I have loved writing for as long as I can remember. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. The opportunity to combine words to create new worlds, conversations, questions, debates, and yes, arguments. Many writers are afraid, and some are also angry at the volume of AI writing now flooding our lives. But the genie is out of the bottle, and there is no stuffing it back in.
I recently read an article about the loss of an artist’s archive, and having worked with many personal collections, I can confidently say that the majority are lost to time. We all hold collections related to our lives and work that will not be preserved, and most collection items chosen for preservation within centralised cultural institutions, are seldom, if ever, interpreted or accessed.
While working with Margaret Mahy on 'The Making of the Word Witch' touring experience, she shared some archives she hoped to include, expressing concern about their fragile condition. Mahy had carried these hand-made books around in a suitcase she used during her engagement work with children as a librarian. One was the first book she remembered writing, around age five, 'Harry is Bad', and another a fully illustrated 'Aranukan Lute Book' she created as a teenager. Pages were held together with Sellotape as they began to fall apart.
I arranged conservation work and created complete digital records, enabling both the loaned original books and digital reproductions to tour. This experience highlighted for me that all collections are vulnerable to loss if the focus is solely on safeguarding via storage rather than making the stories they hold accessible.
When collections are selected for preservation by museums, for example, accessibility is rarely the priority. Many institutions conservatively hold at least 90% of collections in climate-controlled storage, which often accounts for more than half of annual operating budgets.
These measures aim to ensure long-term survival, yet the majority of collections are never seen. Preservation has become synonymous with protection, and engagement has become impossible due to the sheer volume of collections, and is often considered too risky. The common model of collecting ensures holdings continue to grow, yet without activation, they remain stories doomed to be stored indefinitely or eventually deaccessioned.
What this reveals is a fundamental tension in how we value collections: between protection and activating stories. If preservation focuses solely on protection, the knowledge, insight, and inspiration embedded within them is effectively locked away. Stories, ideas, and connections only come to life when they are shared. Without engagement, collections become silent relics rather than living evidence of culture, creativity, and human experience.
Shifting the focus from preservation via storage to active engagement requires rethinking collecting practices. It means prioritising access, storytelling, and interaction. Protection is important, but not at the cost of limiting engagement. True preservation occurs when the stories collections contain inspire new questions, ignite curiosity, and connect people with the past, the present, and one another.
The decline in arts and creative industries training is sobering for everyone in the sector.
I was fortunate to have access to the arts throughout my education. Without exposure in my formative years, would I have taken this path? Probably not. My experience as a student, and later as a tutor and manager developing and delivering programmes, reinforced how strongly education structures shape opportunity.
Across that journey, I saw the siloing of disciplines, the challenges teachers, tutors, and careers advisors face in keeping pace with rapid industry change, and the structural constraints institutions operate within — particularly the lengthy, costly bureaucratic processes to develop or modify programmes. Most significantly, I saw the absence of facilitated industry partnerships and clear pathways into work.
The issue is not a lack of talent or interest in creative careers. It is structural. Training models, institutional systems, and industry realities are no longer aligned — and addressing this misalignment is urgent if we are to sustain the creative sector.
Over my career, I have spoken with thousands of students and parents, and one concern consistently sits at the centre: pathways to sustainable work. While my mother strongly supported my arts development, her preference was that I go to law school rather than art school. Why? Because parents want safety and security, and being an “artist” has long been associated with risk rather than stability.
Policy settings can amplify these perceptions. In Australia, the 2021 Job Readiness Scheme — designed to steer learners toward priority fields — further penalised arts qualifications. While it did not fundamentally change most students’ decisions, it compounded an existing decline in enrolments and reduced programmes offered across universities and polytechnics.
Addressing this misalignment requires more than advocacy for the arts — it requires a rethink of how education connects to practice. If I were an aspiring creative today, I would want mentors active in the industry. I would want to learn in real-world work contexts. I would want to build and feel supported by industry networks that collaborate, share knowledge, and open doors. I would want flexibility and programmes that recognise my unique ambitions. Above all, I would want learning that is connected, applied, and relevant — the kind of education that equips me for the creative life I’m building.
Let’s work together — educators, industry leaders, policymakers, and advocates — to create programmes that are meaningful, integrated with industry, and genuinely prepare learners for the work they aspire to do. Let’s rethink outdated models, innovate where practice and learning intersect, and act to ensure the next generation of creatives have the skills, networks, and opportunities they need. The future of the creative sector depends on what we do now.
Faced with the current model of tertiary education, would I choose to pay for it?
In most cases, no.
Not because learning isn’t valuable — it absolutely is. I have grown through established institutional frameworks. Formal study broadened my thinking, expanded my practice, and opened professional doors. Structured environments and recognised credentials played an important role in my development.
But the world has changed.
Knowledge is no longer confined to institutions. Lectures, tutorials, case studies, industry research, and technical demonstrations are accessible on demand. You can learn coding on YouTube, SEO through podcasts, design in online communities, and business strategy via open platforms. The question is no longer access to skills — it is value. What am I actually paying for?
If learners are expected to pay significant fees, mainstream education must offer more than content delivery. Why, for example, are institutions still investing heavily in resources freely available elsewhere — often by specialists focused solely on crafting engaging content? Replicating what already exists does not strengthen the value proposition. Curation, context, and application do.
Clarity matters too. I don’t want to scroll through walls of text on institutional websites trying to decode offerings. I want to know: who are your people? What are they doing now in sectors I care about? How are they connected to industry? How will they support my career aspirations? Paying fees should buy access to experience, networks, and current practice — not generic programmes delivered by people who have rarely, if ever, worked in my desired or current industry.
So, what would I pay for?
I would pay for professional mentoring rather than traditional teaching — experienced practitioners working alongside me, challenging my thinking, and sharing tacit knowledge that cannot be downloaded.
I would pay for learning in and alongside current or prospective work — not paused employment or simulated exercises detached from reality. Real projects. Real clients. Real accountability. Learning embedded in practice, where theory and application work in tandem and capability is built in context.
I would pay for access to strong professional networks — communities of practice where learning happens through collaboration and shared experience, and relationships extend beyond graduation.
And yes, I would pay for credentials that genuinely signal demonstrated capability, not time served, but competence evidenced in the real world.
Traditional models were built around fixed timetables and standardised curricula. That made sense when institutions controlled access to knowledge. Today’s learners are digitally fluent, professionally active, and surrounded by free expertise. When so much learning is freely available, fees should buy transformation embedded in practice — not transmission detached from it.
If you were paying today, what would you expect in return?
I was introduced to making physical exhibition experience models by Lyn Plummer—an artist who taught me painting (and many other ways of thinking) at art school. Before art school, I was painting full-time and had a fixed idea of the technical skills I needed to acquire. Working with Lyn changed that. She helped me see that painting is spatial and experiential: it is encountered in space, shaped by scale, proportion, distance, and the relationships between bodies, surfaces, and movement. That early shift stayed with me.
Years later, I worked with Lyn again in my capacity as Manager/Curator at the Ashburton Art Gallery on her touring exhibition ‘Modulations: Cantata Reconfigured.’ While the exhibition had a core set of works that travelled, each iteration was reconfigured with new works responding to the architecture, spatial conditions, and context of each venue. Lyn created a physical model of every gallery space to map installations, sightlines, and circulation. Watching her use these models as thinking tools—testing scale, proximity, and movement—was transformative. Space became something you could hold, explore, and experience before anyone set foot in the gallery.
I had seen exhibition models before and was fascinated by them, but watching Lyn actively use them as working tools made the experience tangible. The models enabled me to understand how an exhibition would be encountered, not just seen. This insight informed my MFA practice, particularly as I established artist-run spaces where the interrogation of space as a medium, and how people experience it, became central.
I kept Lyn’s models for years, using them repeatedly in teaching as examples of spatial thinking in action. Over time they became fragile—barely holding together—but that fragility felt fitting. They were never precious; they were tools shaped by use and by the ideas they helped develop. I return to this approach as I explore the architecture of John McCulloch, who used drawing and model-making as core tools.
As I prototype a to-scale model of exhibition furniture for the project, I’m reminded how drawings, models, and prototypes allow ideas to be tested and experienced. People who worked with John recall how he drew during meetings, capturing points raised through sketches as much as notes. Only a few of his models survive, but like exhibition models made from non-permanent materials, they capture a moment when an idea became physical, tangible, and thinkable. Their value lies not in permanence, but in the possibilities they opened for experiencing space.
What could we discover if every idea was first made, held, and experienced?
Images: 1. Lyn Plummer, Modulations: Cantata Reconfigured, Ashburton Art Gallery, photography by Rodney Browne
2. John McCulloch, Model for Southland Polytechnic (now SIT) 1998
3. My work-in-progress prototype for exhibition furniture
Over my career, I’ve conducted far more interviews than I’ve ever attended—and I’ve learned that most organisations have forgotten what interviews are for.
Responsibility for building and sustaining teams has given me a strong sense of how differently organisations approach interviews, and how unclear we often are about their purpose.
Is it an interrogation? An oral exam with pre-scripted questions from a panel, some of whom haven’t even read your CV or cover letter, or an interview led by an HR professional or recruiter who has limited understanding of the role or the needs of the team? Or is it an intentional conversation, designed to understand how someone might contribute to a team with its own culture, pressures, and ambitions?
Having experienced more interviews as a candidate myself over the last year, I increasingly feel that we have lost our way.
Across my career, I have conducted numerous interviews in both small and large organisations. In some contexts I had full autonomy over how interviews were run; in others the process was highly prescribed, with little room to move off script. What I have learned is simple: the best interviews are focused on building your team.
At their best, interviews are conducted by the team members the candidate will work with, asking questions grounded in the actual work and culture a candidate will enter. They create space for meaningful conversation about values, experience, transferable skills, problems that can be solved, gaps that can be filled, and growth that can occur—on both sides. They are not exercises in perfect recall or narrow sector-specific experience.
Face-to-face interviews are my preference, as they allow you to create an environment where a genuine conversation can take place—rather than feeling like an online exam in a small, windowless room (yes, I’ve conducted those too and know they should be avoided!). While online interviews are now routine and often necessary, being in the same room—where the space itself can support conversation and relationship building—still fosters nuance, trust, and exchange, encouraging understanding rather than performance.
Too often, interviews amplify uneven power dynamics. They feel like a return to school—where you sense you have ‘failed’ in the first five minutes while grappling with dated, pre-scripted questions that filter out anyone who does not mirror an imagined ideal. In doing so, organisations lose exceptional candidates.
Building strong, resilient teams requires interviews designed as genuine conversations, not rigid assessments. They are an opportunity to explore skills, values, potential, and how someone can contribute to and strengthen a team; to have a meaningful dialogue rather than a cross-examination; and to invest in the people who will grow, solve problems, and make a lasting impact.
Journey to Piopiotahi, Milford Sound
While travelling to Southland to work on 'Drawing Together: John McCulloch’s Community Architecture', I revisited Piopiotahi Milford Sound. I had never been there in summer; my previous visits were in wilder weather, when the landscape feels fierce and untamed. Still, it was easy to see the appeal of fine conditions for visitors to this World Heritage area.
John McCulloch worked on hundreds of projects across Southland, including tourism infrastructure in Te Anau and Piopiotahi. The Milford Sound Visitor Terminal is one of these. Driving the Milford Road, I imagined the regular site visits described by architect Brent Knight, who recalled the McCulloch team making fortnightly day trips for meetings. What a commute!
The scale of visitation was obvious. Traffic was heavy, and buses filled the terminal car park. Piopiotahi, named after the Piopio, an extinct native thrush, now attracts over a million visitors annually. Numbers grew from around 437,000 in 2012 to 883,000 in 2018. Most visitors take cruises from Freshwater Basin. Around 40–50% of international visitors to Queenstown travel on to Piopiotahi, as do 20% of domestic visitors, and 19% of international visitors to Southland. These figures, from the Milford Opportunities Project, show the pressures on the area and the need for planning.
Although widely known as 'Milford Sound,' Piopiotahi is actually a fiord — one of 14 in Aotearoa New Zealand, all in the South Island, formed by glacial movement carving deep coastal inlets.
Management of the area is evolving. Following six months of work, a new partnership has been established, facilitated and supported by the SDC. Previously shared between RealNZ (49%), Skeggs Group (49%), and the Council (2%), the structure now includes Kāi Tahu, through Ngāi Tahu Holdings, and eight Papatipu Rūnaka — as a 33.3% partner alongside RealNZ and Skeggs Group.
Experiencing the terminal amid such growth highlighted how environments change and how architecture must continually adapt. Projects like this are never permanent forms; they are catalysts. The terminal did more than provide shelter and ticketing — it enabled patterns of visitation, shaped how people arrive, gather, and depart, and organised the relationship between landscape, infrastructure, and experience. It became part of a larger trajectory no single moment of design could fully anticipate.
As visitor numbers rise, expectations shift, and leadership evolves, the architecture evolves too. Additions, reconfigurations, and new layers of meaning become part of its life. Rather than a finished product, the terminal is one stage in an ongoing process — a framework supporting environmental management, tourism, and identity building.
It is exciting to see Kāi Tahu taking a stronger role in kaitiakitanga in Piopiotahi, and to imagine how local narratives and cultural presence may become more embedded in the experience of this extraordinary place, shaping how it is visited and understood.
After returning from a week working in Southland, it has been a pleasure to spend time with publications from John McCulloch’s archives as part of research for the exhibition 'Drawing Together: John McCulloch’s Community Architecture.' I am certainly not an expert in architecture, but, like many, my relationship with it is personal. My mother, an interior designer with a passion for architecture, collected books that allowed me to explore space and design as a child. My parents’ second‑storey extension to our first family home in Dunedin included my mother’s lead‑lighting studio, where stacks of imported coloured glass and feature windows she made revealed the material and social possibilities of architecture.
Through McCulloch’s archives, I am reminded that architecture shapes how we live and move, framing routines, interactions and a sense of belonging, often without conscious awareness. This issue of Architectural Design shows his engagement with debates shaping late twentieth‑century architecture.
Christopher Martin’s essay 'Second Chance' revisits the Prince of Wales’s 1987 Mansion House speech, his BBC film A Vision of Britain, and the 1989 V&A exhibition. McCulloch’s interest in these debates reflects his concern with human‑scale, context‑sensitive architecture. The Prince critiqued modernist redevelopment for erasing historic streets, squares and mixed‑use neighbourhoods, and argued for continuity, craft, and public engagement in design.
A bookmarked article, 'New Town Ordinances & Codes' by Duany, Plater‑Zyberk, and Chellman, likely noted by McCulloch because of links to another archived article by Duany, critiques regulations that prioritise traffic, parking, separated uses and low density. The Traditional Neighbourhood Ordinance they propose purports to reduce car dependence, and support social interaction, civic life, and a mix of housing and local commerce — principles McCulloch explored in his own work.
Richard Rogers’ 'Pulling Down the Prince' offers a counterpoint to A Vision of Britain, arguing that architecture reflects social, economic, and technological conditions. Traditions now revered were once radical. Rogers emphasises adaptability: buildings must change function while keeping coherence, a principle evident in McCulloch’s context‑sensitive design.
These perspectives intersect in McCulloch’s archives and practice. As Rogers notes, “once great centres of civic life have become jungles where the profiteer and the vehicle rule” (Architectural Design, 1989). McCulloch’s advocacy for walkable, mixed‑use communities and responsive design reveals an understanding of these issues that is practical and philosophical. This publication, as an artefact of his engagement, and in the context of 'Drawing Together', captures a moment in the ongoing conversation about continuity, adaptability, and civic life, showing why architecture, as McCulloch understood it, remains inseparable from the way we live.
The new year brought confirmation of ten re-established polytechnics across Aotearoa New Zealand, including SIT, Ara, EIT, NMIT, Toi Ohomai, Wintec, Unitec and MIT, Otago Polytechnic, UCOL and The Open Polytechnic. It’s a significant moment, but it also raises the question: what could autonomy in the regions enable?
Vocational training in the regions takes a community. Times have changed and so have the needs and aspirations of learners and industries. Industries are pivoting faster than ever, and expecting a centralised, siloed model of education and training to keep up is increasingly risky. Regional providers with local governance are far better placed to understand what is happening on the ground and to develop programmes and delivery modes that respond to real gaps in skills and capability.
While the regional institutions identified as sustainable will be relieved to continue this work, ten polytechnics alone will not fill the skills gaps across the country. Some regions will remain underserved. Learners can move or enrol in online qualifications, but attrition in remote programmes is high because the model simply does not work for many people. Onsite hands-on learning builds communities, and when it comes to work, having access to face-to-face industry and community networks who can support your learning journey is crucial.
One of the most visible gaps is for people already in work. Learning pathways are still largely designed for school leavers, who can dedicate months or years to full-time study. For those in full- or part-time work, often supporting families, this is rarely possible. After more than a decade in the sector, I have seen how limited the options are for people to grow or shift their skills in the places they live and work. We all can and should continue to drive our own learning, and access to online resources has never been greater, but the development of hands-on skills and capabilities that are relevant to regional contexts must be embedded in communities and workplaces. Learning is no longer a destination, as it was once viewed. Upskilling and retraining while in work are now fundamental to supporting thriving regions.
So how might newly announced regional autonomy begin to serve those who are currently underserved? Most regions will not see it as viable or desirable to encourage people to leave to train, nor is it practical for many to do so. Regions now have the chance to establish their own models for growth around identified gaps. There is a real opportunity to reimagine delivery so that learning is embedded in workplaces and local industries, with facilitated, blended training that fits around work rather than requiring people to step away from it. Learning and working life are intertwined, and regions are best placed to determine how skills development connects with their industries and communities.
If we are serious about thriving regions and sustainable local economies, learning must be designed and delivered to fit the lives of learners while strengthening the communities around them. Regional providers, industry partners, and communities can now work together to shape models of vocational learning that are accessible, practical, and deeply connected to local needs. This is how skills development can support both people and places, creating thriving communities where learning is part of everyday life.
I started my ‘formal’ tertiary education at the Dunedin School of Art, completing a four-year degree followed by a two-year masters. It sounds like a long time now, but at the time it was standard, and like all periods filled with activity, it flew by. I finished my degree and chose to continue straight into my masters because I felt I had more to learn, I was in the ‘zone’ in terms of navigating that learning environment, and I could already see how hard it was for those with greater financial commitments to step back into study.
What I also learned in art school is that learning never ends. The more you learn the less you know. That really did ring true for me. And although I have spent much of my life in learning institutions, learning itself is not confined to them. It can happen anywhere and at any time, and we are now in a moment when learning has never been more accessible. We can choose learning that fits with the contexts we are navigating.
Many institutions still treat learning as a destination, where you acquire a qualification which signals that you have arrived and will now naturally progress to your aspired place in the world. This does both learners and institutions a disservice, because generally a qualification is not a ticket or a pass to anything. Educational institutions often boast that qualifications result in better employment outcomes such as earning more in the long term. However, rather than the acquisition of a qualification, what really matters is the active pursuit of learning in whatever form that takes.
There are ongoing debates about the relevance of tertiary qualifications, especially in relation to how quickly graduates transition into work. This is an ongoing challenge for institutions whose funding models and historical ways of operating struggle to support the kind of agility the working world now demands. That does not mean there is no value in undertaking a qualification. When I later completed a PhD, I knew the credential mattered less than being supported to pursue research in the real world, and to keep learning as part of how I work.
Those who treat education as a destination, and who prioritise maintaining the status quo over learning, are inevitably steering themselves into irrelevance. You have never arrived. A qualification is not a ticket or a right to the working life you imagine. Lifelong learning is not something an institution gives you — it is something you choose, again and again, as the world, and your place within it, keeps changing.
When I was at art school, I lived off a student allowance, which meant a very lean life with little room for expenditure beyond rent, power, phone, and food. I didn’t have internet at home, or my own laptop. I made black coffee in a pot on the stove, later upgrading to a stovetop coffee brewer I found for $2 at an op shop. I slept on a mattress on the floor with a broken bed base, owned an old antique dressing table, and put cash into jars each week to make sure I could keep the power and phone on.
Most winters I froze and went to bed fully dressed, wearing a beanie and using two hot water bottles. My first flat was a concrete-block, two-bedroom unit with a one-bar heater. Each morning I woke to condensation streaming down the walls. I owned an old second-hand television that worked sometimes but had an ancient video player that worked just fine—aside from the occasional moment when I had to unscrew the top to rescue a chewed tape.
There was a shared washing machine with two tubs, requiring mid-cycle load swaps. I walked long distances to art school, to buy groceries, pay bills, and visit op shops, only occasionally taking the bus. I kept spare clothes in my locker at school because arriving soaked was not uncommon in Dunedin.
None of this felt unusual. And this isn’t a story about hardship—I was happy. I was making my own way in the world and had the opportunity to attend art school and learn from people I admired. I became an avid op shopper and attended auctions, amazed by how much could be acquired for so little.
I committed fully to painting and took every opportunity to do commissioned work: portraits of children, pets, houses, and gardens. When I started, I had two paintbrushes and three colours—black, white, and red. I made my own canvases at art school. Later, a local art supply store allowed me to open an account, paying $10 a week so I could gradually buy more brushes and colours. I painted constantly, developing strategies to work with what I had.
For a large-scale commission, I woke at 4am to paint for three hours before my flat mates woke. The canvases were too large for my bedroom, so I unpacked and repacked them daily.
I didn’t need much to begin. I worked for years with a 35mm camera a friend loaned me, bought 120mm cameras at auctions, and still use two old tripods—one bought for $15 thirty years ago, the other found abandoned.
Limitations became my greatest ally. The skills I learned served me well when I took my first paid role in the non-profit museum sector, where budgets covered little beyond salaries and modest programme costs. Fundraising was routine, and doing a lot with a little was simply how things were done.
Creativity thrives on constraint. Limitations force choices, sharpen focus, and build resilience. Working with less taught me how to begin, how to persist, and how to solve problems rather than wait for ideal conditions. Abundance, by contrast, can often be a hindrance to creativity, encouraging hesitation, distraction, or the pursuit of perfection. These lessons continue to inform my creative practice, reminding me that meaningful work rarely depends on having more but just on getting started.
Commission for Dunedin Hospital, 1999.
As I was searching our bookshelves for a particular quote I wanted to reference this morning, I thought again about books as objects/artefacts. Yes, I am old enough that I completed both my master’s and PhD before the advent of AI, and while I used online sources, I relied heavily on books.
I remembered the substance of the quote and the author, and I was able to locate the book fairly quickly from our very large, unorganised (and somewhat out of control) book collection. Why was I able to access the book so quickly? Because I remembered the book as an object: its size, the colour of its spine, and the cover. A skill that was likely fundamental to the research I was engaged in.
When completing my masters, referencing was done manually, and you learned your lesson very quickly if you did not make note mentally or physically of an important source. This made me think of the connection formed with a book as a physical object that is handled, paged through, post-it filled, marked, and notated. Books that hang around the house, lying open at pertinent pages. Books that are packed in bags and carried around. That are lived with. That are valued as artefacts.
If I used online articles, I was in the habit of printing them and filing them away with the reference carefully documented on the front page. These were also the days when we printed our own texts, particularly when tackling something with chapters, and took to the pages with scissors and tape to reorganise, restructure, and physically address flow and consistency. It all seems a bit strange now — so what, if anything, have we lost when books or articles are read on screens exclusively? Would I have remembered both the author and the content of the quote if it was not tied to the physical experience of handling, paging through, and living with the book?
We often have a young visitor who enjoys perusing our diverse and chaotic collection. Piled on every surface and overflowing from numerous bookshelves (yes, including the garage). Her selections always surprise me but of course I understand that she is selecting piles of books based on their appeal as objects: the size, the colour, the title, the cover, and the illustrations inside.
The physical act of searching and making choices is an embodied experience. Where, when, and how you choose to cosy up with a book all contribute to how we retain what we read. Whether the book is read aloud or consumed in silence. With or without juice, a cup of tea, or snack. The experience of the book is embedded in the physical acts before, during, and after reading.
Do we still need or want to remember in times when we can simply Google or Chat locate a new reference via our screens at any time? What do you think we stand to lose when the experience of books is no longer embodied?
“A life of making isn’t a series of shows or projects, or productions, or things; it is an everyday practice.” Anne Hamilton
Creativity is often framed as a sudden spark — a flash of inspiration. In reality, creativity is built through practice. Your first idea becomes a catalyst. Creative work requires time: interrogation, reworking, and refinement. It often requires unlearning.
As we age, we are taught, subtly and repeatedly, to abandon imagination in favour of certainty. Creativity becomes defined and contained, rather than unlimited and expansive. Fear and doubt begin to feel like barriers instead of natural companions to experimentation. Mistakes, happy accidents, and even failure are not signs of inadequacy; they are essential to the creative process, just as they are to learning itself.
You are not born with a finite number of ideas. Creativity is generative. It produces infinite possibilities: new ways of thinking, solutions to problems, relationships with materials, and approaches to connection. Think of creativity like a muscle — it strengthens through daily use. Small acts of making compound.
If fear or doubt arises, that is a sign you are on the right track. We naturally fear the unknown, but it is precisely in the unknown that creativity flourishes.
Another barrier that emerges with age is the pressure to become an ‘expert.’ Curator Marcia Tucker resisted this position, stating, “Experts are people who are deeply involved with what they already know, and I don’t want to be one of them.” The amateur, the one who does not yet know, remains open, curious, and willing to experiment. It is in this state of not-knowing, or perhaps un-knowing, that innovation becomes possible.
When I see children create, I see unrestrained creativity. Their work is not measured against invisible standards or weighed down by fear it does not ‘measure up.’ There is freedom in that, and it is a freedom worth reclaiming.
So, make something every day. It doesn’t matter what. Write a poem, a post, a story, an article. Play with materials, meaning, and process. Dance. Sing. Perform. Animate. Compose. Curate. Film. Draw. Document. Archive. Just make.
Learn as you go and embrace the amateur in you. Work in the unknown. Fear, doubt, and failure are not signs to stop — they are your friends. They tell you that you are moving beyond what is familiar. Nothing new comes from sticking to what you already know.
Creativity is a practice, a daily commitment to curiosity, exploration, and growth.
Hamilton, Ann. Making Not Knowing. In Learning Mind: Experience into Art, edited by Mary Jane Jacob and Jacquelynn Baas. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010, p. 69.
Tucker, Marcia. Out of Bounds: The Collected Writings of Marcia Tucker. Edited by Lisa Phillips, Johanna Burton, Alicia Ritson, and Kate Wiener. Getty Research Institute and The New Museum, 2019, p. 240.
Volunteering has long been the backbone of communities—sharing knowledge, building networks, and creating resilience. But many of us no longer have the time or energy for long-term roles alongside work, study, and caregiving. That doesn’t make volunteering less valuable—it just means it needs to look different.
Having worked with many volunteer groups, I’ve seen the benefits for both volunteers and organisations. Volunteering builds skills, confidence, relationships, and often opens up opportunities that emerge through connections rather than formal channels.
It shows people what you can do, teaches you to work with diverse groups, introduces new ways of thinking, provides applied experience, and challenges you to solve unfamiliar problems. Many opportunities in my career have grown directly from volunteering.
When I began my studies, internships were rare. That’s why I recommend that anyone choosing a course of study today prioritises programmes that include practical placements. Gaining hands-on experience, whether through placements or volunteering, can be incredibly powerful.
Volunteer roles may not pay the bills, but they help both emerging and established professionals develop skills, build networks, and gain experience at any stage of their careers.
At art school in Dunedin, I deliberately said yes to as many voluntary opportunities as possible. This led to my first role in the creative industries. I gained real-world skills and, just as importantly, a network of people who believed in me. Volunteering gave me access to communities and experiences I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Do I still volunteer today? Absolutely. I make volunteerism a part of my working life and see it as integral to the work I do. Strengthening the resilience and sustainability of the creative industries is my purpose, so this time is well spent.
Working with people in the sector you want to join helps you build your community, which is essential to a sustainable career. That’s why I encourage micro-volunteering: contributing small, manageable amounts of time to a project or organisation aligned with your values and aspirations. If you see a problem or want to contribute, propose how you might help—even in a small way. You never know who will notice, or what opportunities may emerge.
Micro-volunteering recognises modern realities while preserving the heart of volunteering. It allows you to contribute meaningfully without overcommitting, while building skills, relationships, and purpose.
Small, intentional contributions can lead to lasting change. Look for gaps in your sector, consider how your skills, or even a commitment of time, could help in a sustainable way. This is how careers, communities, and industries are strengthened over time.
John Wishart in his Invercargill studio
