Corona Thrive
I think all of us have had more than a sneak peek at how life can be over the rest of the year and possibly years to come. We hear a lot about how our future is going to be entwined with the current epidemic. So it’s up to us to figure out ways to thrive even in its existence.
Lockdown woes: Personally, the first few weeks of the lockdown were hard. I wasn’t really sure how to spend my time, being the social butterfly that I am. But my creative spirit saved the day and many months to come when I was stuck alone at home in Bangalore. I came to realize how well I can utilize my time with creative pursuits, learning new things, and challenging myself to do more and do better! Building on my existing skills became a way of life and exploring new areas of skill-building became a motivating act for me.
I figured it would be a nice idea to let you all know about my creative pursuits and I hope it will inspire you to ponder more, learn more, and create more!
- Get on Udemy!
Udemy has some fantastic courses that are suitable for beginners, intermediate and advanced learners. There is a diverse choice of courses that I found on Udemy which helped me build on my skills. I am proud to say that I can see an improvement in my work purely out of daily course practice. It also helped me gain an understanding of what I liked and gravitated toward. Another good thing about Udemy is that every course has ratings and the quality of the course is on par with the rating. Course prices were dropped during the lockdown time and there were some killer courses that were worth way beyond what I paid!
2. Domestika for the corona domesticated!
Domestika is yet another online course site, but a Spanish owned one! The courses are majorly directed at the Art and Design community. Spaniards have a natural inclination to art, colors, and the idea of exploring. With the numerous creatives from that country — Picasso, Dali, Gaudi, etc, we see that the people of Spain are well versed with the idea of creativity and self-expression. These courses were quite advanced and once I did a few, I had to backtrack and take smaller steps to understand basic ideas. I did a pop-up book course, which was truly brilliant to watch, but very tough to do unless we had the right tools and a lot of prior knowledge about folds, creases, etc. But, this proved to be great inspiration for me and it allowed me to understand that I could use a lot of time making pop-ups and learning more about them, as it seemed endless as to how much you could create!
3. Insta- live
Insta-live is a great way to keep your spirits up. With live interviews, classes, and podcasts, it definitely makes you feel like you actually have someone else with you in the room! It almost matches heading out and socializing! But of course, we all know nothing beats physical presence — or did we all just learn that through this phase? lol A lot of the live streams that I have been listening to include interviews with some pretty exceptional people around the world. The online world is so huge and what can beat sitting on your sofa and interacting with a famous graffiti artist in Uzbekistan or a well known Vietnamese chef?!
4. Teach!
We all have something we know well enough to share with others. Knowledge sharing should be an inherent quality in all of us, after all, knowledge is worth more than physical money any day! I started showcasing a lot of my art and creating videos on the basics of certain art forms. And these were shared with people for free. Although I didn’t get a lot of time in the midst of work to do a lot of this, I did find some inspiring artists who used to take daily free classes for anyone who would want to learn something new. I know it proves to be a great marketing tactic, but it also builds trust amongst the teacher and learner.
5. Talk!
During these times of social distancing, a large way to occupy the day is to talk to people! Get in touch with those long lost friends, talk more with existing ones and well, keep talking a lot more to your family! I have had days where I have spent hours talking to my friends. What they say is true- the more time and care you give to something, the more it is bound to flourish! And my friendships have flourished by many folds, by just communicating so much more than I would have if I had other places to go to!
I feel like I should end this by showing you a lot of the creative work I did over the last few months to stand by #create during covid! So here you are!!
The author of this post, Divya Ramachandran is an Artist and Writer. She has a Masters in Design from Milan and teaches art to kids during the week. She works on creative projects during her free time and loves collaborating with different artists.
You can get in touch with her at rama.divya@gmail.com or follow her on Instagram @ idea_alchemist.