Journal
Artist Dates as Resistance: Why Random Matters More Than Ever
At the end of last year, someone mentioned The Artist’s Way in one of our Studio Bee gatherings. Lots of members had done it years ago - found it useful, then somehow let it fall away. The practice they remembered most was artist dates: weekly solo outings to feed your creative self.
We decided to pick it up in The Studio, sharing our artist dates in the forum each month. And as I started taking them myself, I realised they matter even more now than they did when Julia Cameron first wrote about them in 1992.
We’re being spoon fed by algorithms. Pinterest shows us more of what we click. Audible recommends books based on what we’ve already read. Instagram feeds us the same aesthetic over and over. And AI is making this worse, not better - it’s just scooping from an increasingly limited pool.
If we want to think original thoughts, make unexpected connections, see beyond the safe playpen the algorithm builds around us, we need to step into analog randomness. Deliberately.
In this week’s Friday Film, I share three artist dates I took - a museum visit, an old graveyard, a dusty antique shop - and what each one taught me about thinking outside the algorithm’s reach.
This isn’t about self-care. It’s about resistance.
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