While social distancing is extremely important during this time, it can also feel pretty lonely. If you’re someone who gathers inspiration from spending time and sharing your ideas with others, you might also be experiencing a creative block. A great way to combat both of these issues is to collaborate online with fellow creatives!

We’ve come up with a few ideas to help you stay connected and inspired while practising social distancing.

Musicians

If you’re in a band, social distancing has probably made a huge impact on your ability to socialize and rehearse with your bandmates – but fear not! The internet has made it possible to host online jam sessions so that you and your bandmates can play together from your respective homes in real-time. Check out jammr, sofasession or JamKazam to get started.

Another awesome online tool is Kompoz, which allows you to make music with people all over the world. Say you’re a guitarist and you’ve just written a great song but it’s missing drums, bass and a vocalist. You can record and upload your track and other users can add to it until the song is complete.

Visual artists

Even though a lot of visual artists work from home, it’s easy to find yourself feeling unmotivated if you have no choice but to stay inside and not spend time with other artists. Thankfully, there are a couple of ways you can connect with your arty pals online and keep each other motivated to create.

Have a virtual life drawing session over video chat. All you need to set this up is a model, a decent lighting source and a webcam.

Send each other reference images. If life drawing isn’t your thing, get your friends to send each other pictures to use as references for drawing or painting.

Set each other daily or weekly challenges. These can be as serious or silly as you want them to be. If you’re stuck for ideas, have a look on Pinterest.

Writers

If you’re a writer, we don’t need to tell you that writer’s block is a very real, frustrating thing. If you’ve got any friends who are also writers, suggest doing some online group writing activities to keep you all on track.

One great way to do this is to come up with a theme and have everyone write something based on it in whichever style they like (e.g. poetry, short story, personal essay, etc.). Another fun idea is to use Google Docs to write “back-and-forth” stories (i.e. one person writes a chapter then passes it on to another person who writes the next chapter).

If writing collaboratively doesn’t appeal to you but you do find yourself yearning for literary inspiration and social interaction, consider starting a virtual book club!

If you decide to try out any of these virtual collaboration ideas, make sure to snap a picture, post it on Instagram and tag @perthconcerthall. We’d love to share it and keep the positive vibes going!