My newsletter from last year, about looking for the colours of the rainbow in order, was popular (shout out to Julia, Julie, and Sarah, who all spoke with me about it), so I thought I’d follow that up with another five prompts to keep eyes open and looking out for things.

These prompts can be used on your next museum trip, or even on a walk around your town, city, or in the woods. The beauty of these is that they (mostly) work anywhere.

These are all inspired by the newsletter The Art of Noticing, written by Rob Walker. It shares useful ideas, practical prompts and unexpected inspiration to help its readers pay attention more and better.

Pick a letter of the alphabet and look around for things beginning with that letter. ‘I spy’ with a mindfulness angle! An alternative is to find something beginning with A, then B, then C, all the way through the alphabet.

A variation on the letters above - look for numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 in order. See how high you can go!

Look around and see what you can find from outer space. It could be planets, stars, comets, rockets, spaceships and lots more.

Pick a certain shape (and maybe a colour) and look for how that shape features in the museum’s artworks.

Watch out for flags in artworks - whether depictions of real flags or shapes and colours that make up flags. See if you can spot the two French flags in this Monet painting.

I like these people-watching prompts - not so useful in a museum, fun nonetheless. These work well as creative prompts. Look around and:

Thank you for reading + until next time,