooms other than the cubby hole off the kitchen, as my daughter started creating what can only be described as a pagoda that might attempt a space-launch, held together with reams of sticky tape and emblazoned with Nike and Clarks. Considering the reach of coca-cola into every far-flung corner of the globe, a Pagoda sponsored by Hush Puppies seems less incongruous that you might imagine.

What was striking was that at an age when my daughter is starting to snarl, “life’s not fair” and the increasing inability to separate from her iPod, the constant bringing of her creative endeavour throughout its development for my acknowledgment, interest and praise was a pleasant and welcome surprise.

It got me thinking about the nature and nurture of creativity. I am blessed to know some talented writers who all met under the inspirational tutelage of Lynne Barrett-Lee. We have staged several events, reading some of our creative writing before friends, family and the occasional passer-by, at ‘A Shot in the Dark’ and more recently, in ‘Urban Taphouse’ in Cardiff. We’ve now been joined by marvellous musicians in a celebration of the spoken and sung word. ‘Foxy’s’ in Penarth held a similar type of event recently too.

We’re a disparate group including a man whose soft Geordie lilt enthrals as he weaves a tale with a twist; a teller of dark, hypnotic yarns; a witty, prize-winning poetess and a talented self-taught guitarist, who sings a bit like Noel Gallagher if he were ever to have had the good-fortune to grow up near Snowdon.

We come together with jangling nerves and fragile egos because we have stories we’re compelled to tell; quirky, clever metaphors that we’re desperate for others to imagine; because we want praise perhaps and validation quite possibly; because like my daughter, we care about what those we care about, think and feel. Because through our creativity we can express how we think and feel. Also, because creating something new and unique leaves a little legacy and maybe a smile on the face of those we share with. In lives that can, at times, be tough and turbulent, creating a ‘pagoda’ moment can be something quite special indeed.