Hello! I’m Gillian Lancaster, a creative soul, teacher, & adventurer.
I was born in England, and after a fairly conventional, if slightly hippie, childhood I obediently went to college to train to be a teacher. After teaching classroom music and subsequently marrying and having children, a change of direction was needed. Not one to do things by halves, this included following my husband to the panhandle of Florida in 1988 and then on to Princeton, NJ in 1992. (Living there for ten years amongst Ph.Ds and Nobel prize winners also left me very aware that I was terribly under-educated, which may have influenced my next step!) After a divorce and move, I decided to go to the University of Pennsylvania to get my masters degree – despite being in my 40s – and subsequently emerged with a liberal arts degree and concentration in graphic design.
Going to Penn as an adult was an amazing experience, and from it have experienced the thrill of bringing my passions for learning and writing into being. Since graduating I have created and built a communications business, working with both individuals and non-profit groups, including churches on a multitude of projects. As I have worked with more clients I realized that I most enjoyed working with individuals to help them bring their passion projects to life, so created this site, specifically for those needing coaching, tutoring or personal design help.
A few years ago I wrote a book called, Midlife Rediscovery, chronicling my arrival in middle age before I was ready for this reality. You can read about it here. (Writing a book was something I had always wanted to do, but couldn’t think of what to say. I started to write a blog, and after a couple of years had ample material already written that I could edit and use…) If the the idea of uncovering and following your passion projects is new to you, you can read more about it in this section of the site – along with thoughts about the creative process and how to bring your story to life!
When not creating art, planning or writing, I’m an NPR listening, coffee drinking, New York times crossword-aholic, who is always ready for the next adventure. I have long loved to make handcrafted items and art, and now have two shops open on Etsy one for my art and the other for craftier projects that I co-run with my younger daughter.
I am also building a site called “Uncover Your Creativity” that as of January 2017 is not yet live. It will house my courses and retreat offerings, as well as providing projects to help people reconnect with their innate creativity. I think we are all born creative, but schooling tends to push it aside as we are prepared for “real life”. For me, creativity is all about finding ways for solving problems, whether technical or for pleasure, so creativity is a necessary skill for real life… which is why it has its own site!
As a child my parents bought a VW camper van (hence the slightly hippie reference at the top of the page!) and we traveled around England as well as across the channel to Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany and France. I soon realized that I loved to travel, and was always ready to try new foods, ideas, places and meet new people. That love of travel hasn’t left me, but as I age I also realize how much it formed my ideas and opinions, as well as expanded my world view, so am eager to resume traveling to renew that pleasure.
My pathway to this point in my life has developed because I have been fortunate to get to know, and learn from, some of the biggest names in the field of following your passions and moving into self employment through them. This has included collaborating on a Joyfully Jobless weekend with Barbara Winter in Philadelphia, learning from and being interviewed by Valerie Young, and most recently working with Terri Belford on a book project. I was later interviewed by Terri about my design offerings, and my most recent passion project, art retreats. I am delighted to have had the opportunity to work with these three women, and also now to be exploring my own path and passions because of the inspiration their lives and ideas have given me.