Joy Development mentoring for artists, writers, creatives
Join me on my Joy Development Substack to see how I envision more creative joy for us all.
Have you found career success, but instead of feeling confident and secure, found yourself fearful of how others see you? Do you see competitors rather than allies?
Have you begun a new journey as a creative after years in a job that didn’t feel like you? Do you feel being an artist is your true self, but years of living as a people-pleasing false-self have taken their toll?
Or maybe your wider activism means, when you come back to your practice, you don’t see its value? Maybe your practice even feels frivolous, particularly in our current political and environmental climate?
Do you live in the chaos of all of your ideas? Before breakfast, you’ve solved all the world’s problems. By lunch, you don’t know which solution is your priority. By tea, the overwhelm has taken over…
I can help.
By hearing your dreams and visions and identifying the excessive tangle of spaghetti strands stuck together that have become burdens and limitations, we will work together to pick out the individual strands that matter most to you. I will suggest practical strategies to nurture what matters to you and manifest your ideas in the brightest, boldest ways.
We will refuse limiting beliefs and we will hold dear your tender visions together.
HOW I WORK
My philosophy respects that you already know what you want to create. I am here to help you find your ‘why’. If you deeply understand this you will unlock the boundless possibilities for your own practice.
ABOUT ALLIE CARR
For more than a decade I have worked as a university lecturer and before then as an artist-practitioner in community, museum, and school settings. I have observed time and again that artists and visionaries need to feel they have permission to do what they do—and when they cultivate this for themselves, the magic happens.
I am also a practicing artist myself, and while I draw on this to give professional advice, the tools I have developed to nourish my creativity and resilience come from the experience of overwork and overwhelm that led to a migraine that lasted nearly 10 months and chronic headache problems for the next five years.
Everything in my life seemed to feed the pain—my ambition, all the toxic feelings around work I was carrying, the numerous ways I was limiting myself through my own mindset. It was a negative spiral. I felt professionally invisible and this compounded the physical pain, which made me less visible.
This was a catalyst moment and since then I have spent time working on methods to handle stress and the precarity of my work life. I developed boundaries and eliminated any people-pleasing. I have learned to say what I need in order to feel safe, secure, and able to flourish. I concentrated on giving myself permission to feel and I rejected the cliched narratives of a frustrated artist. It opened up space for my own joy and pleasure in my practice, to reframe what a practice might look like.
Since sharing these insights in my friendships and mentoring relationships I have empowered others to feel more confident in the work they do and have a range of practical tools to draw on when they wobble. I realised it is time to share my mentoring work more broadly.
WHAT I CAN OFFER YOU
I want you to feel more joyful and empowered, to refuse the self-punishment and ‘work-harder’ narratives.
I will share with you how to cultivate more confidence, integrity, and resilience to handle whatever your career might throw at you and to enjoy the journey.
You’ve been doing what you do for some time, but you’re feeling some burnout. Or you are refocusing on your practice after time away. I can guide you through a period of personal or creative evolution, so that you can identify your own sustainable work solutions.
We can work in an expanded way, negotiating what would work for you. From in-person meetings (Sheffield only), video calls, WhatsApp voice notes or email check-ins so that you can feel supported as you rebuild your vision.
How shall we begin? Complete this registration form so I can get to know you. If you’d like a no-strings informal chat book in a call with me. Even if now isn’t the right time for you to work with me, I’d love to connect. Follow my Instagram account here, Artistic Mystic and and subscribe to my Substack, Joy Development.