Creativity has become a much-vaunted concept in recent years. Richard Florida has argued that the ‘creative classes’ are keeping cities alive, corporations are suddenly opting for African drumming lessons over annual barbecues, and creativity courses are everywhere.
It’s such a strange idea, teaching someone to be creative. Often it feels like we’ve placed creativity in a dialectic of genius; something you either have, or you don’t. The answer, for most of us, is probably no. After all, who’s going to write a haiku when the news is on and no one’s started dinner?
There’s an almost Marxist sense of alienation at play with our ideas about creativity. As people, we have become divorced – not just from the products of our labour – but also from our art. Capitalism and mass entertainment have joined forces, robbing us of the desire to create. When it comes to art, we are now consumers. Hell, even the artists have become consumers; postmodern quotation ensuring that nothing is new, anymore. As humans, if we cannot create, how effectively can we question?
Faced with this ever-spiralling cycle of disempowerment and passivity, creativity courses can be viewed as an attempt to get something back. Wresting art away from the elite, the gallery, the television, and bringing it into the home, the office, and our daily lives.
Shelley Berc and Alejandro Fogel run the very successful American organisation, Creativity Workshop. They have been touring Europe since August and will be in Dublin for the second and third weeks of September.
The workshops – utilising writing, drawing, acting, objects and interview techniques – are focussed on process over product. This is a very different accent from what we are used to. Typically, product is art. We don’t go to galleries to see someone painting; we go to see the artwork.
But what does this shift imply? If we put the emphasis on process, then we are yielding firmly to idea that there is something inherently good about creativity. The very act itself is desirable–and fair enough, really, who doesn’t want to be creative?
Richard Florida extrapolated this to national level. In his just re-released book, The Rise of The Creative Class, he argued that creators are the real power-wielders in the information age. Their ideas attract money, and their preference for idiosyncratic and dynamic lifestyles keeps cities evolving. Florida used the term, ‘creative capital’, the marriage between ideas and money.
This concept – though controversial – has shaped more than just urban development. Community groups like CreativeTampaBay have sprung up, a not-for-profit organisation, ‘dedicated to synergizing the community’s assets to cultivate an environment that encourages innovation, expands the economy and is a magnet for creative people.’
Now, that sounds exciting. In fact, it all sounds exciting. Workshops, cities, social groups, all creative, all contributing. There’s a feeling of zeitgeist surrounding the idea of creativity. It’s out there, it will make you rich; personally, economically and politically. No wonder we can’t get wait to join in.
Of course, the flip side to all of this is where we see ourselves now; un-creative and unprofitable. These ideas about creativity all operate on the notion that we aren’t creative enough, and worse, that if we don’t start creating quick-smart, we’re going to slip behind.
But, is it actually possible to be non-creative? My haiku journal might be gathering dust, but aren’t there some other ways to interact with the world? Surely, to be human, is to create?
Ironically, it is that division between process and product that weighs us down here. The idea of creation still revolves around a God-like conception of making something. We may focus all our attention on the process, certainly, but that process is one of production. No one seems keen to ask, ‘is it possible, to create, without production?’
The answer, of course, is yes. We may spend our days consuming vast quantities of media and texts, but this doesn’t have to be disempowering. On the contrary, the staggering variety of meaning that surrounds us is surely a testament to creative ability everywhere.
When we read something – anything – an act of creation is taking place. We create meaning itself – not necessarily tied to any product – and it is both personal and potent. This is not an ability restricted to university campuses, or people who watch BBC Four, it is public and necessary.
If interpretation were not creative, meaning would be singular. We would all think the same things, about the same things. Emphatically, this is not the case. Postmodernism, with its relativistic undertones, has pushed us back to thinking about a product when we think creativity. Unfortunately, interpretation has become a casualty in this war. Creating an opinion, an emotional response, has been taken for granted, but ironically, being surrounded on a daily basis by the creations of others compels us to create.
Ultimately, this makes the New Creators – Florida, the Creativity Workshop and the Tampa Bay residents – all right. Not because we’ve all become mental Luddites, refusing to create something at the cost of prosperity, nor because we’ve become an alienated proletariat, divorced from meaning itself. No, they are right, simply because like begets like.
Distrust of our own creative impulses – be they responding to a film or painting an abstract – stems from a singular place. Overcoming this reticence can only be a positive thing. Perhaps, if we learn to give weight to one mode of creativity, we will also learn to appreciate the less glamorous ones that we use every day.
Creativity has become a galvanising concept in our society. Businesses are demanding it, cities are promoting it, and we are – now more than ever – seeking it in ourselves. And so the real question is: Will all this lead to economic, personal and political affluence? The answer to that, if you hadn’t guessed, is for you to create.
