Between us: careers, children, reinventions, and long stretches where creativity felt like something we used to do, back when there was time. We know what it's like to feel creatively flat, to scroll past other people's making and wonder where yours went.
So we built the thing we needed. Spark is a creative workshop experience where there's no talent required, no pressure to be good, and no wrong way to make. Just guided, playful processes that get your hands moving before your inner critic wakes up.
The spark never actually goes out. It just waits for permission.
Michelle studied Fine Arts at Stellenbosch, then spent twenty years running a design business without making a single thing for herself. No painting. No personal creative practice. Just the slow, quiet loss of something she couldn't quite name.
It took art therapy and a seven-month artist support programme to help her find her way back to her creative roots. And a little more time after that to call herself an artist without flinching.
The experience of being a creative person who stopped creating, and the long road back, is what drives everything she does. As a painter and entrepreneur, she brings experience, guidance, and a genuine curiosity about what holds people back and what becomes possible when they give themselves permission to make things again.
"SPARK is built on one belief: creativity never leaves. It just needs to be supported and kindled back to life."
Gwynnie trained in textiles design for fashion, spent time designing and selling in New York, worked as a high-end stylist. A handmade deckchair business; working wood and designing textile slings, gave her hands back briefly. But the paintbrush and pencil stayed quiet. The computer took over. Creativity drained from her again.
A move to Cape Town and creating Wataka enlivened her design eye again. But it was a move to Kommetjie, surrounded by working artists (like Michelle), to crack something open and creativity flowing again. Life drawing. Silversmithing. Then Feel Don't Think, a daily practice she created, that bypasses the thinking mind entirely and suddenly she was creating again. Life started flowing through her. Businesses evolved. Her relationships deepened. Her ideas sparked. Her sense of who she was came alive.
"At the end of the day, it's not about the art or the craft or the design. It's about reconnecting to the creative spark inside – that aliveness that reminds us we're fully, vibrantly human."
Workshop dates, Adventures, and the occasional nudge to make something.