But Am I Allowed to Do That?

Reflections on creativity, making mistakes and what teaching across generations has taught me about creative education.

Creativity is not bound by rules. It should only be tailored by guidance.

I have been thinking about this recently, particularly in relation to my teaching practice and how we approach creativity in education.

I consider myself quite fortunate to have the opportunity to teach across different educational structures and age groups. In any given week, I could be teaching an eight-year-old who is just discovering how to use a sewing machine, a university student developing their creative practice, or someone in their seventies who has decided to learn a new skill.

My teaching takes place across formal education, community settings and online provision, and one of the things I find most interesting is observing how people of different ages and experiences approach learning something creative.

Despite their differences, I often hear very similar questions.

"Am I allowed to do this?"

"Is this the right way?"

"What am I supposed to do?"

And sometimes, before they have even attempted something, they are already worried about getting it wrong.

It makes me wonder how much of our creativity we hold back simply because we are afraid of making mistakes.

So what if it is not perfect?

One of the things I regularly remind my students is that they are allowed to make mistakes. In fact, I expect them to make mistakes, particularly when they are learning something new.

I often tell them to give themselves some grace. You cannot be learning something for the first time and simultaneously expect yourself to produce the perfect outcome.

I see this quite often in sewing classes. Someone is learning to sew a straight line, and the moment their stitching moves slightly away from the intended line, they become disappointed. Sometimes they want to start the whole project again.

And I find myself saying, "So what if your straight line is not perfectly straight?"

You are learning to sew. You are learning how to control the machine, guide the fabric, manage your speed and coordinate your movements. All of those things take practice.

The same applies to measuring. So what if your one-inch measurement is slightly off? You measure again, understand where you went wrong and make the necessary adjustment.

In an art class, perhaps you are trying to mix a particular shade of green, but the colour you produce looks nothing like what you imagined. Of course, you can go back and adjust the mixture. But perhaps you have also discovered a completely different shade that might work beautifully somewhere else.

Or you are writing code and it does not run as expected. You investigate the problem, make changes and test it again.

I am not suggesting that accuracy is unimportant. Far from it. In sewing, for instance, an incorrect measurement can affect the fit of an entire garment. There are times when a mistake must be corrected for the project to function properly.

But there is a difference between helping someone understand the importance of accuracy and making them feel that every imperfect attempt is a failure.

I want my students to understand that making mistakes is part of the process, not something that disqualifies them from being creative.

The place of rules in creative education

Now, as someone who teaches practical creative subjects, I understand why we have rules, techniques and established ways of doing things.

There are reasons we teach students to take accurate measurements, understand garment construction, use equipment safely or follow particular processes. These principles provide a foundation for developing their skills.

However, I sometimes wonder whether we place so much emphasis on doing things correctly that we unintentionally limit students' willingness to experiment.

For example, when I demonstrate a technique in class, my intention is to show students one way of achieving a particular outcome. It is not necessarily to suggest that this is the only way it can ever be achieved.

Yet, I sometimes find students trying to reproduce exactly what I have demonstrated, even when the activity allows them to make their own creative decisions.

And this is where I think guidance becomes particularly important.

As educators, we have a responsibility to teach students the knowledge and skills they need. But we also need to recognise when to allow them to explore those skills independently.

If a student wants to approach a design differently, I would rather understand their thinking before telling them it cannot be done.

Perhaps their approach will not work. Perhaps they have overlooked something important. In that case, we have an opportunity to discuss why.

But what if it does work?

What if they discover a process I had not considered?

Surely that is something we should encourage within creative education.

Some discoveries were never part of the original plan

When we look at the history of innovation, there are many examples of people discovering something valuable through experimentation and unexpected results.

One example I find particularly interesting is the invention of Post-it Notes.

In 1968, Spencer Silver, a scientist working at 3M, developed an adhesive that was much weaker than the strong adhesive he had originally been trying to create. It was not the outcome he had set out to achieve.

Years later, another scientist at the company, Art Fry, recognised that this unusual adhesive could be useful for creating bookmarks that would stay in place without damaging pages.

That eventually led to the development of Post-it Notes.

I find this interesting because the original result did not meet the intended objective, but that did not make it worthless. It simply had a different potential that took time and further experimentation to recognise.

Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin offers another example. When mould contaminated one of his bacterial cultures, he observed that the bacteria surrounding it were not growing as expected. Rather than simply dismissing the contaminated culture, he investigated what he had observed.

Of course, neither of these discoveries happened simply because someone made a mistake. There was knowledge, observation and further work involved.

But that is precisely what makes them relevant to how we teach creativity. Sometimes an unexpected result can provide an opportunity to investigate something we had not previously considered.

I think this is particularly relevant to fashion and design, where experimentation has contributed so much to how we understand clothing today.

Designers such as Rei Kawakubo have challenged conventional expectations around garment shapes, proportions and the relationship between clothing and the body. What might initially appear unusual or even incorrect when measured against traditional ideas of garment construction can become an entirely different approach to design.

As a fashion educator, I find that fascinating.

We need to teach students how garments are constructed, but we should also be encouraging them to question what a garment can become.

Are we teaching students to create or to follow instructions?

This is a question I sometimes ask myself when reflecting on my teaching.

When a student asks whether they are allowed to do something, are they genuinely asking for technical guidance, or are they looking for reassurance that they will not be criticised for making the wrong decision?

I think the distinction matters.

There are situations where students need clear instructions, particularly when they are unfamiliar with a technique or working with equipment that requires specific safety procedures.

However, there are also situations where students have sufficient knowledge to make a decision but are reluctant to do so without approval.

I wonder whether some of this comes from how we experience education more generally.

From a young age, we become familiar with correct answers, grades, assessment criteria and the expectation that our work will be judged against particular standards. These are important parts of education, but creative practice also requires us to explore possibilities that may not have one predetermined answer.

Sometimes I think students become so concerned about producing what they believe their teacher wants that they forget they are also supposed to be developing their own ideas.

And I have to remind myself of this as an educator too.

It is easy to demonstrate something and expect everyone to follow the process exactly as shown, especially when managing a busy classroom with different abilities and levels of experience.

But if we want students to develop creative confidence, we need to make room for them to think independently, even when their decisions take them in a different direction from the one we anticipated.

The fear of making mistakes does not disappear with age

One of the most interesting things about teaching people from eight years old to those in their seventies is recognising that the fear of getting things wrong is not limited to any particular age group.

I have seen young people become frustrated because their projects do not look like the examples they were shown. I have also taught adults who apologise repeatedly when they make a mistake, even though they are attending a class specifically to learn something new.

Sometimes I find myself wondering why we feel the need to apologise for not knowing how to do something we have come to learn.

I do not think this is always about a lack of confidence. People arrive in creative spaces carrying different experiences of education, work and life. Some have spent years believing they are not particularly creative. Others have had experiences that made them reluctant to try unfamiliar things.

And sometimes, the older we become, the more conscious we are of what other people might think about our abilities.

This is one of the reasons I value community-based creative education so much. It provides opportunities for people to explore skills outside the pressures they may associate with formal assessment.

But even within formal education, I believe we can create environments where students feel comfortable asking questions, testing ideas and making mistakes without feeling embarrassed.

For me, this is an important part of inclusive teaching.

Not everyone enters a classroom with the same confidence, and not everyone responds to criticism or failure in the same way. The way we guide students through their mistakes can influence whether they feel encouraged to continue or begin to withdraw from the process.

Making room for mistakes does not mean lowering standards

I think this is worth emphasising because encouraging experimentation can sometimes be misunderstood as suggesting that quality does not matter.

I care very much about the quality of my students' work.

I want them to develop strong technical skills, understand their materials, improve their processes and take pride in what they produce.

But I also recognise that those things develop over time.

A student who struggles to sew a straight line during their first lesson may eventually become highly skilled at garment construction. An unsuccessful design experiment may help another student understand something about materials, proportions or processes that they would not have learnt by simply copying an example.

The important thing is how we respond to those experiences.

When something goes wrong, I want to help students understand what happened and what they might do differently. Sometimes that means repeating a technique until they can achieve the required standard. Other times, it means exploring whether an unexpected outcome offers a different creative possibility.

There is room for both approaches.

I also think students need to know that not every project has to become something they are proud enough to photograph, display or share publicly.

Some projects exist because we needed to practise.

Some are experiments.

Some simply teach us what not to do next time.

And that is perfectly fine.

Creativity should be guided, not confined

The more I reflect on my teaching practice, the more I recognise that some of the most valuable moments in a creative classroom happen when students begin making decisions for themselves.

It might be a young person choosing to adapt a design rather than follow the example exactly, or an adult who initially needed reassurance at every stage eventually becoming confident enough to try a new technique independently.

Those moments are important to me because they show that the student is beginning to take ownership of their creative process.

And perhaps that is one of the things I enjoy most about teaching across different ages and educational settings. I get to observe how creative confidence develops in different people, sometimes in very small ways.

I want my students to leave my classes with more than the ability to complete a particular project. I want them to understand what they are doing, why they are doing it and how they might apply those skills to something they have imagined for themselves.

So, when a student asks me, "Am I allowed to do that?", I do not always want to be the person who immediately provides the answer.

Sometimes, I would rather ask what they are trying to achieve, discuss their approach and encourage them to explore the possibilities.

There will be times when I need to correct them, demonstrate a better technique or explain why something will not work. That is part of my responsibility as an educator.

But there should also be times when I can simply give them the space to try.

Because I believe creativity develops when people have the knowledge to make informed decisions and the confidence to explore beyond what they have already been shown.

And if their first attempt does not work, we can look at it together, understand what happened and decide what to do next.

After all, they are learning. And so am I.

Creativity is not bound by rules. It should only be tailored by guidance.