The Journey

Making things with my hands is the oldest thread in my life.

Early on, I had the chance to represent Northern BC at the BC Festival of the Arts, and something about that experience stuck with me, not the recognition so much as the quiet permission it gave me to believe this could actually be a life, not just something I did on the side of one.

For most of my career, the honest answer was no, not really. I spent more than two decades building a career in community development, communications, brand strategy and event planning, work I was (and am) good at, work I was (and am) proud of, work that had me leading big projects and building things that mattered to entire communities (and am still doing sometimes). But it wasn't making, not in the way that mattered most to me.

The further that work took me from a paintbrush or a lump of clay, the more I found myself sneaking creativity back in through the side door, small-scale crafts tackled between errands, projects squeezed in during a recital or while half-watching a movie with my family. For a few years, I sold handmade pieces at local markets, just to keep a thread of it alive and found some of the most encouraging, generous community support I'd ever experienced doing it. It was never enough, but it was something.

Eventually, "something" turned into a leap. I opened The Makerie, a craft studio and coffee bar here in Prince George and unexepctedly signed the lease the very week the world shut down. What followed were three of the hardest, most extraordinary years of my life. We built a real gathering place for makers of every kind against odds I wouldn't wish on anyone, and somehow it became something people loved fiercely: a community that showed up for us again and again, awards for Business of the Year and Resiliency, a little studio that people called magical. For the first time in years, I was surrounded by creativity all day, mine and everyone else's. Closing its doors eventually was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made, but I carry so much gratitude for what it taught me about building something that matters to people beyond just me.

Then came my 50th birthday during a trip to Italy, standing in front of paintings, pottery and architecture that had outlived everyone who ever touched them. Between the two, something in me finally said: enough sneaking it in through the side door. The call to create has never been louder or clearer than it is right now, and I'm done treating it as something to fit around the edges of a life. It is the life.

That's why Kim Hayhurst Creative Studio exists the way it does today: creativity and craftsmanship at the center, finally, exactly where they always belonged.