Freshers nostalgia: The quiet company of art

Art doesn’t have to wait for a studio, a degree show, or a grand project. It can live quietly in the folds of everyday life. It’s not a truth that is easily recognised, especially when you hold your creations in high regard. The need to share a section of yourself that you’ve lovingly put into a form of art is natural, but entering a new space like a university with new people and talents can feel daunting. The need to prove yourself is strong; the urge to impress is even stronger. It’s a fact that sounds obvious, but when you’re in it, walking underneath the bright yellow lights of the Warwick Arts Centre foyer and approaching three tables full of mismatched chairs filled with unknown faces – well, it’s easy to mistakenly believe that a good painting might win me belonging. Perhaps, I thought, if I did well enough, I could find friends – because that’s what the first week always feels like: a bid to find friends immediately, and throwing yourself entirely at anything that might provide that safety. So, when I left that workshop with nothing to show for it and a cardboard cut-out of a penguin in the bin, it was easy to mistake a clumsy first attempt for a final verdict on my creativity; the failure as proof that I didn’t belong. 

Art tends to resurface in the margins when you least expect it. Mine reappeared…through the lens of my phone camera

Yet art tends to resurface in the margins when you least expect it. Mine reappeared not through grand canvases or performances but through the lens of my phone camera. It started a few months after the traumatic cardboard incident. I was beginning to adapt to the university timetables and familiarise myself with the buildings along campus when I got a text asking for a picture from my family. I sent them a picture of a small booth in the library. Immediately, they texted back, unhappy, begging for a picture that didn’t look like it could be from every other university. So I took my things and left. I headed towards the greenery at the edge of campus, where I had never explored. With just my phone, I captured sudden bursts of colour from autumn leaves, glints of light between trees, and overgrown flowers between pavements. It wasn’t much, but my family gushed over them. Their reaction made me realise that what felt ordinary to me could be seen as beautiful. It was an idea that pushed me to look closer, wander further, and eventually carry a film camera to turn those same walks into something more deliberate, almost like pieces of art. 

These fragments became a record of my first year, messy and incomplete, but they are there when I feel like sharing

Once I started looking closer, I began to gather more than photographs. I kept the negatives tucked into the pages of a journal (unstuck, just lazily thrown in), alongside receipts from the first night out, overpriced flight tickets from my return home, and stickers I peeled from the back of the FAB building. These fragments became a record of my first year, messy and incomplete, but they are there when I feel like sharing. On those same walks, I started paying attention to people, too. I jotted down what they wore if it told a story, scribbled overhead conversations, or noted down the incredulous things my friends would say to me. Half of my writing never went anywhere, but it didn’t matter. The point wasn’t to finish or to impress, but to remind myself that creativity doesn’t have to be polished to be real. Later down the line, they would unfold into pieces of poetry that no one saw or short stories anonymously published. 

It took me a while to re-learn that art shouldn’t be a bargaining chip for social standing. It sounds painfully obvious, and I’m unsure of when I forgot it, but somewhere along the way, I had let play turn into pressure. At its core, creativity is closer to a child with crayons, making a mess of colour for no reason other than joy. As we grow older, it’s easy to forget that freedom, but being unsettled in a new place helped me rediscover it. When I finally loosened my grip on perfection, it wasn’t through a society but a small gathering with friends. Armed with a mug-painting kit from Flying Tiger, or melting candles and doodling on them with wax markers from the Range, we spent the evening laughing at crooked lines, admiring each other’s designs and celebrating what we made with pictures.  That, I think, is what makes creativity worth holding onto at university. It doesn’t have to be perfect, and it doesn’t have to win you friends. Sometimes it’s enough that it keeps you company, and the rest follows on its own.