Spring has sprung, and a warm breeze now dances through the alley of London. For a someone like me, a girl who raised in a tropical country where seasons mean only rain or shine—spring feels like stepping into a dream I’ve only seen in movies, I never had it my entire life. Blossoms blooming, sunlight gently warming your skin, and people smiling more often just because the sky’s finally blue. But this fairytale season comes with a twist: hay fever.
It’s strange that flowers, of all things, could trigger my allergies. I’m used to sneezing from dust and Jakarta’s ever-present air pollution, especially during the 9AM commuting chaos on a packed TransJakarta bus. Back then, I blamed everything—from smog to stress—for my constant irritation over the air pollution, and Jakarta as a whole. Every sneeze felt like a symptom of something deeper, heavier.
But here, it’s different. I still sneeze, but somehow I don’t resent it. Because this time, it’s pollen—a product of nature’s rhythm. And oddly enough, that feels… bearable. Regardless that London might one of the most polluted city, but the green parks and cities managed to make it better.
As a Jakartan, I am honestly feel so envy.
The Real Journey Begins
As spring opened its petals outside, our wild summer term kicked off inside the classroom. We were tasked with completing Project 4 and 5 side by side. Yes, I’ve been as busy as a bee (fitting, I suppose, for the season). But it’s Project 5 that truly demanded I pause and reflect, because it will lead to a bigger project. It’s the one asking us to articulate our what, why, how, and what if—not just as students, but as people with stories.
The term began with an activity led by Carolina—meant to go deeper than simply “unpacking” our ideas. I jokingly called it the Problem Tree, even though she named it The Story I Tell. For me, the activity felt more forensic than reflective. It wasn’t just about tracing identity and experience—it was about interrogating them, or me, digging into the roots of why we care about the things we do.
And what I found at the root shook me.
When the Problem Is Personal
From the email I sent to Carolina, in the middle of my reflection:
A little bit of a background: I am so much engaged with the idea of “give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. teach a man how to fish, he will eat his entire life.” And this idea, driven by how I grew up, seeing both of my parents have to support my mother’s family out of poverty which was by giving them money not the job. Therefore, it gave pressurized both of my parents until they got sick and left me away in my early 20s. The grief made me want to change the way they acted to help people, make people work. Many people I know have a lot of potentials and ideas, but they just don’t know or don’t want to know or don’t have any access to make it work. So, it triggers my mind on how to create an idea bank for people who have a creative idea, so they can realize it.
I see the future will be dominated by the creative people and community — the designers, the artists, the running community, the writers, etc. These are the jobs which, back in my country in Indonesia, are considered as profitable or making slower return compared to the more extractive ones: mining, oil or maybe online lending job. And on the other hand, creative industry still being seen as a privilege job, you need to be wealthy to be ‘sustainable’ and ‘can afford’ to be in the industry, or you need to thrive abroad. Even though making ideas are free and dreaming is easy, realizing ideas is HARD :[ So many factors to consider and that’s why many people I know, end up making it as daydreams.
If dreaming and ideas are powerful, resourceful and massive, I believe that idea can be a form of energy. Moreover, the cleaaanest energy in the history of humanity. It makes people move, only someone can make the engine out of it, to prove the energy can actually be ignited (or maybe you can teach me which energy formula in physics that is actually appropriate to describe the idea). And idea and creativity are also a regenerative one, right?
Through reflecting on the email (thanks Carolina I owe you a lot), grief shaped my dream. I didn’t realize it until now.
Grief, Unpacked
Call me lazy for copying that straight from my email into this blog post, but honestly? Rewriting it took everything in me. When I came to the UK, I carried a backpack full of emotional baggage. But I never really unpacked it—because opening it meant revisiting wounds that still haven’t healed. Thanks for MA Applied Imagination, I spend more time to reflect and analyze. It might ease the job of my therapist, but also ease the way I am healing from my grief.
Losing both of my parents meant losing not just love, but shared dreams. I grieved for what they couldn’t become. For the life we didn’t get to build together. For the “what ifs” I’ve buried in the back of my mind.
But this project… it forced those “what ifs” back to the surface.
Nobody’s Truly Free
As I worked through the reflection, one truth became clear: nobody’s truly free. Our motivations are rarely untethered. Mine are rooted in loss, in anger, in hope. This project isn’t just about generating a new idea. It’s about reclaiming a dream. It’s about redemption.
The grief I thought I had tucked away turned out to be the very reason I’m doing this.
Reframing the Allergy
Earlier, I mentioned how pollen didn’t make me as angry as the smog back home. Maybe it’s because I started to think differently. Pollen is natural. It’s part of life. Annoying, yes—but not harmful in the way that pollution is. That shift in thinking helped me find peace.
But here’s where the metaphor ends.
Because pollution can’t be reframed. It’s man-made. It’s toxic. It’s not seasonal. And that’s the same with injustice, with inequality, with the lack of access and opportunity I saw growing up. These things need fixing—not reframing.
This was written on my tree, saying how many times I hate pollution, it grows my concern in environment and equality for everyone to have fresh air. Especially in Jakarta.
Jakarta, Always
Jakarta—my love-hate hometown—has never really left me. I may be in London now, but I still carry its dust, its chaos, and its energy in everything I do. Being Batavianese shaped the way I see the world. It made me who I am—and gave me the courage to try and imagine what else could be possible for others like me.
Spring, a season that never happened in Jakarta, isn’t just a season of blooming. It’s also a time of sneezing, of adjusting, of confronting things you didn’t expect. But, how can we bring Spring to my hometown, so everyone can experience the same resilience like the spring. And maybe that’s what growth really is: a mixture of discomfort and beauty. Of grieving and hoping. Of letting go and holding on.
In Conclusion
I’m beginning to reshape my “what” into a question that guides my exploration: Can creativity act as a form of renewable energy in cities like Jakarta—an energy that not only raises awareness, but also mobilizes people toward greater change, like addressing air pollution?
This marks the starting point of how I will shape my “why.” It’s not just about creating for the sake of expression—but about igniting action, building possibilities, and reframing how we see creativity: not as a luxury, but as a catalyst for regeneration.
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