We recently moved to a new home in a different town and have been heartened by the volume of festive lights. It all feels very welcoming!

But imagine if January comes and goes, then February and March, and the Christmas lights remain?

What if it turns out we’ve accidentally moved to a town where it’s always Christmas? How will we fit in? And how will we retain our sanity in the face of festive year-round cheer?

The same premise works just as well for Halloween, Valentines’ Day or any number of seasonal celebrations. Can you turn this idea into an unnerving or comic tale?

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please let me know by emailing judydarley (at) iCloud.com. I’d love to know the creative direction you choose.

This floating island drifted past on the River Avon. It made me think of how species can travel from landmass to landmass thanks to flood, tide and chance.

I wonder what could have got caught up in this tangle. Might they have been peacefully dozing, only to wake up on their move to a new home?

I love how this castaway seems to float on a sea of clouds, suggesting a voyage not only between landmasses but between worlds.

Can you turn this into a story, or other creative work?

Could this be an opportunity to explore the growing plight of refugees and immigrants?

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please let me know by emailing judydarley (at) iCloud.com. I’d love to know the creative direction you choose.

Bristol is renowned for exceptional graffiti and for its particularly eccentric turns of phrase, which can also be heard across Somerset, Devon, Dorset and Cornwall, including ‘Pat a cat’, an urging to nuzzle a moggy… Ahem, why does that sound rude?

Quite simply, anywhere you stroll in Bristol away from the hectic centre, there’s a high chance you’ll meet a cat seemingly keen for a stroke

This gorgeous artwork appeared at Bristol harbour a while back, and is one of many giant feline portraits to pop up across the city in this style. The attitude of the cat makes me wonder if they’d welcome a pat, though.

The artist who created this work must have had to balance precariously over the murky water, or paint from a boat. What might their motivation have been? Part of me feels it could have been one of the many local cats with inky paws, tempting gullible humans to come in for a stroke and get a scratch!

Can you turn this into a tale?

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please let me know by emailing judydarley (at) iCloud.com. I’d love to know the creative direction you choose.

I never expected to see a red admiral butterfly flapping around my neighbourhood on a chilly November day. This one is clearly aware of its naval namesake, as it’s perched on the boat motif that adorns Bristol wheelie bins.

And yes, it is the butterfly that’s upside-down, and not the photo or the bin.

It’s an odd image, though, isn’t it? There are so many directions you could take this prompt in, from a climate fiction tale on butterfly sightings in November, and what this bodes for our planet, or a fable about a red admiral butterfly meeting a naval admiral, or even, taking into account the butterfly’s topsy-turvy posture, a piece revelling in the natural world’s eccentrics. It’s up to you! Take this idea, and fly with it.

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please let me know by emailing judydarley (at) iCloud.com. I’d love to know the creative direction you choose.

A photographer’s lens can offer a precisely edited view of the world, and raise questions about why they chose to capture that particular scene rather than another, as well as what exists beyond that frame.

Look at any instagram feed and you’ll receive an artfully skewed impression of a life. What does the selection of shared images tell you about the photographer? Why is this the story they’ve chosen to tell? What might they have opted to leave out?

If you look at your own photos, what themes or preoccupations can you spot? What does this suggest?

Can you use this to inspire a tale?

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please let me know by emailing judydarley (at) iCloud.com. I’d love to know the creative direction you choose.

This statue in port of Kaleici, Antalya, is of a sea captain named Mustafa Ekizler, who lived here between 1905 and 2000. Mustafa is famed for having been present at “numerous events” including the 1919-21 Italian Occupation and Turkish-Greek exchange. He earned his living from the sea for 85 years, but is mostly renowned for bearing witness, and is regarded as an icon of the area’s tumultuous history.

My favourite thing about this statue, however, is the bronze dove on the captain’s shoulder. What better way to prevent pigeons crapping on your monument than by suggesting that job’s already taken? In fact, the dove is there to symbolise peace, and is so covetable that it’s been stolen twice previously.

If someone created a commemorative statue of you, what should be sitting on your shoulder? What could it symbolise?

Can you use this to inspire a tale?

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please let me know by emailing judydarley (at) iCloud.com. I’d love to know the creative direction you choose.

Growing up in the UK, I grew up with the idea of Hadrian’s Wall cutting through rolling green fields resembling something like a humble version of the Great Wall of China. I imagined Hadrian building it, or at the very least overseeing its production.

In Turkey, I came face-to-face with an artefact that puts that into some doubt – Hadrian’s Gate – a grand entry to the Old Town of Antalya, a foot-polished, tourist-magnet we passed through most days, and which Roman emperor Hadrian probably never laid eyes on.

Imagine if an edifice was named after you. What would you like it to be? How would you feel if it was something you found out about accidentally, without having been told about it, let alone had anything to do with its creation.

How would you feel on visiting it for the first time?

Can you turn this concept into a story?

If you write or create something prompted by this idea, please let me know by emailing judydarley (at) iCloud.com. I’d love to know the creative direction you choose.