Guest blog from The Fagan Foundation
It’s World Kindness Day and around the UK people have pledged to look out for each other by buying food or coffee for strangers, getting to work early to help a colleague, giving out compliments and visiting elderly people, amongst others.
Kindness day was organised by Kindness UK, a non-profit organisation which gathers research and champions kindness as a vital part of daily life. The day asks people to have a heightened awareness of kindness in their interactions and to consider giving a random act of kindness to a friend or someone they don’t know.
The Fagun Foundation is a non-profit organisation devoted to using creativity to help women who are experiencing barriers in their educational, personal or professional lives. We are working with top creative practitioners around the UK to set up workshops in performing, visual and literary arts where women can express themselves and support each other.
Self-care is a huge part of kindness – as well as looking after other people, each individual needs to look after themselves. Creativity is a great place to start being kind to yourself. The benefits of creativity are endless - working it into your everyday routine can help you see life in different ways and get rid of any blocks you might be experiencing. We would like to encourage you to try a small act of creativity to care for yourself this Kindness Day. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Do a five-minute sketch of a household object.
- Write without stopping for three minutes – even if you just write ‘I don’t know’, you are still allowing your creative consciousness to flow.
- Make an origami bird – here are the instructions.
- Make a sculpture from objects on your desk. Write a name label and a description, like in a gallery.
- Go for a walk and take a photograph.
- Pick two words at random from a dictionary and use them as inspiration for a poem or a short story.
- Put on your favourite song and dance for as long as the song is playing.
- Write a haiku about your day, something you can see, hear or touch – a Japanese poem style with three lines and seventeen syllables. The first and last lines have five syllables, the middle line has seven.
- Think of something you are worried about and draw it as a cartoon animal. Stick it on your desk and laugh at it.
- Make up some new lyrics to a song and sing it.
Enjoy your creations and have a wonderful kindness day!
The Fagun Foundation will soon be holding an event in Central London and are looking for creative practitioners and speakers in a range of artistic disciplines to inspire and teach the students. If you are interested in supporting this or finding out more please get in touch with them.
