M.Y.O (Make Your Own)
Go here if: you’re wondering how to bring more creativity into your life, you are feeling lonely and looking for more connection, or you need to find a strategy for destressing, learned here, then taken home with your creation.
What is it: M.Y.O. (Make Your Own) is a space where grown-ups can play around with materials and making. The creative studio was launched in 2017 by Sam Lehane and Diana Muendo, both chartered accountants who were coming into their own creativity but could not find the environment that they needed to support their new interests.
Why you’ll love it: M.Y.O. gives you permission to be creative because Sam and Diana believe that everyone is. There’s no worrying about outcomes, or getting it wrong, or that you’re not really ‘Arty’ or an ‘Artist’. Just the space to explore and find the medium or practice that works for you.
What you need to know: Small classes take place in a two-level studio in Borough that has all the materials you could possibly imagine to get you making things and a space where it feels ok to get messy. There’s a huge variety of classes (refreshed every few months) on everything from watercolor painting to macrame plant hangers. Adults get a break from it all and a chance to explore arts and crafts skills without judgment or prior experience.
How to bring this into your life wherever you are: In parallel to the bricks-and-mortar space, M.Y.O. hosts a similarly wide array of virtual class options hosted with sister company Creative Jungle Co (which also offers Virtual Team Building with teams across the world).
Why we think it matters: The well-being benefits of creativity are becoming ever clearer (anyone who has picked up a watercolor brush or taken up baking in a lockdown can probably now attest to this). M.Y.O. is increasingly thinking about creativity in terms of how it helps us function in the world, helping reduce stress and loneliness. The classes offered by the studio give you an easy way into figuring out if creativity can have a place in your life and what shape that might take for you.
In their own words: “An art gym for your creative muscles.”
Something to do: You don’t need to be good at art to do it. You don’t have to make perfect pots to mold clay. All you need is the willingness to try, and an openness to seeing where it takes you. What would you try creatively if no one was watching and it’s really just for you? Start there.
