Creativity as Currency
“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once they grow up.”
Picasso.
I was recently discussing this quote with my good friend and Algerian filmmaker, Iliès Terki. As a singer-songwriter, being creative is something I do almost every day. I am continually grateful for the fact that I am able to make a living from writing and performing my own songs, whilst simultaneously bringing a little joy into the world.
Currency is defined as “the money in use in a particular country,” or “the state of being commonly known or accepted or in use”. In our current economic and social paradigm, creativity is valued only if it’s implementation will lead to the generation of more money. But it’s becoming abundantly clear that these current markers of “success” will not help us find solutions to current global problems. Could a reprioritisation of the importance of creativity be a catalyst for meaningful change? How could creativity become a form of currency?
There is no denying we are living in dynamic times. We are living through exponential rates of change driven by a breathtaking speed of continuous technological advancement. In a decade, we’ve seen the birth of social media, smart homes, iPhones, self-driving cars, online dating and the sharing economy, to name a few. But sometimes I think we get so caught up in celebrating the invention of a new technology, or sending a billionaire into space, that we overlook the more pressing problems.
The development of technology has meant that humans are rapidly becoming obsolete. Yuval Noah Harari predicts that “artificial intelligence and automation will create a global useless class”. Then there is the fact that as a species, we are currently living through the world’s sixth mass extinction event, also known as the Holocene extinction, with plants and animal species going extinct at 100 to 1000 times faster than natural rates.
Furthermore, as David Wallace Wells notes in his terrifying book “An Uninhabitable Earth”, since 1980, the planet has experienced a 50-fold increase in the number of places experiencing dangerous extreme heat, with a bigger increase to come. Climate change and its associated challenges will surely be at the forefront of humankind’s most pressing issues well into the future.
The current corporate capitalist system, with profit being used as the sole driver for success, has meant that we are continuing to mass produce plastic, pollute indigenous river systems, mine fossil fuels, and create industries of denial that resist change, whilst further enriching the obscenely wealthy.
It’s clear that these systems are broken, and in order to get out of this mess, we must come up with innovative ideas to ensure a more equitable future for humanity and the planet. These ideas must be totally out of the box. Extraordinary problems call for creative solutions!
A revaluing of creativity as currency is an essential step. We need to foster more spaces for people to get their creative juices flowing, and feel valued for doing so. Now is the time to stop our singular obsession of wealth generation, and focus more attention on encouraging creativity. And where would be the best place to start? In our school systems.
People starting school today will be retiring by around 2080. Things are changing so fast that no one has a clue what the world will look like in five years’ time, and yet we’re perpetuating an ancient educational model from the 19th century that was developed to meet the needs of industrialisation. The British and Prussian empires needed a system to churn out obedient soldiers and reliable factory workers, as we see in many of the hallmarks of the school experience today: uniforms, bells, detention, rules, conformity and the suppression of individualistic creative expression.
The late Ken Robison said in his amazing TED talk in 2006 that in education “creativity is as important as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” He also said, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original”. In most national education systems, mistakes are seen as something to avoid – as the worst thing that you can do. We are educating people out of their creative capacities.
I remember giving a songwriting workshop a few years ago in Hamburg. For me, writing songs is extremely fun and I was trying to pass on some of that excitement to the group by coming up with rhymes and silliness. There was one man in his mid 40s who just couldn’t let go. He refused to engage with the group and that playful part of himself. After the session, I felt sad for him. He was also at one point a young boy and a creative force, but that had been squashed out of him.
I realised that this could have been me if I hadn’t have taken a different direction in my life. I didn’t release my first album until I was 30. I studied engineering at university and worked as an engineer for seven years. Ironically, even though one of my roles was as a “design” engineer for the Airbus A350, my creative capacities were not being utilised. Luckily, these days I am able to exercise my creative muscle daily. This has helped me to develop skills which are useful in other areas of my life too, such as trusting intuition, thinking outside the box when confronted with problems, and being more open to new ideas when working collaboratively. In my own life, prioritising the currency of creativity over money has been an overwhelming net positive.
There is a misconception that in order to be creative, you have to work in the arts, maybe as a designer, musician or artist. This is not true. At its essence, creativity is the ability to imagine and generate ideas that have value. We can already see the results of creative thinking in small communities. The town of Yackandandah in north-east Victoria is a great example. The Yackandandah Community Development Company was created in 2002 when the town’s only petrol station was about to be closed. From the rubble, a co-op petrol station that doubles as a hardware store and plant nursery was founded. The co-op generates all its energy via solar, with surplus being sold back to the grid. All profits go back into the community building and to maintaining public spaces. It’s one great example of the innovation happening in Yackandandah, which has made a concerted effort to keep people in the town by fulfilling the needs of locals and attracting visitors. Cultural events like the annual (and 100% waste free) folk festival are also huge drawcard, and investment into local mountain bike trails has turned the town into a single-track biking riding mecca. The Community Development Company has fostered an environment for more creativity in the town, where projects and initiatives which provide economic, social and cultural benefits can be freely explored and undertaken.
As the late Steve Jobs said: “It’s the crazy ones, the misfits, the round pegs in square holes, the ones who see things differently… that push the human race forward”. Steve was talking about creatives here. The way forward is to find solutions that are currently not aligned with how we are running our global community. If we manage to make our way out of our current predicament, it might well be because we started valuing creativity as a form of currency.
Learn more about Joel and his music here.