C is for Creativity

From the Memoirs of Billie Harper, looking back on her learning journey.

They used to teach creativity like it was a subject — as if it lived in art rooms and brainstorming sessions. But creativity, as we came to understand it, was not a skill. But creativity, as we came to understand it, wasn’t just a skill. It was a response — to constraint, to change, to collapse..

When the old systems broke, it wasn’t innovation that saved us, but imagination — quiet, often unrecognised acts of reconfiguration. I grew up on hearing stories—a broken fence becoming a wind harp. Abandoned stations turned into seed banks. Recipes reshaped around what could still grow. And Molly. One of many remarkable women in my matrilineal line— cobbling together old tech to get us talking again.

Cultivating Creativity

Back then, some still saw creativity as a luxury.

Now, we know it as continuity. It’s the thread that allowed us to weave new ways of being from what we had left.

I remember Mum telling me they made paper from mushroom stems during the Rebuild. How neighbours built solar heaters from scrap.

The Importance of Creativity

I remember how we once re-mapped an entire learning circle activity around a single question: What can we still create, together?

Creativity is not invention. It’s attention.