I need inspiration at specific time and for that a periodic email is not going to cater me well. Would you consider delivering this in some other format - for example online gallery that is available when I need it?
For now I'm going to keep it as an email list. If the participation is high enough, I'll start posting people's completed projects to the site. Kind of a "completed projects" gallery
Why not make the Mailchimp archive public? Folks can subscribe if they want, get a feed, or view the archive. Content is the same either way. And that'd solve the "I'd like to see what I'm subscribing to" questions.