Ways to change up a tired creative routine…

1-28 and the idea courtesy of Gabe Anderson, 29-56 courtesy of Matthew Carey.

1. Hang posters around town with just your name on them
2. Write a song with your agent
3. Call your manager’s spouse to thank them
4. Buy your bass player some strings
5. Introduce two of your artist pals to each other
6. Recommend a book to your fans and then do a FB live the following week to talk about it
7. Make a playlist of your fifty favorite songs and share it
8. Ask your PR agent or team what they would love more than anything
9. Write a song with two different choruses that both happen twice 
10. Send an email to the drummer of your dreams asking them if they’d be interested in playing on a track
11. Turn your phone off for an entire day
12. Post every hour for an entire day
13. Make a little video introducing your fans to your team
14. Send your fans merch
15. Get coffee with your producer just for fun
16. Buy some Facebook or Instagram ads promoting an artist other than you
17. Go test out amps with your guitar player
18. Call the people from your high school rock band and tell old stories
19. Take a Polaroid every day for a month, auctioning each one on eBay 
20. Write a really fast song
21. Write any song and release it on soundcloud the same day, maybe livestream the entire day
22. Make the best music video you can using only free stock footage
23. Draw a picture and then throw it away
24. Release a song on myspace
25. Release a song under a different name and don’t tell anyone
26. Come up with a new idea for how you end your live show
27. Watch Almost Famous with other musicians 
28. Write lyrics to a song without writing them down

29. Dedicate an appreciation post to your favourite artist.
30. Donate time to teach or mentor someone who’s just starting out in your field.
31. Ask someone very young what art means to them.
32. Ask an elder in the business what has changed over the span of their career and what has stayed the same.
33. Use a friend’s social media post as source material and work your magic. Turn it into a song. Illustrate it. Write a scene around it.
34. Leave your favourite podcast a review on Apple podcasts.
35. Create a playlist of tunes (Spotify) or videos (YouTube) that inspire you and share it.
36. Ask your fans to share what they’re working on at the moment.
37. Make a piece of work mimicking the style of one of your creative heroes.
38. Start with a piece by another artist and try to improve it in some way.
39. Pretend you are your favourite artist for a day. Act as they would and see what happens.
40. Flip your usual mode for a week. If you usually focus on producing quantity, switch and work on making one thing of quality. If you usually focus on quality, let go and create as much as you can with no judgement of what is or isn’t good enough.
41. Reach out to a rival and invite them to collaborate.
42. Make something in public, inviting your audience to participate in the process.
43. Pitch yourself for a job you wouldn’t ordinarily be considered for.
44. Without waiting for permission, make something creative and useful for someone you admire and offer it to them as a gift.
45. Commit to a one-week project. Write a book, record an album or make a film. Make it to the best of your ability within the constraint of one week.
46. Curate a collection and invite colleagues to contribute. A portfolio, a conference, a festival.
47. Create a piece of work using the fewest and simplest tools possible.
48. Deconstruct a piece of art you love, then teach what you have learned in a format of your choice.
49. Spend half a day making something in an art form outside of your expertise.
50. Set yourself a challenge to make something within 7 minutes. Then spend another 7 minutes remaking it but changing one element. Now remake version 2, changing a different element.  Do this 7 times in total and see what you have at the end.
51. Take a long walk with no distractions but your own thoughts.
52. Swap workplaces with a colleague for a day.
53. Invite some young people to collaborate with you on a project (the younger the better).
54. Invite colleagues to take one of your pieces and create their own remix of it.
55. Wear an entirely different outfit to do your work than you’d usually wear. 
56. Devise your own list of 28 ways to switch it up and share it.

If you’d like to be first to get all the news about Kieran’s Theme Nights and Teenage Theme Nights, you can sign up to the Theme Night newsletter here.

Or if you’re interested in learning how to play piano, you can sign up to the Piano With Kieran newsletter here.

Advertisement