Creativity has been on my mind recently. The topic was triggered by the imminent arrival of a special piano to my home.
When I was 14 years old, my grand-uncle left me a shiny black grand piano in his will. Oom Boet. He was the person that most personified creativity to me during my childhood. He also saw the creative being in me. And encouraged it in all sorts of ways.
For my 6th birthday my parents gave me four tubes of oil paint (the primary colours and white). So, I could have an oil painting session with oom Boet in his studio. I’ll have to go look through my parents’ storeroom to see if I still have the canvas.
He would phone me shortly before every birthday and ask me what I wanted as a gift. And then I would rattle off my favourite things: Tinkerbell nail polish (my parents thought nail polish was inappropriate for small girls), art stuff, or (wildly!) surprise me. Surprise me he always did.
Oom Boet was an artist (painter and pianist) who, by day, worked as a pharmacist in a public sector hospital. He understood people, suffering and joy, beauty and devastation. He was a man whose heart had been broken many times.
The piano was promised to the child in the family who had progressed the furthest with music lessons. A bit of an unfair last bequeath to me since I was the eldest child. I had the longest time to accumulate years of difficult piano lessons…I didn’t have the natural talent. I want to believe that he thought I would be the person who the piano would bring the most joy to. But who knows.
And now the piano is on its way to me. I finally have space to put the piano where it deserves to be seen and played. And I will be able to look at it every day, learn to play it again and remember oom Boet, and creativity.
I’m also thinking about creativity for other reasons. I’m an economist. Not a particularly creative profession (on the face of it). So, I grapple with how I can bring more creativity to my work space. A space that I both chose (continue to choose) and love. There must be something creative here…
In his book Creativity Explained: From Music and Art to Innovation in Business, Prof David Priilaid of the School of Management Studies at the University of Cape Town explores creativity from all angles. Its emotional and other sources, how it manifests, and how it can be encouraged.
David writes the following about alternative (non-artistic) types of creativity (p.204):
“As a more generalized comment, it should be said that artists are de facto ahead of their times. They define the moment; they interpret the signals and offer a vison of the future. This is also what entrepreneurs do.”
I’d like to think that economists also do this. Our profession has to provide foresight, or at least try. We use complex data to paint a picture of the now, as well as the future. And increasingly, we will have to use storytelling (paired with complex data) to take people along to where we should be going.
In a world where we are all currently watching artificial intelligence (AI) developments with awe (and some trepidation), creativity and flexibility are likely to be the two main features that distinguish humans’ work from AI labour.
I’m asking myself: how can I cultivate and treasure my creativity? If creativity is the one characteristic that is going to distinguish my work from the work of the bots.
David’s book provides guidance on ways of caring for our creativity. He writes that although there’s been much emphasis on collaboration in creativity, creators need “solitude and absence from external distractions” that allow them to “hear and pay attention to the first indications of creative thought” (p.205). We need to create space for alone time and work.
We also need to create space for people different to ourselves and invite others who may not typically work in our field in. “Otherliness” is not only about work focus, but also about personality, ethnic and cultural background, gender and many other things. Ultimately, we need to embrace and make room for all forms of diversity, also diversity of thought.
And then there are two last points about encouraging creativity that really struck me. We need to cultivate space for ourselves and hone the practice of paying attention. Sometimes the ideas are whispering softly, and will be drowned out by the noise in our lives if we haven’t learnt to listen. Lastly, “most importantly, creativity is about being yourself, about finding your voice, your authenticity. Few artists of any merit are poseurs” (p.206).
I love that these perspectives came from an academic focused on business. It gives me hope for my own creativity. I hope it lights a little flame for you too.
