So we took a volunteer week 2 weeks ago and volunteered at the Creative Places and Spaces (ArtScape) conference, I’m a little bit late in sharing my experience but hopefully the video I’m sharing will makes up for my tardiness.  It was an interesting experience for me in that I’ve never been to a ‘real’ conference like that before and I’ve certainly never volunteered at one either.

The volunteering aspect was actually kind of secondary to the rest of the experience though I think because my responsibilities always fell during times when there were no speakers, so for me that was very fortunate.  This obviously allowed me to observe the conference as an attendee for the most part which I really enjoyed.  There were 3 speakers that I thought I would share some thoughts about.

The first is Richard Florida. I have never seen a picture of Florida before and frankly he’s a lot younger than I expected.  He talked about local governing, changing education to be a more modern and relevant medium and the importance of intelligent collaboration and competition. It was a good talk but I think that’s what I was expecting, so I wasn’t blown away.

The second speaker of note was Spencer Tunick, who among being arrested countless times has been able to organize 18,000 people to pose naked for him in a public place at one time (see the link above – and yes these are all real pictures, nothing photoshopped). The man is clearly dedicated to his art, but then again it looks like a blast, so who wouldn’t be. What I couldn’t wrap my head around is how he found so many people in one place to get naked for a picture. The amount of community building behind this is nothing short of amazing.

Finally was probably the one of the best talks I think I have ever heard in person or on TV or even on TED. Sir Ken Robinson absolutely captivated the crowd through a lot of laughter and even more wickedly intelligent insight and delivery.  He spoke on many different topics and one of the more interesting ones to us is that our current education systems kill creativity. There are many takeaways from Sir Ken’s talk. Firstly is that you will never be creative if you let fear keep you from being wrong. You must overcome your fear and allow yourself to fail. Second he gave great insight into the nature and thought process of taking things for granted.  Here he describes an interesting correlation between common sense and creativity and how your ability to ask “why” about your surroundings changes your ability to be creative.  There are many other great tidbits within his hour long speech and is certainly worth watching.

So with no further hesitation, here is a very poor quality video of the speech (sorry for the quality), but it’s worth watching.

Sir Ken Talk

Being a volunteer at the event, I didn’t get to participate in all the conference’s happenings but the Torontoist provides a good play-by-play here. I did make a point, however, to see the presentations by the creative world’s equivalent to All Stars -Sir Ken Robinson, Richard Florida and Charles Landry. Sir Ken’s speech was, in particular, thought provoking as he described the solution to our “climate crisis of the mind” by suggesting that we can plan for creativity.

I first found this comment counter-intuitive but his methodical explanation of how we accomplish this was worthy of the subsequent standing ovation. Simply defining creativity as new ideas that have value, Sir Ken implored the audience to consider why we associate intelligence with rational thinking while we associate creativity with irrational thinking since new valuable ideas are theoretically intelligent. His point, at the end of the day, was that we should not only embrace creativity but we must foster its growth in all of our systems. No system is more important than our educational one where we explained that “in school it’s called cheating, outside it’s called collaborating” to simply illustrate the divergent modes of thought in and out of our school systems.

The championing of collaboration ran deep through the conference to the point that by the time Landry spoke on morning of Day 2, he joked that he would not say the word in fear of overuse. But his presentation ran along this same current and he used example from cities where avoidance of collaboration produced disastrous results (in fact, Landry seemed to have a real disdain for public leadership in general). The goal, according to Landry was that we must go forward by being strategically principled but tactically flexible which parallels Sir Ken’s main point that we must start planning for creativity. Florida, on the other hand, left us with a different conclusion.

Florida’s takeaway point was that creativity’s biggest struggle now will be with control which was somewhat an ironic contrast to Landry and Robinson’s idea of bringing an element of control to the creative. He also talked at length about his new book, The Great Reset, which seemed to be a divergence from his previous works focusing on the creative city and the creative class in suggesting that we are all creative and can be a part of a ‘reset’ movement. I don’t disagree with the recession being a rare opportunity to start things anew but it was interesting to hear him argue for universal creativity when he’s already devoted so much time to defining a specific class where it most prevalently exists. Although Florida made a point to mention that he thought all people could be creative in Rise of the Creative Class, I wonder if his new book represents a maturity in his thinking or even an accommodation to his critics who accused him of class-based arrogance for his championing of the Creative Class.

The difference now, in the words of Florida and the rest, is how we bring creativity outside the creative class.

A new study out of the University of Amsterdam has found a strong relationship between being in love and being creative.  When in love, we tend to think more long term and thus trigger global processing which is considered central to creative thinking and interfering with analytical thinking. Conversely, when not in love we tend to think more in the immediate which triggers local processing and has the exact opposite effects.

Having sex on the mind, therefore, is apparently extremely limiting to one’s creativity. Go figure. Scientific America does a good job of analyzing the results of the study here.

What are your thoughts?

Businesses are beginning to understand that recession or no recession, purchase decisions are not influenced by price alone.  For the most part, we want to purchase affordable products/services of uncompromised quality and value.   For that reason, I’m quite intrigued by the advertising and marketing direction of today’s companies: sell a better product at a better price and make it interesting.  Companies need to fight for our loyalty now more than ever, and they’ll do so at whatever cost.  Ads are getting down to business: raw, straightforward facts.  I say this with the Rogers and Bell ads at top of mind.  At first, you had to put two-and-two together “I think Rogers is talking about Bell when they refer to that blue couch”.  But now, you don’t need to be a Math scholar to understand their message “Spend less than Rogers, get more with Bell”. The amateur price-wars of yesterday are gone, replaced with arguably immature “I’m better than him because…” ads. The Rogers and Bell marketing campaigns appear to have my best interests at heart – they tell me all the ways I can get more while saving more. So part of me is impressed at their “fight” for my hard-earned dollars because it looks like I end up the big winner at the end of the day.  It’s not that simple though.

I have a beef with the Rogers/Bell battle: Two players in any given industry will not push service and quality to its peak.  I’m a Rogers client who knows people that use Bell services, and I’ve found that we share one thing in common: no one’s happy.  Rogers’ automated customer service line is anything but helpful and my one alternative isn’t much better.  I’m numb by the realization that Canadians are stuck when it comes to choices.  I simply cannot buy-in to the notion that the customers’ interests are truly protected.  I can appreciate the great marketing direction behind the campaigns, but I struggle to accept that we, as customers, will ever get what we deserve from either provider.

Unfortunately, they won’t come out and write that in their advertisements.

Dear Friends,

These are ideas that I’ve read, heard, seen, found, thought up or stole.

Some have helped me get out of creative ruts and moments of self-doubt – like when I feel that my work isn’t good enough or isn’t contributing anything significant. Others have helped me say “why the fuck not?” when faced with making a safe versus unsafe decision. A few keep me in the realm of possibility.

All serve as fuel for the fire.

So fill up!

16. “WE DON’T PLAY, EVEN WHEN WE BE PLAYIN’”

Outkast making the case for serious play. Seriously.

15. THE ONLY TIME YOU LIVE IS NOW

You don’t live 2 minutes from now, 2 hours from now, 2 days from now or 2 years from now. You’re only alive at this moment, so why not make that time the best time possible?

14. IT’S NOT ABOUT HOW GOOD YOU ARE, IT’S ABOUT HOW GOOD YOU WANT TO BE

So how good do you want to be? (This was the great Paul Arden’s way of saying don’t talk about it if you don’t live it.)

13. JUST ASK

Really, what’s the worst that could happen? Besides, there are worse things in life than hearing someone tell you no.

12. “IF YOU’RE NOT PREPARED TO BE WRONG, YOU’LL NEVER COME UP WITH ANYTHING ORIGINAL”

Words of wisdom from Sir Ken Robinson, someone who understands that failure is only one attempt preceding success.

11. GET HIGH

For real. You might see some next shit that you’d miss otherwise. Take Bob Marley, who doesn’t seem to miss anything:

“Herb is a plant… herbs are good for everything. Why these people who want to do so much ‘good’ for everyone – who call themselves governments and this and that – why them say you must not use the herb? … We see them just say ‘You must not use it, you must not use it ‘cause it make you rebel.’ Against what?”

10. “THE SPIRIT OF YOUR DESIGN MUST MATCH THE SPIRIT OF YOUR CONTENT”

The designer of “No Logo” telling Naomi Klein that basically, all of the pieces matter. This line is one of the best ways to see if your work really “represents”.

9. “GOOD DESIGNERS (AND ARTISTS AND WRITERS) ARE TROUBLEMAKERS”

The troublemakers understand that the most dangerous things about our society are the very things that we take for granted. The quote above is from the perverse optimist himself, Tibor Kalman.

8. “WHEN EVERYBODY ZIGS, WE ZAG”

One of the dudes who designed the Air Jordan’s said that if they do something that everyone likes, they scrap the idea. If they do something that makes people feel uncomfortable, than it means that they’re doing some next shit.

7. ALLOW YOUR FUTURE TO CONTROL YOUR PRESENT

I’ve seen many lives in ruin as a result of the past dictating the present. The only way the past has any bearing on your present is if you allow it to. Switch up your mentality from PAST-PRESENT-FUTURE to FUTURE-PRESENT-PAST.

6. DON’T ASK SOMEONE WHAT THEY THINK ABOUT YOUR WORK – ASK THEM HOW YOU CAN MAKE IT BETTER

More often than not, you’ll get an honest answer.

5. SHARE

Your time. Your ideas. Your work. Your energy. Share everything you have and more will come back to you.

4. “IT’S NOT WHERE YOU TAKE THINGS FROM – IT’S WHERE YOU TAKE THEM TO”

Jean-Luc Godard co-signs stealing – but only stealing that which speaks to your soul. (I stole this from Paul Arden, who stole it from Jim Jarmusch.)

3. GOD IS IN THE DETAILS

No really, she is. Take a good look. Right there, do you see her? She’s right in that space that separates the best in your field from the best in the world.

2. ROLL THE DICE

Because it’s better to regret what you have done than what you haven’t.

1. DO WHAT YOU LOVE

A wise man once asked me, “what do you love to do?” After I answered, he asked me, “then why aren’t you doing it?” Doing what you love will make it easier to get up in the morning and it’s more rewarding than any material object will ever be. I really can’t stress this one enough.

(((Respect to Paul Arden, Bruce Mau, J. Sakiya Sandifer, Karim Rashid and others for the inspiration information. *Before I forget, this is the snack like version of my original Incomplete Humanifesto. The original includes ideas about life and love and relationships – but you don’t wanna read about that…)))

Creativity is the ability to develop something new by throwing away past ideas or concepts. So to start, we first must reach into the depths of the seemingly impossible. We need to go beyond the innovative ways of making money and somehow transform the economic system altogether. As the philosopher Alan Watts says in his book Does It Matter, “money is a way of measuring wealth but is not wealth in itself”.

Our society is a victim of temptation and the more stuff that accumulates around us the more cluttered our minds become. Fortunately, these things and possessions have no feel. At most they are a temporary lust that fills an empty void. We have to move towards a system that caters to our most basic needs; food, shelter, mental/physical services and art in all of its forms. This also requires a society that promotes our growth toward becoming higher beings.

Herman Daly, an ecological economist, states that more growth in terms of physical product is not the answer. Daly says “this only compels people to work harder in order to be able to afford the unending stream of ‘new’ goods being supplied by the system”. Daly expresses that “marginal costs of additional growth in rich countries, such as global warming, biodiversity loss and roadways choked with cars, now likely exceed marginal benefits of a little extra consumption”.

The human being is considered a very advanced species, maybe because we hold the only opinion on the topic, but I would argue that our steps are minimal and all over the map. This is directly related to our lack of trust in one another and in the universe. We steal each others money and point fingers while putting all of our confidence in this ‘virtual’ wealth. Yet, there is no depth here. There is nothing pure or hopeful about it.

We have built and expanded our world from side to side and from top to bottom because we have no concept of the actual space that surrounds us, this infinite magic that is energy. If our goal can be to inherently help and improve one another we will reach a greater fulfillment and our society with naturally change to fit our mold.

We can no longer make physical products that are intended to break and fail for the sake of doing business. The number one reason being the environment and the second being the empty and disheartening experience we tolerate when deceiving one another. People in this period of time have no idea what they are really working for. We have created a continuous competition among ourselves while disregarding the beauty and health of a natural phenomenon that is our home.

Human beings never really appreciate something until it is gone. This is how we have evolved, to always have more, but we cannot buy back the lakes and trees once they disappear. We desperately need to connect and when we do I guarantee we will witness something amazing. This economic downfall is an opportunity for us to realize the insignificance of money. This may be a naïve way of thinking due to the current system we find ourselves in and I know people are suffering but we cannot look for a quick fix. We need to put our minds together, tap into the collective consciousness and build something new, something seemingly impossible from our current view.

A Creative Club attendee recently sent me a TED video from 2007 of Sir Ken Robinson explaining why he thinks our education system is killing creativity. Like most TED products, it’s a fascinating argument and because “everyone has an interest in education”, I thought it would make a good focus for today’s discussion.

Robinson’s contention is that creativity should be as important to education as literacy but the reality is that we’ve been educating people out of their creative capacities. The reason for this centers around the idea that we stigmatize mistakes, which is a mistake in itself because “if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original”. But more importantly, he adds, our education system has not evolved from its earliest iteration which was created before the 19^th century to meet the needs of industrialism. Thus, we are discouraged from pursuing what was once considered more frivolous pursuits, like the arts, because of the industrial-centric perception that arts do not produce productive workforce members.  Academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence, discourages creativity and “the consequence is many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not because everything they value at school wasn’t valued or was actually stigmatized”.

This last line resonated deeply with me because it spoke to my own experience in academia. As early as kindergarten, my parents were told that I was ‘gifted’ but behavioral problems had prevented me from my ‘true potential’. It became a familiar storyline for the rest of my academic life until I eventually became convinced that I was not intelligent at all, but apparently good at giving off that impression. This made sense to me as I never seemed to meet expectations and I found myself far more interested in people and getting involved while than I was with class.  In fact, I loved school for these exact reasons and when I entered MBA School at Wilfred Laurier University, I strongly believed that greatest thing I was going to accomplish there was making friends.  After two decades of being in education, this seemed to be the thing I could do best so my expectations were set accordingly.

I was an odd-ball in the program, partially because of my views and partially because I was one of a few arts students among a sea of primarily business and engineering folks (which is nothing against them).  The school’s philosophy and the people produced an encouraging environment to be different and factors like the not so difficult evaluation scheme (something I think is prevalent in most MBA programs) also encouraged me to try different approaches and make mistakes.  The turning point for me was in a mandatory finance course where I purposely flunked the exam so I didn’t have to spend time studying for it because I knew I could re-write it with the same questions later.  I’m not encouraging this approach, but in hindsight that was my creative solution to adhering to education’s non-creative ways while enabling me the time to explore new things. I never did something quite like that again (well I never took a finance course again) but that’s probably because I began exploring things which suited the way that I thought – something that had been very foreign to me.

This is my personal example and relating back to Robinson’s argument, our constructs for education are simply not conducive for creativity.  He makes a great case for why we must change the system for children but for those well past this point, all is not lost. Many people have clued in on the importance of creativity in education. If you’ve decided that going back to school is a recession-solution for yourself, you should heavily consider what type of school is best for you before you decided on a program. My guess is that if you’re reading this, you would probably benefit from a school like the Institute without Boundaries, which is based in Toronto.  In one sentence, the Institute brings together mature students from various disciplines to collaboratively and creatively obtain a forward thinking education. Their final output, a “menu of options for neighborhood renovations”, is on display from June 4^th to July 26^th and I highly recommend you attend the opening or check it out at a later time.

Creativity can’t be forced, but it can always be nurtured.  We’ve advanced in almost every way from the industrial age, education should not be the one left behind.

There I was lying in bed at 1am and much to my chagrin, I was being forced to watch the final episode of American Idol… then KISS came on stage. Yes, that’s right Knights In Satan’s Service were standing on stage pretending to be hardcore and cool standing beside what I think is yet another painful peace of corporate America. I don’t think I’ll get into what KISS used to claim they were all about but I can tell you it didn’t involve endorsing things like Ford (American Idol’s big sponsor). That said, KISS sold their souls to the musical devil long ago, so seeing them on American Idol was more of a matter of time than a surprise. But what really turned my stomach was seeing Slash, from the once amazing band (Guns n Roses), on American Idol a few weeks back. It hurt so much because it was yet another symbol of one’s rebellious youth and free spiritedness falling to the all mighty green back. So sad.

Those heart breaking moments really forced me to consider a few questions that I would like to pose to our readers that will hopefully have you reflect on what you see in the media. First, do you feel it’s important for artists – musical, written, visual, etc. – to have artistic integrity? I personally think the answer without a doubt is YES.

If you agree with me for the first question, then the next question to ask is – is ones artistic integrity lost when the artistic material is dictated/guided by those footing the bill? To this I would say it depends on what you do with their suggestions. There’s the Britney Spears-esque approach of not writing or singing your own music – zero artistic integrity in my opinion. Or you can take Weezer-esque approach. Weezer was told by their label executives that their last album was not commercial enough. So before releasing their first single Weezer’s label demanded that they come up with a commercial single. Weezer quickly threw together the album’s first single [the mega successful] – “Pork and Beans” – which essentially was Weezer creating a song explaining that the song was commercial and that it’s not their style. The rest of their album sounded very different from their first single, because that’s what they wanted to do. Artists with integrity.

So whether or not you think Britney Spears or Weezer have or don’t have artistic integrity I would like to pose the next question. Can an artist’s message be taken seriously if they are corporately sponsored? I believe the answer to this lies within the artists ability to have enough integrity that allows the artist to be true to themselves, but this is the same with anyone, artist or not.

Next I would like you to ask you; do you think you can be passionate about something in which you show no integrity? Personally I’d think NO. Maybe this is why almost all pop singers don’t write their own music. Next, can someone be truly creative in an area without having passion in that area? This I don ‘t know for certain but instinctually I believe the answer is NO. This would also explain why large corporations are “creative through acquisitions” and not through they’re operations/bureaucracy. Even touted creative corporations like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft find it easier to buy creativity than to create it (the hyperlinks provide the lists of each of their acquisitions).

So, are large institutions well suited for creativity? Are many artists much different from an employee at the same label? Do these so-called artists deserve our praise as artists? Or do the artists who fill the pop airwaves have the same artistic integrity/ability as the man designing the speakers you hear them on if they’re both just doing their job.

These questions and my positions I have stated are generalizations, there are exceptions to everything but can we really expect truly novel ideas/art from people that are purely motivated by money? I personally don’t think so.

Are Recessions a Good Thing for Creativity? April 20

I recommend that you not tell me that I’m predictable. I get so perturbed by the characterization that my ensuing behaviour is erratic and often regrettable as I attempt to prove that the only thing predictable about me is that I’m unpredictable. The good news is that the knee-jerk habit has begun to wane in age as I realize that being predictable can represent a good thing.  For example, it’s come to my attention that starting this group and having relative success, is pretty predictable. At least, that’s the conclusion I get from reading the Chopra of Creativity, Richard Florida, who asserts cities like Toronto that posses good levels of diversity, tolerance and a bohemian belly are most attractive to the creative class and ergo, prosperity.

When we started this group, a handful of my better-read friends suggested that I learn about Florida so I did some research and was pleasantly surprised to find out that he is the Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute, which is located in Toronto. The Institute is “the world’s leading think-tank on the role of sub-national factors…in global economic prosperity”. Feeling rather fortunate to be so close to this creative hub, I jumped at the opportunity to set up a think-date with Florida. Unfortunately, my hopes were quickly dashed due to his scheduling demands and without anyone saying it, I suspect the predictability of our group’s existence meant that we didn’t scream “I deserve your time” quite yet.

Understanding, although disappointed, I asked if ‘anyone’ would meet me from MPI and two months later I had the good fortune to meet with Dr. Kevin Stolarick. As the Research Director and Associate Director at the Institute, Stolarick is the ying to Florida’s yang. Bonded by their shared interests, the two have crafted a successful partnership over the past 10 years with Florida as the story teller and Stolarick the data driver. Obviously, they don’t play those roles exclusively, which is good because I had a lot of questions for him which required a little bit of both.

Recessions are a great thing for Creativity.  Stolarick launched into this topic by quoting economic growth specialist Paul Romer who claimed that “a crisis is a horrible thing to waste”. To paint this point, Stolarick explained how in the aftermath of forest fires we are treated to an eclectic and diverse boom of new species in the area. Similarly, what we are seeing now is newer, smaller companies being given a chance that they were barely afforded before. This aligned well with our very first piece advocating the creation of a Canadian Car rather than funneling more money to the big three, which we’ve come to learn is textbook creative destruction (“out of destruction a new spirit of creativity arises”).

Creativity, however, cannot be credited for everything. There is a more direct play than creativity, Stolarick pointed out. Often the increase in startups during recessions occurs simply because people are out of work or in need of supplementary income. This is interesting since creative destruction itself leads to layoffs as workers finds that their skill sets become obsolete with the emergence of something new and better. Sometimes this leads to even more innovation but creative destruction more often leads to severe negative repercussions for affected workers. It’s for this reason that creativity has a really tough time when things are good. If it isn’t broken why would you bother fixing it especially if the solution comes with unenviable repercussions like rendering people obsolete?

This is a classic example of where short term trumps long term thinking and the results aren’t pretty. A recent article about the 12 major brands that won’t be around by next year prophesizes the demise of some inudustry giants, who share key commonalities but perhaps none more important than how comfortable they became with the status quo. So where does that leave us? Will companies constantly just rise and fall during recessions if the pay-off for constant creativity is too great to do pro-actively?

The short answer is no. The companies that last will do what they do the best but constantly challenge themselves to do better. Google is a great example of this as they encourage their engineers to spend 20% of their time working on something that they’re passionate about that’s unrelated to their actual work. It’s not surprising, therefore, why it seems like Google Labs is shooting out new tools on a weekly basis and sure, they’re not all handy but this commitment to never be satisfied is critical to Google’s long term success. The beauty of a commitment to constant creativity is that workers develop along with it, rather than becoming victims to it. As Stolarick boldly stated, “the minute Google gets satisfied, it’ll be replaced.” Seems improbable now but companies like AIG, GAP and Ford seemed unbreakable at their peaks as well.

We’ll be talking  about this more in today’s Creative Club but next up in the Stolarick Series we’ll be looking at whether we turn to creative or conservative leaders during recessions.

Do we Turn to Creative Leaders? April 27

As an outsider looking in, it’s remarkable how much America has tried to distance itself from George W. Bush given that he was elected not once but twice. Subsequent generations will ask how the same mistake was repeated and while there is not just one answer, the finely crafted image of Bush as the macho cowboy was critical to influencing the vote in 2004 when America felt it was enduring a safety crisis. The correlation between crisis and cowboy got me wondering if there was a similar connection during times of economic hardship: do we turn to leaders who seem more creative or do we still prefer the cowboy?

To Kevin Stolarick, Associate Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute, the answer is quite simple: at times of economic hardship, the cowboy vs. creator argument is secondary to whether the leader is considered to be visionary. The visionary is able to cross lines and ideology. He or she is able to overcome the fact that during hardship people turn to leaders who represent change as much as those who symbolize tradition by selling the idea that they have a plan

Creativity, interestingly enough, is not a good word to bring up in the political arena. Stolarick believes that the concept of creativity “scares the hell out of people” and Dr. Keith Sawyer confirmed this discord when he asserted that voters would rather that their candidates are the exact opposite of creative – they’d prefer them perfectly predictable. Granted, I’m a creativity enthusiast (and thus posses some bias), but I initially found this surprising. How could creativity be more of a liability than an asset?

Thinking about this question was initially not easy for me (had I got it all wrong?) but ultimately it proved to be a positive experience. We’re not wrong to see creativity as a solution but we should be cognizant that for some people, creativity represents something erratic, destructive and drastic (think the term “creative destruction” inspires much confidence?). The key, according to Stolarick, is recognizing your audience and consciously using language that they’re comfortable with.

This is an important lesson to remember as the Generation Y community, who represent the majority of the readers here, try to play a larger role and be heard during this time of need. Creativity might indeed kill the recession, but we just don’t need use those exact words to make it happen.

Defining Creativty Got us Nowhere. April 30

At this Monday’s Creative Club two entrepreneurs, a venture capital specialist, a writer/actor, an architect, a mobile media marketer and a molecular biology PHD candidate, somehow attempted to define creativity and who makes up the creative class. The accidental experiment was futile from the perspective of deriving an answer but it was fascinating to find that not one person could entirely agree with another. The eventual decision was that we were all right (as creativity is respective to an individual), which ultimately points to both the strength and weakness of intellectual debate about creativity.

Kevin Stolarick said that the one of the biggest fallacies people make is assume that the creative class is monolithic and our most recent creative club was a good example of this. While I didn’t make that assumption myself, I’d readily admit that I’ve been struggling with the fact that the creative club has so many different types of people. I asked Stolarick: how can I engage everyone if everyone is so unique? Doesn’t the fact that we identify as being creative mean that we’re harder to unify?

Stolarick quickly corrected my thinking: members of the creative class desire to work with other members of the creative class particularly because of these differences. The best one can do is connect them together because what might seem like the crashing of two paradigms often creates something incredible akin to when the mixing of blue and green make yellow. This might not sound profound but the connecting of a creative class member with a member of the labor class, for example, does not often produce the same results. I’m not saying it’s to be avoided (or saying anything bad about those from the labor class), but just that the clashing of ideas between creative types is more likely to lead to something positive whereas clashes between creative types and non creative types do not.

The key, according to Stolarick, is to find topics or problems that creative types have in common and most often these are societal topics like recessions, transportation and health care. Not surprisingly, probably the most successful topic we’ve discussed was what the Toronto Transit Commission can do stop their bleeding and provide a more respected service (everyone who attends the creative club does so using the TTC). It’s also worth mentioning that one club member mentioned that they much preferred topics of discussion similar to this opposed to this week’s ‘what is creativity debate’.

I assured this member then and will write this now, let’s get back to focusing on solutions and new inspirations. There’s one more piece in the Stolarik series which will discuss how to leverage a creative community and I think this a great launch pad to get us into something more phsyical and

Generation YES. May 4

At the book launch for “Rise of the Creative Class”, the usually verbose Richard Florida spent only a short amount of time speaking about the book and then opened the stage for anyone to speak about a cause, idea or opportunity that they were passionate about. It was an odd decision, since authors typically use their book launches to talk about their…books (go figure). Florida’s long time collaborator Kevin Stolarick justified this by explaining their belief that the creative class can never be organized and the best one can do is simply connect them with one another.

The story of the launch was Stolarick’s way of responding to my question as to how the Creative Club could be taken to the next level.  I had been thinking about this since an early critic asked if theCreative Club is just “a bunch of people [that] gather at a bar and talk?” Well yes, that’s what happens but over the last 10 weeks (we’ve never had the exact same group of people twice, which has been very cool) our conversations have connected strangers and stimulated different people to start thinking or acting upon areas of discussion that interested them.

Thus, on a micro level, our Club has had tremendous success since we can all provide individual evidence on how creativity is killing the recession but we’ve also reached a level of maturity now that we must consider our macro potential. We have an incredible opportunity to mesh various talented minds and deliver solutions that’s matter. Never have I felt the desire to do this more when this past weekend I saw the front page article of the Toronto Star - “Generation Why Me” – regarding how Generation Y is struggling and angered by the injustice incurred by the recession. In all due respect to those who are suffering, every generation can point to how they’re hurting (e.g.  seniors whose pensions have depreciated, baby boomers who can’t retire, Gen X who still feel under loved, etc) and I’m just not sure how our Generation has been labeled so defeatist (maybe it all stemmed from being a good play on the ‘Y’ in gen Y).

So here’s what I’m wondering: Why can’t the play on the term ‘Generation Y’ instead be ‘Generation Yes’?

This recession provides an incredible opportunity not just for Gen Y but for everyone to reset and return better than ever – or at least better than before. I’m not naïve to think the world can be perfect, but I’m optimistic the recession has afforded us the opportunity to turn over every stone and consider what’s underneath. I’m hopeful. For Gen Y, rather than lamenting how we were told to get educated and now we’re nowhere, why not talk about how we’re fortunate to be the best educated Generation and are leveraging this into being recession killers, world savers and changers. It should be, even simply from the perspective of continual improvement, our goal to become the greatest generation yet.

Tonight at the Creative Club I’ll have one question for the group: what’s important to us and what can we do about it beyond discussion, either as individuals, as a sub group, as several groups or as a large group. This is what I believe Stolarick was always driving me towards. After all, is there is one thing that is certain about the creative class is that the ability for us to collaborate has proven to be the true determiner of prosperity.

So let’s go Gen Yes.

But another important thing to consider is how bailouts impact the creative class.  I believe that the two – bailouts and creativity – are inversely related. So as bailouts increase, creativity is suppressed and it’s not hard to figure out why.

If we save GM, not only are we propping up a company which has shown a tendency to avoid being creative – which is one of the reasons why its where it is right now – but our lifeline is accompanied with a short leash on what they do. They are more likely to consider how to fix their old errors than open up into a territory that they are unfamiliar with. They are, in other words, very adverse to creativity.

If GM was left to face its inevitable decline, on the other hand, it would create a vacuum for new industries to emerge that are ultimately better suited for today’s economy. Take the airline industry as a good example of this. Almost all Canadian airlines (except, for some inexplicable reason, Air Canada) are not provided with the same lifeline that we are currently dishing out and accordingly, almost all of them have failed. Because of this, WestJet was created with a creatively divergent business model (which they can actually credit SouthWestern Airlines for) and has comparably flourished in this airline-hostile market. They haven’t been without their own problems but the point is that the death of one corporation means that many others will follow until the right formula is found.

I’m not particularly an advocate of the Austrian School of Economics which argues that we should just let everything fail and re-start again. I’m also not particularly a fan of complete and utter government intervention (i.e. rampant socialism) that seems to be going on right now. I am a fan, however, of the idea that we don’t bailout for the sake of bailing out and really consider where we put our lifelines. I wonder if rather than giving GM 6 billion, what that money could do if it was up for grabs for entrepreneurs and small business owners in the auto realm. Would this not create the same job creation that we are fearful of losing? Would this inspire more people to think creatively about building companies for tomorrow and not saving companies from yesterday?

Creativity is a risk, I’ll admit it. But at some point we all decide that what we have isn’t worth fixing. I think this is one of those times.