CYCLICAL CREATIVITY – Don’t make me create on a straight line.

Cyclical creativity explores how cyclical awareness can reshape creative practice. It investigates how the menstrual cycle influences creativity, and how this understanding can be communicated through visual design. It also raises a wider question: what happens when cyclical bodies are expected to function within linear systems of productivity?

We are not taught to create in cycles, and we are most definitely not made to create on a straight line.

I explored this topic through workshops, conversations, and self-observation. My project was process-based, and I had to let go of expecting a specific outcome, allowing the work to emerge at its own pace and in its own time. This allowed me to observe how creativity flows and what strengths we carry during different phases of our cycle.

In the end, my work became an installation of three circles.

One is a cyclical spiral of my entire creative process: small circles displayed on a circular board, filled with everything, the highs, the lows, workshops, crash-outs, creative bursts, poetry, quotes from readings, and personal reflections.

Another circle holds archives: side creations, participants works, and small tokens collected throughout my process, all labelled with the phase of my cycle I was in during their creation.

The third circle within the installation is a participatory space, a place where one can sit, read the soft guidelines for the workshop within a booklet, and, if they want, leave a trace.

During workshops, I asked participants:

“What was the story you were told about menstruation?”

Most people responded that their caregiver had said something along the lines of:

“When you become a woman, you bleed, you may feel some cramps, feel a bit emotional, and probably crave chocolate and carbs.”

The more we learn about ourselves, the more fruitful stories we can pass down. Instead of simplifying our menstrual cycle to moodiness and cravings, we can tell stories about befriending the lows and dancing with the highs, noticing our patterns, understanding when to express, when to go a little wild, and, honestly, most importantly, when to rest. Because rest needs to be part of a creative life in order for us to fully show up for ourselves and others.

“The change from a phase of active creativity to passivity can be frightening until they realise that the active phase will return or that their creativity has simply taken a different form.” (Gray, M. 2008)

We are all completely different. No cycle will ever be the same. But through my work, I hope to bring awareness to the importance of our cycles and how, through knowing them and learning to dance with them, we can hold ourselves in a new way, passing this understanding down to future generations.