2025 | Craft + Design Daily Creative Challenge

 The Craft + Design Canberra Daily Creative Challenge is designed to redefine what creativity is.  The 2025 Challenge explored the theme of Rewilding, a call to return to untamed creativity, embrace imperfection, and connect with the raw, natural forces that shape both art and life.   Participants received daily word prompts related to the theme of Rewilding via email throughout July, created a response using any creative technique and posted an image to Instagram.. As CEO + Artistic Director of Craft + Design Canberra I developed this project several years ago as a means of connecting our community and sharing the benefits of daily creative practice with wider audiences, these benefits include improved wellbeing and cognitive function, productivity and self confidence.I am participating in the Challenge to be part of this rich connecting experience and reignite my creative energy in the winter months. I am not eligible for the prizes, simply participating to be part of our wonderful community. For the 2025 Challenge I hoped to ‘Rewild’ my creative practice by using a handmade process that was wildly different to my digital images, a contemporary jewellery technique of crocheting with copper wire. Crocheting with wire is slow and repetitive and forced me to be present in the now. I saw it as a quiet protest against the speed of contemporary living and the destruction it wreaks. A ‘Rewilding’ antidote to the mayhem, and a seed of alternate approaches to living and repairing our world. For the 2025 Challenge my aim was to generate a digital image in response to the prompt and then crochet a section of one long piece and or/ fragments that would be combined to create a one piece at the conclusion of the Challenge. Sadly I was struck with nasty bout of Covid during the project and was unable to complete the 31 days. The results of what i did complete are presented below.

1 July | INFINITE. Today I started by creating a digital image as a way of processing my ideas about the word prompt, Infinite. I found myself thinking about infinite reflections and and visualised them as optical black and white tunnels on an infinite circle. I translated this into a silver and black tube. I added reflective circular beads to create infinite reflections and inserted marbles into the them to create rhythm and enhance reflections. Glass and metal in concert. I am surprised by the result - it is entirely a product of process that I could not have imagined without the journey.

2 July | WATER. With my evolving crochet form I sought to represent water as a vital resource, precious and rare gem. I selected a deep sapphire coloured marble, reminiscent of a perfectly spherical water drop, its surface evoking the stillness and mystery of a secluded pool, an inviting space of reflection and immersion. By leaving part of the marble uncovered I reveal its richness and draw attention to the contrast between the glass and the deep blue wire that cradles it. This wire acts as a metaphor for support and care, holding and nurturing the marble as we must hold and nurture our access to clean water. The work is a meditation on gratitude for the privilege of clean, life sustaining water and a reminder of its fragility and value.

3 July | RIPE. Today’s response embodies the essence of ripeness, a threshold moment when something is on the cusp of transformation, full of latent energy and promise. I chose a warm colour gradient to evoke softness and sensuality, crafting a voluptuous spherical form that bursts with potential. It captures that fleeting instant of perfection, balanced delicately between firmness and softness, just before release. Inside the crocheted sphere, I placed three opaque red marbles, symbolic seeds poised for dispersal. They represent the readiness for change, the quiet tension before growth begins to unfold.My aim to create one continuous piece has been thwarted. Today’s response, like yesterday’s, has formed an end piece, this time at the opposite end. I now find myself with a completed fragment. I am left pondering how I will integrate the next response…

4 July | RELEASE. The delightful moment of release, of surrender, acceptance, and the quiet joy that blooms in letting go. My creative response to the prompt RELEASE is a standalone wire crochet element rather than a continuation of the necklace-like piece I created in response to the previous three words. I stitched myself into a corner by finishing the piece at both ends. Reaching this point feels liberating. It has opened up space for me to create diverse fragments. As the days unfold, I imagine finding ways to reunite these fragments into a single piece or perhaps an installation.

5 July | MOON. When I think of the moon, I think of bedtime rituals steeped in love. When my children were small, I would carry them out to the deck at night, and together we whispered goodnight to the moon. A soft circle of safety drawn in starlight and quiet words. Later, when they were away staying with their father, when they called to say they missed me, I’d tell them to look up and find the moon and remember our cuddles. ‘We were never far, we are both gazing at the same silvery moon in the sky.’ My partner walks in the moonlit bush where white gums shine like ghosts of trees, the creek gurgles and the frogs sing in operatic glory. From the hill, he calls at bedtime, his deep voice describing the night in vivid detail— a landscape of love, a goodnight serenade, lit by the moon. This week got really challenging as I was struck down with a nasty bout of Covid and was only able to rest and sleep. I’m feeling way behind in the Challenge now and worried about my ability to catch up. However, as I recuperate, I’m starting to get my energy back and have managed some iPad drawing and wire crochet. These gentle creative activities have been surprisingly grounding. Even though I’m stressed about overdue work, it’s been comforting to do something expressive and soothing from bed. It’s reminded me how creativity can be a quiet companion during recovery, helping to ease the mind while the body heals. The digital image I created in response to the prompt MOON was reminiscent of the moon on a boat, a journey, transporting me and my loves to sleep through our moon rituals. I tried to recreate the moon as a stripy sphere with wire crochet, but was unhappy with the first result. I tried again to create a more silvery and sparkly moon with crystals added to replicate moonlight in the bush. Again, not totally happy, but enough, I’m really behind, so onto the next word. It is, after all, about playing, process, and creativity, not perfection.

6 July | ABUNDANCE. Abundance is a mindset. Years ago, when going through some challenging stuff, I started gratitude journalling on a daily basis. This drew my focus to small details in life and noticing abundance and beauty everywhere. In the bush, in people, at work, in art. It built resilience and positive focus. After the fires and the pandemic, my favourite walking track was dry and sparse, traumatised and thirsty. Then La Niña came, and it rained and rained. Suddenly, as if from nowhere, green spouts appeared and rampantly filled space. And then, extraordinary wildflowers I had never seen before poked their heads out from the rambles and looked at the sun. Where there had seemed to be nothing, life emerged triumphantly from dormant seeds waiting for their time. In response to the prompt, Abundance, I created a lush green crochet form growing chaotically from a seed (represented by a glass marble). I experimented with chain stitch tendrils breaking free from the original form.

My foray into the 2025 Craft + Design Canberra Daily Creative Challenge was cut short by a nasty bout of Covid so i didnt complete the 31 days.