The Value of Creating by Hand in the Age of Uncertainty: An Extract from Making a Start

Early in 2025, I began asking creative people about how they start a new piece of work. At the time, I was making a start of my own – setting up Scarlet Tiger Press with the simple idea that I would publish books that were beautiful and environmental. I didn’t know exactly how to do that – and, truthfully, I’m still learning – but trial and error and making it up as I go have become my best friends.

Perhaps that is why I found myself drawn to the subject of beginnings. I was looking for guidance, for inspiration, for company. I hoped some of my favourite artists and makers would be kind enough to share their processes with me – to trust me to turn what they wrote into a book which could go on to inspire other people to start something of their own.

And they did. 

This book is your creative companion. A handbook for creativity in uncertain times. A glance into the studios of 17 incredible artists and makers, each generously opening their door to those wandering by.

Creativity is often solitary and hard to pin down. Where do ideas come from? How do you stay inspired? And how do you keep going when doubt creeps in? Knowing that other artists and makers are out there grappling with the same challenges in their individual ways, feels, to me, deeply reassuring.

Of course, we are also living in the era of climate crisis, and that raises other questions. Why make at all? Why draw, paint, stitch, shape, when this alone will not save the world?

I believe making matters more than ever. To make something is an act of care and intention in a world that often feels chaotic and indifferent. The climate crisis is hard for us to conceptualise in our limited languages, because it exists on multiple temporal scales and involves countless perspectives, human and non-human.

Making bridges this gap between meaning and language; it gives shape to what is intangible, ineffable, connecting us to each other. Or perhaps it is simply this: to make something is to pay attention. To stop and step outside yourself for a time. And that, in itself, is powerful.

The creative processes described in this book span a wide range of disciplines – from penmaking to pottery to printmaking and plenty in-between. Some of our contributors plan things methodically from the start, others jump straight into it, trusting their intuition to lead the way. Many spend time walking and sketching in nature, while others do not draw at all. Often, the start is difficult to define; there is the physical start, of course, but the mind may turn over impressions and ideas long before this point.

Whether this book says something universal about creative beginnings or instead simply highlights that everyone is different, and creativity cannot be teased apart, broken down step by step, I am not sure. But there is courage to start in a world like this. To know that making new work matters, even as the future feels uncertain. To create place and meaning, amidst increasing artifice, abstraction, and homogeneity. It is, and always will be, an act of resistance.

So, take this book and go boldly into the unknown. Notice change, document the world around you, and say something with your hands. Be proud to begin again each time, and welcome the mistakes that make us human – that connect us to each other, to our pasts, to our many possible futures. Do not worry so much about what comes next. Make the start that makes you who you are.