Creativity Explosive

Hayley Cantor is a purebred creative person of English origins but with a true Barcelonan heart.

Ok, Hayley, please, speak about you… when and where were you born?
I was born in Hythe, a small village on the edge of the New Forest in the South of England. It’s famous for absolutely nothing, except the invention of the hovercraft. I worked in Mental Health services and with homeless people, before ‘accidentally’ moving to Spain.

When and why did you move to Barcelona?
I moved to Barcelona in 2009, when I came here to study to teach English as a foreign language. I fell out of love with my life in England, and in love with this crazy city in a matter of days.

How do you introduce “creativity” into your life?
I wouldn’t say that I introduce creativity into my life, I have just learnt to see. I remember my first Art teacher told me to always remember that a great artist is not someone who can paint or draw well, but someone who can see things. Finally, I understand what he meant. Being creative, to me, just means seeing the things around you, interpreting them and then documenting them in some way. Some people do it through photography, others through writing, some, simply through the way in which they speak to others. We are all artists, it’s just that some forms of expression are acknowledged in different ways to others.

What’s your inspiration?
Everything around me inspires me in some way:: from the shapes in the clouds, to the way coffee looks when you spill it all over yourself. Sometimes, it can be overwhelming, and other times I have no inspiration whatsoever. My passion is learning and every time I produce something, I learn something. So I guess I’m not really an artist, I’m an eternal student.

Please explain how you work…
I would never use the word work, because to me it doesn’t feel like work. It’s like a need. You feel hungry, you eat. I see something, I produce. For this reason most of the things I do are impulsive – an idea comes to me and I start to make things immediately. Most of the projects I start, are over within 24 hours. If I don’t work this way, I find that self-doubt creeps in and I don’t do anything at all. I’m too impatient for perfection.

What is your main activity at the moment?
I never really have a main activity. That’s why I use the artistic name másqueunpoco (more than a little). I have spent most of my life frustrated artistically, because I have never been able to focus on one thing at a time. I grew up believing that it was better to do one thing and be amazing at it, than to be ok at doing 10 things. When I started to accept that I like to be doing lots of different things at once, I started to get really productive, although my desktop is chaos… I have at least 10 windows open at any one time…

What are your future plans? What would you like (in the future)?
The future is also something that I have stopped thinking about. I find that thinking about the future just makes me nervous. I’ve tried to stop thinking about becoming some sort of final product, or reaching some specific destination and try to consider life as something a bit more like a song: we don’t go to a concert to hear the final note, we go to dance without ever thinking about where that might take us. It’s only through looking backwards that things start to make any sort of sense.

What do you expect in your life?
For me, expectations create disappointment. When I was 7 years old, I would have told you that I would be an archaeologist; at 14, a famous surfer; at 17, an interior designer and at 24, a psychiatrist. Now I’m 28 years old and I’m teaching British culture to children, a resident VJ in a club in Barcelona, and playing the ukulele on the side!

What do you think a creative person is? Could you define “Creative Person”?
Creative people are associated with lots of things: paint, musical instruments, and photographs. We are all creative people. it’s just that some express their creativity in more extrovert ways than others. Asking me to describe a creative person is like asking me to describe an intelligent person – everyone knows what it is, but it would be impossible for us all to agree on an exact definition.

What do you think about Barcelona and the people that move here?
Barcelona is a playground for grown-ups. It has absolutely everything: sun, sea, sand, graffiti, skating, art, music, markets, good food, culture, history, shopping and dancing. It’s also a stone’s throw from the mountains, so there’s something for everyone. People come to live here from all over the world. Barcelona can be anything that you want it to be, but it is also a very lonely place –thousands of people come and go on a daily basis and it is continually re-inventing itself. You have to give a lot to the city, if you want to get a lot out of it because there are very few people setting foundations here.

Find out more on Hayley’s web site.