Field Notes: When Creativity Needs Permission

When Creativity Needs Permission

There is something deeply unsettling about being told that creativity is for everyone while constantly being asked whether you are allowed to create.

Over the last few months I have found myself spending less time making work and more time navigating systems. Every question seemed to lead to another meeting. Every conversation uncovered another policy. Every possible solution revealed another reason why something might not be possible.

It was never simply a matter of hearing the word no. It was the journey towards it.

When your practice relies on machinery, printing equipment and making things with your hands, you quickly discover how many barriers have been built around creativity. I offered compromises. I offered to contribute towards increased electricity costs because my equipment draws more power than most artists would use. I tried to understand every restriction and adapt wherever possible.

Each attempt seemed to uncover another obstacle.

This experience has forced me to think about something much bigger than one studio or one organisation. It has made me question who creative institutions are actually designed to serve.

Across the country we hear the same language repeated. Creativity should be accessible. The arts belong to everyone. Communities should be supported. Working class voices matter.

These are ideas I believe in.

The problem begins when those words meet reality.

Many institutions appear to celebrate working class culture while becoming increasingly difficult for working class people to exist within. The artist who paints quietly in a corner is rarely questioned. The maker running machinery, printing garments, building installations or experimenting with materials often finds themselves navigating an entirely different set of expectations.

It is a strange contradiction.

Street art is welcomed once it has been framed.

Protest is celebrated once it has become history.

Working class culture is admired once it has become safe enough to hang on a gallery wall.

The people still making culture in real time are too often asked to justify their presence.

Accessibility is often discussed as though it begins and ends with a wheelchair ramp or an open door. Real accessibility is much more complicated than that. It asks whether somebody working full time can afford the rent. It asks whether a person building a business through overtime wages has the same opportunity as somebody with financial security. It asks whether creativity is still possible without asking permission every step of the way.

Institutions rarely intend to exclude people. Most are filled with passionate individuals who genuinely want to support artists. Yet institutions have a habit of protecting themselves first. Policies accumulate. Procedures expand. Decisions become slower. Before long the system itself becomes the obstacle.

Working class culture has rarely waited for permission.

It was built in factories after shifts ended. It emerged in social clubs, warehouses, squats, garages and community halls. It appeared in photocopied zines, on skateparks, on railway

bridges and on the backs of jackets.

People created because they needed to.

Not because somebody approved the idea.

That realisation has shaped the future of Rambling more than any business plan ever could.

Instead of asking how to make the brand fit inside somebody else's framework, I have started asking a different question.

What would happen if we built spaces around makers instead of bureaucracy?

What would happen if workshops mattered as much as exhibitions?

What would happen if people making things with ink, wood, fabric, steel and paint were seen as just as valuable as those hanging finished work on white walls?

Rambling has always been about more than clothing.

It has been about creating opportunities where they do not already exist.

The next chapter will not be defined by the doors that remained closed.

It will be defined by the workshops we build, the people we invite in and the communities that grow without waiting for permission.

Perhaps that has always been the point.

The future of creativity has never belonged to the gatekeepers.

It has always belonged to the people who kept making anyway.