The Spark File with Susan Blackwell and Laura Camien
Your one stop shop for creative ideas and inspiration. Each week on The Spark File podcast, Susan Blackwell and Laura Camien reach into their spark files and share stories, ideas and fascinations to ignite your imagination. Obsessed with creativity, Blackwell and Camien also talk with artists and makers, movers and shakers who have taken the spark of inspiration and fanned it into a flame. Hear from inspiring creatives like Lin-Manuel Miranda, Sara Bareilles, Eric Stonestreet, Jonathan Groff, Julianne Moore and Bart Freundlich, Zachary Quinto, Leslie Odom Jr, Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Billy Eichner, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Karen Olivo, Sutton Foster, Michael R. Jackson and many more about their passions and their failures, their inspirations and their aspirations. Refill your creative fish pond with new ideas and fresh perspectives. Listen, then take it and make it!
The Spark File with Susan Blackwell and Laura Camien
Creativity Sparks: Creativty + Mental Health
You know the old trope that one must suffer for their art? That creativity is somehow the byproduct of mental illness or addiction or self-harm? It is time for that idea to go! An examined life can contribute greatly to our enjoyment of life, and to our creative work. In this episode, Susan and Laura discuss the relation of mental health to creativity and the innovative ways in which creators like Neal Brennan, Selena Gomez, Jonah Hill, and many more are infusing their mental health journeys into their creative work, showing that an artist can be brilliant and also prioritize their mental health.
And remember, if you are in the United States and need immediate mental health support, you can call 988 and you will be connected to a trained counselor. (Painting: "Self-Portrait in Hell" by Edvard Munch.)