Growing a space for intuitive creativity with mother, movement teacher and storyteller, Bridget Luff.

#02 ATELIER, a new collaborative interview series exploring our creative spaces, processes and rituals.

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Nov 16, 2023

I’m Lyndsay, mother, creative and storyteller with a background in interiors PR. Story & Thread. is a weekly letter exploring the intersection of creativity, mothering and the living world, with a home and a garden at the heart...

Please feel free to share parts of this newsletter that connect with you — here on Substack, on social media or I would love you to send it on to someone special to you.

Hello lovely readers

How are you feeling this week?

It felt as though all of the leaves descended onto our road overnight earlier this week, the trees now feel very sparse and there are layers of leaves to wade through on the street (which has provided much delight for a three and one-year-old).

I hope you enjoyed the earthy rituals explored through the senses that I shared last week — I loved hearing how you engage your senses intuitively at home and that embodied rituals that are already woven into our lives resonated with you (rather than having another thing to think about…)

Today is the second edition of ATELIER, a new collaborative interview series about our creative spaces, processes and rituals. Below is a little update on my creative space, and I am so excited for you to read my interview with movement teacher and magic-maker Bridget Luff below…

My ‘atelier’ update.

As I mentioned in the first edition of ATELIER, after two years in our home (which has seen and held an intense, tender and all-consuming chapter of mothering), my thoughts have turned to carving out an intentional creative space at home.

Since I last wrote, we have brought a turmeric-toned futon down into the space from my daughter’s room, and are soon to inherit a dining table from family who have moved abroad — it is not the atelier style trestle table in my vision but it has played host to family life, and features some endearing colouring pencil marks made by my niece and nephew, it will definitely do for now!

The table came with some Ercol-style chairs which I am thinking about spray-painting in a colour that will work with the palette that is just forming in my mind. This shaping of the colour palette is becoming more pressing as we are actually going to be painting the room next week…

My initial thoughts were to paint the room a sunny, warm yellow but I have had a slight re-think as the room is south-facing and gets a lot of light, so can handle a slightly cooler colour and still feel warm. I also considered a floral patterned wallpaper (which would be amazing) but I think I will prefer a less busy canvas on the walls to allow a feeling of clarity and space. Also in my mind is the balcony that becomes wildly woven with wisteria in the spring, drawing me towards a complementary tone to the pale pink blooms and green leafiness at that time. I loved the surprising but natural combination of colours I saw in a village local to my parents in France over the summer which I wrote about it in A Love Letter to Summer.

I love the palette on the streets of this French village, St Quentin-la-Poterie.

My thoughts are now on a plastery brownish pink shade for the walls (on my list of samples which I need to edit down (!) are…Jonquil by Edward Bulmer, Setting Plaster by Farrow & Ball, Amchoor by Graphenstone, Soho Pink by Mylands, one of the amazing pinks by Atelier Ellis, Plaster V, Powder III, Temple or Desert Rose by Paint & Paper Library and Vintage Peony by Fenwick & Tilbrook), and to bring in the warmer tones with furniture and accessories, I also have a sky blue filing cabinet…! I’d love to hear your thoughts or if there are any of your favourite plastery pinks that I have missed (not that I need to add any more to my list…!)

Whilst I continue to gather inspiration and create a moodboard for the space, I am collating insights into how and where others create, and the rituals they intentionally adopt to elevate the space for creativity. This gathering of inspiration and ideas led to the idea for the ATELIER series…

ATELIER, noun, [French atuh-lyey].

a workshop or studio, especially of an artist, artisan, or designer.

Ultimate atelier inspiration found in St-Quentin-la-Poterie, ceramics capital of France.

Meet Bridget Luff, mother, movement teacher and storyteller. She runs in-person yoga and Pilates classes and hosts online circles for mothers, movers and/or makers. With a background in performing arts she continues to create events and spaces where people can connect and question. Art and writing are hobbies that set her soul alight, she’d love to do more of those when she grows up.

Her greatest endeavour has been becoming a mother, which has been a magic, mundane and mammoth task. In 2020 alongside Ana Muriel she co-created The Wildflower Way, an online course supporting and uplifting those who mother through numerous lockdowns all over the world — this work is now hopefully becoming a book and coming to Substack,

The Wildflower Way

, where they plan to share more tools and support…

I loved speaking to Bridget about her creative spaces at home and how she tunes into her intuition as she works from her Victorian terrace house in the east of Oxford, near the woods and the banks of the River Thames.

Bridget Luff, photograph by Elle Narbrook.

Describe who you are and what you do.

Firstly I just wanted to say how it’s an honour to be able to talk about my space, my home, my creativity with you — I have such a respect and admiration for your work and writing and mothering, and I also appreciate the privilege of some time on my own, a house which I feel deeply grateful for and support from my family and community in what is a troubling time in the world. It’s hard to write about what feels quite trivial but also how valuable it is for humans to feel free to be, to live in real ways. I’ve gone on a tangent already! OK…

So I’m a mother, wife, daughter, sister and aunt. I like to think of myself as an artist in my own way, I teach/facilitate embodied movement (specifically Pilates and yoga but they blur and blend in other things) and I try my best to take care of my home and am a homemaker of sorts I guess.

I am also messy and impatient so all of the above challenge me.

Do you have one place dedicated to your creative work or do you move around?

In 2021 we moved into an old somewhat dilapidated house in Oxford, which I fell in love with. It is a privilege and I am very grateful for (it weirdly felt given to me like I became a guardian of it, but also we have to pay for it!).

In the house was a little room at the back which had a weird furry green carpet and lots of light and plants which somehow survived two years despite the previous owner having died, and it became our office/art studio/writing room — we called it ‘the green room’ and my husband and I compete for space but thankfully I have now managed to stake my claim (mostly because he’s not working from home so much anymore). That said, it can be cold and small up there and so depending on my task at hand I move around the house like a cat — following the sun and warm patches.

I have to do my movement/yoga/Pilates/dance practice in our bedroom, because there’s just about enough space there and it’s just about warm enough. I’d love a bit more room but it works and it’s enough. And the cold gets me jumping around. I need to have a mat laid out, props at the ready, and be able to wave my arms and legs about without hitting anything fragile like a light bulb.

Sometimes if writing I like to go to a cafe or have a walk in nature just to break any stagnancy/shift something/change perspective kind of thing. I used to have the perfect Turkish cafe in London near where we lived but I haven’t quite replaced it yet — you have to have the right staff, right tables, light, not too many people, good coffee and I really need comfortable chairs. I always have music playing when I make or move.

What are your non-negotiables when in creative mode?

Always a coffee, not when I do my movement practice (although when I was in my twenties I used to drink coffee sips between sun salutes - I do not recommend this though). For me the act of making my stove top coffee is a sacred ritual I do before I work/write/paint — I need to have a cup of coffee next to me and often I don’t even drink it all. Just a couple sips. It’s just like an old friend accompanying me.

Coffee on the stove is Bridget’s creative companion.

I make playlists which are for specific tasks — writing, studying, moving, walking, running — for example I can’t have anything with lyrics for most of my creative tasks because they sneak into my thoughts too much. The rhythm of the music impacts me, I curate the playlists to take me on a journey, and this is also what I do when teaching/or facilitating a movement class — the music swells and subsides — good music is a transmission and tool to something quite holy I feel.

Where do you find inspiration?

Getting inspired I feel is deeply important for my creativity. I usually need to take a walk somewhere in nature, next to a body of water, probably with my headphones in while listening to music. Ideally I’ll go where there are little to no humans and find a tree or spot that I like to regularly sit at. I kind of ‘zone out to zone in’ to go into a kind of creative reverie (?!) — gosh it’s hard to talk about.

Movement in the woods, photograph by Elle Narbrook.

If it’s too horrid outside or I’m ill, I may start by sketching or reading an inspiring book, looking at some art, meditating and/or writing or doing my movement practice — something that gets me into a state of flow.

Things that hinder me are burn out, fatigue, I get super stagnated and want to hibernate — but I also figure there are times when we need to rest and recover or just survive.

The phone and social media I find can really disrupt my flow — I get a bit lost, I lose my sense of self and it becomes all mimicry and comparison. I’m trying very hard to spend less time attached to my phone and more time just opening up a book or just sitting or moving without the distraction instead.

I feel like we need to process a lot of feelings, energies, that idea of composting to be creative. So that the work we make comes from a more free place or channel — it’s not clogged up with the desire for approval and attention. When we are working with the need for approval it can stunt us as artists, I speak from 42 years of experience — I’ve spent a very long time working from trying to please people rather than seeing what arises from what I want to say is — my soul. I think that’s starting to incrementally shift, I mean it’s a process, but at least I’m more aware of it. And I’m excited to see what comes from at least recognising the difference.

I love to see photos of other artists' homes, or even to visit their homes, that inspires me greatly. I love nature but I also really love cities. I’m a bit all or nothing. But buildings and the stories they tell really inspire me. I’ve always loved that — I grew up in Cape Town which is very colourful and vibrant and has a strong pulse and magic in it. Then I lived in London which is a sprawling mass of people and stuff and stories.

Now I’m in Oxford which is old and has these secrets and legends and otherworldly and olde-worlde qualities, you can peer in peoples front windows and they have real pianos and paintings. I like that. I wanted that for my son growing up, to experience real and tactile things.

The streets of Oxford have an otherwordly and olde-worlde quality.

I like a bit of messiness actually. That’s where the magic is. We don’t want to sanitise too much. Keeping it wild and woolly round the edges is important.

How do you set the tone and energy of a creative space?

I think that having a creative and movement space takes time, like any space. And you just have to keep doing it, to start making art or moving in a space repeatedly and let it evolve around the practice. Whether it’s an art form or movement form, and then in time the space begins to hold that vibration — a tone or resonance is set.

Of course there are the tools we need, but they too can grow. I struggle with this idea that we need everything perfect and prepared to step in, we can plan but the shape of things are different in the end from that original vision. My spaces slowly are shaping, as am I — I find the easiest place for a yoga mat, my paints, and so forth and it evolves. Taking what works and dropping what doesn’t, letting it adapt around me, and me with it.

It’s about getting into that state of flow in a space — and I’m curious about how we create that vibration that invites us to slip in. For example, I go to an art class in a building that only has had art classes in it for 50 years and you can feel all the dreams and visions in the air as you walk in. It’s magic.

And also I am so lucky right now to teach at a local yoga studio where I can go in an hour before the class, make a tea, potter around, do a practice and take a quiet moment to set my intention for the class and the people about to enter. Already the space is set to be a space of practice so that energy is there but I do feel I need to flush the space out…to open the windows and allow the energy to move through. It becomes a fresh page.

It makes such a big difference if I’m able to do this — I think the people entering it feel it too, the music is on, the light is on, maybe even some candles are lit — the entry into a space is the portal opening, it’s the threshold, we turn off our phones, become present and I encourage people (and myself) to arrive, to land, to look and feel and sense into a space…to see it, to walk in it, to inhabit it.

How do you conclude your creative/movement time?

We don’t always give ourselves time to process much of life, but yoga and art teach us presence I feel. I guess I grew up going to church and then the theatre and there’s a dream-like ritual that prepares us to shift consciousness in a way, to evolve. I like to set up a space and state to do the work/make the thing/move the body and then also to deconstruct. This part is important, the closing, the integrating. Tidying up afterwards allows us to move on.

But there are remnants, and those remnants in the air are what start to shift the space into a thing of beauty, creativity, an invitation to something maybe softer and more subtle.

You can explore more of Bridget’s work via her website, Instagram and new Substack publication Our Wildflowers.

I hope you enjoyed reading Bridget’s beautiful insights into the evolving space of creativity. I’d love to hear if you have a space that you are growing with creatively at home?

Thank you for being here and I really look forward to your thoughts, hope we can chat more in the comments.