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98 results
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  • Article

Migraine, creativity and me

| Lydia Ruffles

Novelist Lydia Ruffles explores how migraine has made her mind stretch, shrink, widen and change, and how it’s influenced her art.

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Care, creativity and a connected world

| Christine Ro

Find out about the challenges Wellcome Collection has faced during the last very demanding year.

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Genius spirits and the mystery of creative inspiration

| Anna Faherty

Once upon a time, we all had a genius.

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Sarah Carpenter on making time for herself through creativity

| Sarah Carpenter

Art provides a refuge for Sarah Carpenter, allowing her to utilise her energy and keep up the momentum of her recovery.

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The art of scientific glassblowing

| Helen BabbsThomas S G Farnetti

Exciting things happen when art, craft, engineering and science collide. Glassblower Gayle Price is proof of that.

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Remote romance and the common cold

| Elena CarterThomas S G Farnetti

Getting creatively romantic due to a virus sounds all too contemporary, but our archives show what socially distanced seduction looked like seven decades ago.

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Spanish flu and the depiction of disease

| Allison C Meier

The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 killed many millions more than World War I did. Find out why contemporary artistic depictions of its devastating impact are so rare.

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Dancing for joy

| Dr Peter LovattJem Clancy

Dancing is a mood enhancer, it increases social bonding and it improves creativity. Maybe you really can dance all your troubles away.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Artists, activism and AIDS

| Lalita Kaplish

Posters by artists who turned their art into activism to support their communities and raise awareness of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s.

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How ritual creates meaning

| Victoria Adukwei BulleyMaïa Walcott

In a world that encourages us to quash our sense of wonder, ritual can help push away apathy and nurture life-enhancing creativity and imagination.

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Rejecting shame and a decade of change

| Jess Thom

Jess Thom spent years trying to ignore and suppress the tics of Tourette’s syndrome. Read what happened when she decided to celebrate them instead.

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The freedom to provoke

| Jamie HaleStephen Allwright

Jamie Hale talks to performer and director Emma Selwyn about the joy of creating work that celebrates, rather than suppresses, autistic behaviours.

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Talent, tech and visual art

| Jamie HaleKirsten Irving

Jamie Hale finds a combination of talent and technology are crucial when it comes to creating great visual art, but how do you keep working when your circumstances are in constant flux?

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Writing in remission

| Brian DillonNaki Narh

Reading the writings of the lifelong hypochondriac Jacques Derrida during lockdown, Brian Dillon realises his own health anxiety has become unusually subdued.

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How to thrive in lockdown

| Gareth BerlinerCarrie Ravenscroft

Gareth Berliner shares how being a Disabled person has given him the resilience and motivation to find a new creative challenge during lockdown.

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A wheelchair in the world

| Jan GrueLinda Bournane Engelberth

Five years ago, Jan Grue, author of ‘I Live a Life Like Yours’, became a father. A wheelchair user since age eight, Grue explores how parenthood helped him reimagine his relationship with his wheelchair.

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What writing myself has revealed

| Caroline ButterwickKimberley Burrows

Caroline Butterwick talks to two creators about how lived experience feeds their art, and reflects on her own year of writing about her life.

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How music opens the doors of memory and the mind

| Philip Ball

People living with dementia can often still listen, perform or move to music. What does this tell us about how memories are formed?

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

“Each day brought a new obstacle I hadn’t considered”

| Haydn Gardner

I'm a 25-year-old autistic artist from Manchester. I have just moved from my first home away from my parents to a new apartment.

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Documents of my breath

| Swati Joshi

Swati Joshi’s childhood bronchitis meant that she couldn’t imagine being able to breathe easily. As an adult, she chronicles her recovery through artworks created using bubbles and her breath.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Out of the mouth trap

| Jonty ClaypoleRory Sheridan

After 15 years of speech therapy, Jonty Claypole decided to make peace with his stammer. He explores our fear of disfluency, revealing how accepting it could actually increase our creativity and persuasiveness.

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Coleridge’s hypochondria

| Mike JayNaki Narh

An intense focus on his own bodily sensations led poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to self-medicate with narcotics. But this fascination also put Coleridge ahead of the medical sensibilities of his day.

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Chemotherapy-day drawings

| Clare Smith

Undergoing treatment for bowel cancer, artist Clare Smith produced around 70 abstract drawings while sitting in the chemotherapy chair. She reflects on how creativity can bring respite in a crisis.

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The enduring myth of the mad genius

| Anna Faherty

There’s a fine line to tread between creativity and psychosis.

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Exceptional talent and the trouble with IQ tests

| Anna Faherty

Is a high IQ really a mark of genius, or does something else explain the exceptional?