Creative calendar: How to do one creative thing a week for a whole YEAR

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a list of 52 things you could do in 2015? Just one thing a week? It needn’t cost much to do a fun thing you’ve maybe not done before. Hey, you can even do a heroic TWO things in one week. Imagine it… multiple things. WHO CAN STOP YOU? NO-ONE!

Here’s a handy list for you to print out and tick off as you go. You could blog your adventures (let us know if you do!).

Creative calendar: Do one creative thing a week for a YEAR!

1. Take a photo of you doing all of the other 52 things you do this year and make a blog or photo album of it. Day one… a picture of you making a pinky promise to yourself to get this show on the road!
2. See if you can get into every room in your house without touching the ground. How you do this is entirely up to you.
3. Find out some family history to see if you can learn something new about your ancestors.
4. Go charity shopping and buy an unlikely dressing-up piece or a CD/book you’ve never heard of.
5. Feed the birdies at your local park.
6. Learn swear words in another language.
7. Trawl a really old, dead online forum like a time traveller.
8. Donate a gnome to someone’s garden (better not to steal one, gnome karma is not to be messed with).
9. Wear a wig.
10. Write a (very) short story with exactly 365 words.
11. Try out urbex, or in other words go urban exploring…
12. Fill a notebook with things you like about yourself for when you’re feeling pooky.
13. Make a shirt/dress/corset/bloomers/bag/anything.
14. Create a self portrait.
15. Make/buy a birthday cake when it isn’t actually your birthday.
16. Get some seeds of a herb like basil/parsely/mint etc and keep your budding little plant alive for the rest of the year.
17. Write a diary entry for how you are feeling, fold it up and hide it somewhere. A few months later, add what’s changed, then hide your entry again.
18. Buy the biggest, ugliest t-shirt you can find and cut it up into a swanky new top.
19. Write a haiku about a banana, on a banana.
20. Make a beard out of cotton wool. Wear it to the shops, if you like.
21. Leave a post it note with a drawing on it in every place you go that day.
22. Do beautiful, elegant ballerina/waltz dancing to inappropriate music, like some death metal or ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’.
23. Take a marker pen into every public toilet you go into and write an encouraging message on the door for anybody who goes in after you.
24. Learn how to make a cocktail (either alcoholic or a non-alcoholic mocktail, your choice! PS do try the Gilded Age mock champagne recipe for a steampunk twist).
25. Avoid using words the beginning with or containing a particular letter for the whole day.
26. Take a camera around with you for a day and take a photo every hour without fail no matter where you are.
27. Watch a random foreign language film without subtitles with your friends and try to figure out what’s going on.
28. Go dumpster diving.
29. De-clutter your room. Here is a useful way. Here is a not-useful way.
30. Visit any free/really cheap museums that are nearby.
31. Get into a place where you don’t belong.
32. Give a homeless woman a gift of essential toiletries in a nice little bag (perhaps you have one you feel it’s time to pass onto someone else).
33. Make a self-care blanket fort out of bedsheets, and host a classic tea party in there.
34. Sell something you’ve made, perhaps with your own Etsy shop (but not to your friends or family). Hey, it could become an indie business.
35. Eat at a cafe you don’t normally visit. Write complementary notes to each person in the cafe, and give them out before you leave.
36. Hide a £5 note somewhere, and leave a note wishing a nice day to the person who finds it.
37. See a band play live. Any band.
38. Adopt a rock for a day. Protect this rock with your life.
39. Get some printer transfer paper, make a t-shirt/hoodie with your own face on it and wear it as if there’s nothing unusual.
40. Buy flowers for yourself.
41. Give blood.
42. Create a book nook and read a book you’ve always wanted to read, but never got round to it.
43. Get all dressed up in a ballgown/evening suit and go to the supermarket/bowling alley/chip shop.
44. Lay down in the grass and look at the funny shapes in the clouds.
45. Put two different teabags into the same teapot and see what it tastes like.
46. Leave a trail of strawberries on a pavement, a strawberry every 5 yards, ending in the location of your choice.
47. Go to the grocer’s and see if you can make a feast for two – for only £2 (or about $3).
48. See how many animals you can impersonate. It could be less than you think…
49. Learn to play a nose flute.
50. Regress to childhood and make a pasta necklace.
51. Learn about something completely random like the science of decomposition, or the origin of Tic Tacs.
52. Make different paper aeroplanes and test which is the best.

These are just ideas, but feel free to use them as you wish. Doing a new thing a week for a whole year! That would be a nice thing to happen.