The Case for Creativity

Earlier this year I was at trend presentation at an Unbound conference hosted by Stylus. The room was incredibly hot and I was feeling incredibly uneasy. I was rewatching a trailer for the film Morgan. Yet, it wasn’t the film’s horror genre that left me on edge. No. The fact that AI created the content left me burdened over the future of human sentimentality. Essentially, what is the point of being creativity in a world dominated by robots?

Yet this anxiety was relieved when I saw Quartz had published that creativity is the driving force of our next industrial revolution, not machines. Reassuringly, the World Economic Forum has highlighted by that 2020, creativity will be the most desired skill in the workplace. Business Mind Today puts forward that whilst robots increasingly take on manual work, our future lies in what differentiates humans from machines. We must tap into our creativity.

And if you look around you will see that efforts to be creative are everywhere. The Economist 1843 magazine’ published on the front cover of their September issue ‘does LSD make you more creative’. Inside I found an article detailing that the Silicon Valley avant-garde is micro dosing on LSD for breakfast to increase their performance and productivity.

Why? Well, as aforementioned, robots are far more intellectually sophisticated than humans in their ability to perform tasks more efficiently and competently. With widespread documentation of job automation, humans must tap into what makes stand apart from robots. This of course, is our human sentimentality and part of that is our innate ability to be creative.

Our intuition intrigued, we sat down with Clare Barry, the Founder of Urban Curiosity. A fervent flâneuse, we were enriched by Clare’s energy to promoting creativity through the means of walking. We discussed the pace of city life and how this can fundamentally take its toll on how our emotional health and our ability to think and be productive. Through Urban Curiosity’s walkshops, Clare’s clients are inspired to slow down, practice mindfulness whilst wandering to achieve creative fulfilment. As such, the ability to be creative not only proves useful for establishing a competitive edge over robots in the workplace, it is also a meditative process.

With this in mind, we headed to the British Museum in Bloomsbury to catch up with Author and Journalist Harriet Griffey. Harriet’s next book is called ‘I Want to Be Creative: How to Live a Creative Life’ and will be available early next year. From our afternoon spent talking about creativity, we talked about how art, music, writing and walking are all creative outlets. If nourished, being creative can help improve the way we think and see the world.

As consequence, we are beginning to see creativity permeate into the world brand communication. Take Lush for instance. The beauty brand hosted a creative summit in September that invited consumers to participate in beauty driven events. Just recently The New York Times shared that ‘the hand is having its social media moment’. Journalist Amanda Hess asserts that hands are a symbolism of artisanal craftsmanship and zealous entrepreneurship.

Whilst there is certainty something endearing about this human representation of creativity, it also signals an opportunity for brands. Firstly, brands can use creativity as a springboard to court knowledge and performance improving hungry consumers. Secondly, tapping into creativity lends itself to the world of wellness. By gauging consumer attitudes, there is a huge potential for brands to explore and innovate.