Everyone is creative. The question is whether you have the courage to use it.
There’s a story most people tell themselves: that creativity belongs to a special group called “creative types.” I’ve never believed that story — and after thirty years travelling through the lives of thousands of people, I know exactly why it doesn’t hold up.
Walk with me through Paris, and you’ll watch that story fall apart.
Artists, writers, architects, philosophers, entrepreneurs, revolutionaries — they all looked at the same world you live in now. The difference? They didn’t just imagine another one. They had the courage to act on it.
THE HEROINE’S JOURNEY: CREATIVE CONFIDENCE
With Colette, Coco Chanel, Édith Piaf, Sonia Delaunay, Camille Claudel, Sarah Bernhardt, Isabelle Adjani and Simone de Beauvoir as your guides through the city.
Paris becomes your classroom. The streets become your pages. The women who once walked them become your teachers. And their stories become mirrors — mirrors through which you can finally begin to see your own story differently.
Your Journey Through Paris
The Call — Place des Vosges, with Colette
Colette rewrote her own story again and again — as a wife, a writer, a scandal, a legend — refusing to stay inside the role handed to her. We start here with her question underneath every reinvention: what would you change if you believed you could create something different? What story are you living right now — and where is it asking to be rewritten?
The Imagination — Coco Chanel’s Paris
Coco Chanel understood, better than almost anyone, the power of imagination to build new worlds — she imagined a woman who didn’t exist yet, then dressed her. Through her Paris, we explore the relationship between observation, imagination and storytelling. What do you see when you stop looking at the world as it is — and start imagining what it could become?
The Outsider — Montmartre, with Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf sang in the streets near here long before anyone called her a legend — an outsider with nothing, who became “the voice of Paris” precisely because she refused to shrink herself for anyone. Among the artists and outsiders of Montmartre, we explore what happens the moment you stop asking permission to think differently. Which part of yourself have you made smaller just to fit other people’s expectations?
The Experiment — The Left Bank, with Sonia Delaunay
Sonia Delaunay treated colour, fabric, canvas and the street itself as one continuous experiment — she never separated “art” from “life,” she just kept playing. Here, we turn imagination into action. You’ll experiment with a new way of seeing a challenge in your own life, and discover possibilities that only become visible once you start playing with them.
The Crisis — The Seine, with Camille Claudel
Camille Claudel’s story holds the sharpest edge of this journey — a sculptor of extraordinary talent, overshadowed, discarded, who destroyed her own work rather than let it be forgotten by history on someone else’s terms. We stand by the river she knew and explore what happens when an idea fails, when certainty disappears, and the path ahead goes unclear. Maybe the obstacle isn’t the end of the story. Maybe the obstacle is the story.
The Discovery — The Louvre, with Sarah Bernhardt and Isabelle Adjani
Two actresses, a century apart — Sarah Bernhardt, “the Divine,” who built an entire legend out of sheer will, and Isabelle Adjani, who disappeared into role after role to find something true each time. Among the stories and images that have shaped our collective imagination, we ask: what do they reveal about the story you’ve been telling yourself? What possibility haven’t you allowed yourself to see — yet?
The Return — Paris, with Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir’s great insight was that you are never simply born who you are — you become it, choice by choice. She meets us at the end of the day to remind us that the purpose of a Heroine’s Journey was never to stay in Paris. It’s to come home changed, carrying a new perspective, a creative experiment, and the confidence to act.
What You Will Discover
- That creativity is a human capacity, not a professional category
- The beliefs and fears blocking your imagination
- How stories unlock new perspectives
- How to see familiar problems differently
- How experimentation turns imagination into action
- Why failure and uncertainty are part of every creative journey
- How a city becomes a source of ideas and insight
- What your own creative story could become
Your Travel Guide
I’ve spent my life travelling through stories.
For more than three decades, I’ve travelled through literature, history, art, cities and the lives of thousands of people, searching for the stories that could help us understand our own. What I discovered: the stories we admire are rarely just stories about other people. They are mirrors.
The artist who dares to see differently. The writer who imagines another world. The outsider who refuses to accept the world as it is. The traveller who leaves the familiar behind.
Their stories became the foundation of The One Great Story and of The Heroine’s Journey.
I don’t take you through Paris to tell you what your story should be. I take you there to help you discover it for yourself.
The city is your classroom. The stories are your companions. I am your travel guide.
And you are the traveller.
The Question That Changes Everything
What story could you create — if you had the creative confidence to begin?
Take the Journey
The Heroine’s Journey: Creative Confidence
One day travelling through the stories of a city, discovering the creative story you’re living now — and what it could become.
| Paris | Amsterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Autumn | 14 October | 16 October |
| Winter | tbc | tbc |
| Spring | tbc | tbc |
| Summer | tbc | tbc |
📍 One day · €695 excl. VAT
You don’t have to be a “creative type.” You don’t have to know exactly where this journey will take you.
You only have to be curious enough to begin.
Spaces are limited — this isn’t a journey for a crowd. It’s a journey for you.
📧 To book your journey or ask a question, write to peterdekuster2023@gmail.com