Creativity for a cause

A common misconception about creativity is that it's purely cosmetic. Not even the icing on the cake, it's just the sprinkles that add a little pizzazz.

Photo by Sheelah Brennan on Unsplash

While it's true some creativity is primarily concerned with aesthetics, I believe we grossly underestimate the impact that beauty has on the state of our soul. I don't think many of us would want to live in a world devoid of beauty.

But without belittling beauty, I think it's safe to say that most creative endeavors aspire to make more than just an aesthetic mark on the world.

There is, of course, a long tradition of artists raising awareness of, and sparking a response to, human suffering.

Picasso's Guernica (1937), perhaps the most famous anti-war painting.

I'm always inspired by the ways in which creativity can be harnessed to help a worthy cause. During the lockdown I loved Save the Children's Save with Stories campaign in which celebrities like Benedict Cumberbatch and Emilia Clarke recorded themselves reading children's books. (As an aside, the next time you're feeling stressed I invite you to watch one of these videos and reset your nervous system in a matter of minutes.)

At the moment, the world is still reeling from the devastating earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria just over a week ago, killing 36,000 and making more than a million people homeless.

So this week I wanted to share three ways you can support the disaster relief efforts while also getting your creativity on:

1. 'Book' a writerly conversation: The Book Auction for Turkiye and Syria includes so much more than just signed books. Hundreds of writers, agents and editors are donating their time and have already raised almost $60,000. Last year I developed a children's book idea* but I haven't done anything with it. So I bid for a zoom call with a picture book agent to get some feedback. There's only a few more days left to bid, so if it speaks to you, you'll want to move quickly!

2. Buy art: Open Space is organizing the sale of many donated works of contemporary art, including this gorgeous painting:

Possibilities 8 (2016) by Secil, oil on paper, 40x40cm, £420, image: @openspacecontemporary

3. Give a creative gift: Over 200 celebrities have joined ChooseLove and Cameo to offer short personalized video messages to raise money. Maybe your niece would love a birthday message from Cinderella or your Aunt who adores Downton Abbey would appreciate a get well message from Lady Edith.

So there you have it. Three ways creativity can help now. But even after the regions in Turkey and Syria have been rebuilt, there will continue to be no shortage of worthy causes.

What's a cause that's close to your heart? What's one way you might contribute your creative talents to supporting that cause?

* If you're interested in learning about writing children's books the London Writer's Salon periodically runs workshops. The one I attended on writing picture books was incredibly helpful and included tailored feedback. I also enjoyed this comprehensive masterclass with Julia Donaldson.

Dressing the part

What would your creative self love to wear?

Last week my husband, Akram, and I went on a date browsing Broadway Market. After picking out new glasses for him and picking up cozy wool socks for us and our daughter, we decided to head home for a cup of hot cocoa. 

Catherine Tough’s stall at Broadway Market (image: @broadwaymarket)

Then, an item in a shop window caught my eye. ‘No’, I told myself. ‘I don’t need any more clothes. And what’s the point in looking if I’m not buying anything?’ I kept walking. 

But two stores down I stopped. Another voice said, ‘Go back.’

I’ve been working on reclaiming my creativity long enough to know to listen to the insistence of my intuition.

I turned to Akram and we headed back to the store. 

The window display that caught my eye at Retrouve in Broadway Market. (image @retrouvevintage)

I admit a part of me felt uncomfortable asking the shopkeeper to take the coat off the mannequin. The conditioning to optimize for others’ convenience is much quieter than it used to be, but it’s still there. I simply said “hello” to that part and made my request to the friendly woman who was happy to oblige.

Trying on this Egyptian* handwoven, hand-embroidered vintage coat felt amazing, magical even. But it wasn’t cheap and my rational cost-benefit assessment said I would never wear it enough to justify the price. 

But Akram got a glimmer in his eye. ‘I want to get it for you. You need something to wear for your future storytelling self’. (As an aside, seeing and validating someone else's creative potential like this is a beautiful and sacred act).

For context, I have a deep passion for traditional oral storytelling. I love nothing more than storytelling events, festivals and courses. The night before our wedding I shared a Palestinian story with our guests called “Women’s Wiles Beat Men’s Wiles”. When I designed my psychology of creativity course for UCL I was sure to invite my talented friend, Hannah, to share some storytelling magic.

I don’t plan on becoming a professional storyteller anytime soon. But my creative self is certain that sharing traditional tales will be part of my future. I guess I identify as an aspiring storyteller. So “storyteller” is one of, what Prof. Herminia Ibarra would call, my possible or provisional selves.

Buying this coat became a commitment to my creativity and to that specific possible self. Making space for it in our home somehow helps me to make space for hope in my heart that the vision will come to pass. It concretizes a dream that would otherwise remain abstract and ephemeral.

It also fortifies the creative self. A necessary task so it can be strong enough to stand up to the rational voice with its endless list of reasons why the creative path is not practical or prudent or possible.

In a recent interview, Joseph Gordon-Levitt shared how his brother’s first step toward reclaiming his creativity was wearing “weird loud socks that didn’t match.” Similarly, one of the women I interviewed for my PhD research shared that her decision to wear a pink sweater in her male-dominated workplace was a symbolic act of reclaiming her creativity. 

What’s one way you could honor your creative self by dressing the part?

* The tag said it was Egyptian, but the handwoven cotton looked more like the gabi I saw in Ethiopia than anything I’d seen in my time in Egypt. Any textile expert out there who could clarify?

What flamingos can teach us about creativity

Recently, when my 2-year-old daughter had a fever, we turned to the comforts of David Attenborough guiding us through the beauty of nature. He told us that flamingos are actually born grey and gain their pink color from the food they eat.* The brighter the flamingo, the more healthy and well-nourished.

However, when flamingos become parents they often lose their color. Both male and female flamingos produce “crop milk” which costs a lot of energy and nutrients to produce. I’m sure I’m not the only parent who can relate to feeling like a paler version of myself at times (in fact, instagram tells me so).

But the flamingos get their color back eventually. They simply sit out a few breeding seasons, foraging for their favorite foods, until their color returns and their chicks are old enough to fend for themselves. 

So what does this have to do with creativity? When we’ve finished a major creative project, we can feel lost, purposeless. All of a sudden there is a gap where our project used to be. We may try to escape the discomfort of feeling unmoored by jumping right into working on the next shiny idea. Diving into the next task on our creative bucket list. But that would be a mistake. And a recipe for burnout. 

My friend Susanna finished her PhD ahead of me. She said I should budget at least 6 months from when I completed the dissertation before starting anything else creative. I’m embarrassed that at the time there was a voice in my head that said, ‘I bet I can do it faster.’ But it turned out I needed even longer. 

Creativity costs us life energy. So check in with yourself. How pigmented are you? Is your spirit drained and washed out? If so, your only job in this season is to get your color back. Find what nourishes you and let yourself absorb all the nutrients. Wait until you’re vibrant, practically fluorescent. Give yourself permission to sit on the sidelines for a while before you’re ready to dive onto the dance floor again. 

A few things that help me get by pink back:

• Beauty: Spending my micro-breaks imbibing something beautiful. My current crush is browsing the listings on Inigo. 

• Stories: I have a passion for fairy tales, myths and legends. Sitting with these stories that have survived for centuries feels like soul medicine. You can find an online repository here.

• Gratitude: Appreciating the amazing products of other people’s creativity that enhance my life every day. I recently sent a quick thank you note via instagram to the illustrator of one of my daughter’s favorite children’s books. Acknowledging the inspiration I receive always gives me a boost of energy.

We are not machines and creativity is not a mechanical, linear process. We belong to the animal kingdom and are governed by natural cycles. If we want a healthy chick (creative product), we need to wait until we are fully nourished.

What nourishes your creative spirit? Let us know in the comments below if you feel comfortable sharing. It may help others to get their color back. 

*Fun fact: This alchemical process involves transmuting poison into pigment. Flamingo’s color comes from toxic chemicals called carotenoids found in the crustaceans and algae they eat in lakes that are often so alkaline they “could burn human flesh off the bones.” They have a special liver that can break down these chemicals into their functional components. Very cool.

What is creativity?

For as much as we talk about creativity, it's surprising how rarely we clarify what the word means. Similar to 'love' and 'friendship', there is a risk of the word becoming watered down to the point that it barely means anything at all.

I believe we've inherited an impoverished definition of creativity. Not only does this traditional definition limit who can count as creative (only the exceptionally talented) but it also limits what kind of activity we can conceptualize as a creative outlet.

Traditional creativity is confined to the artistic and intellectual domains. 

The default popular definition of creativity seems to be something along the lines of "are you good at painting and drawing... or perhaps music?" 

The default academic definition of creativity is "the production of an idea or product that is both novel and useful" (Amabile, 1983). 

Disclaimer: I don't mean to imply in any way that art isn't intellectual. In many ways this is a false distinction, but here I'm using 'intellectual' as a shorthand for science, business and organizations.

But what if creativity isn't what we do, it's how we do it? Because of course we can paint a painting in a more-creative or a less-creative way. The same way we can generate a new business idea in a more-creative or a less-creative way. 

So, what if we trace back from the creative product to the underlying creative process, the way of being, that is its source? Something we might call a 'creative orientation' or a 'creative way'.

But what constitutes a creative orientation? I’ll tackle this question in another post. For the moment, let's assume that there is such a thing. If so, we should be able to approach any endeavor in a creative way, right? So let's test it out. 

So if artistic creativity is a way of making something beautiful and intellectual creativity is a way of thinking that yields new ideas, what could be a third domain of creativity? 

I'm proposing that we can see the way we interact with another person, the way we show up, as a domain for creativity. And relational creativity is a way of relating to another person that results in a felt experience of meaningful connection. For the principles of creative relating, check out my TEDx talk. 

Are there other domains of life that you see as domains of creativity? I personally think travel can be a creative endeavor. What comes to mind for you?

So, given all of this, how am I defining creativity? I want a definition big enough to include all possible domains of creativity, something not limited to intellectual ideas, or artistic expression, but also that isn't so diluted as to not have any meaning at all. 

My working definition is as follows:

"Creativity is a partnership between possibility and the present.” 

It's not perfect, but it's a work in progress...

Relational creativity - coming out of our CAVE

I'd like to share more about the content of my TEDx talk, where I framed relational creativity as a possible balm for the loneliness epidemic we find ourselves in the midst of at the moment.

I chose to label the principles of creative relating, CAVE. As in, creating connection requires coming out of our caves (cue reference to Plato's cave). 

C is for curiosity. Curiosity involves an inherent openness to experience, admitting we don’t already know the answer. As a recovering know-it-all, I have to admit this can be tricky for me at times. But we can ask ourselves in any interaction are we coming from a place of curiosity about what life is like for them or are we trying to control the outcome of the conversation, push our agenda or earn their approval?

So how can we activate curiosity? We could start with seeing question crafting as a domain of creativity. Could you challenge yourself to ask someone a question they’ve never been asked before, one you’re genuinely interested to know the answer to?

A is for appreciation. Research shows we like people who’re like us, a phenomenon called homophily. So we’re often told that if we want to connect, we need to find something we have in common. In and of itself this common ground approach isn’t a problem, but if it comes at the cost of downplaying our differences, then we’re limiting our ability to connect. Creativity requires that we not only suspend judgment of what is new and different but that we find a way to value a fresh perspective. When we can appreciate the way in which someone is different from us it establishes a tone of psychological safety where the other person feels they can share freely without the risk of judgment.

To activate appreciation, try to put your finger on a virtue of theirs that you value. Even if you don’t express it explicitly, just bringing it to mind will put the other person at ease.

V is for vulnerability. There simply is no creativity without vulnerability. Proposing something new and different is inherently risky. Will they judge me? Laugh at me? Similarly creating deep connection requires the courage to show up as our real selves. A willingness to be seen as we are.

Activating vulnerability can be as simple as sharing a story. It might be a story of struggle or a story of celebration. As long as it’s a story that matters to you, you’ll create connection.

Finally, E is for engagement. If we’re too busy or stressed or exhausted or absorbed in our phones we’ll find it almost impossible to be creative. Creativity comes when we have focused attention and full engagement in the process. So when we interact with another person, what percent of our attention do they have access to?

Could you dial down the volume of distractions buzzing in the back of your mind and amplify the focus on this fleeting idiosyncratic opportunity to connect.

For some of you, you’re naturally creative in this way. But for the rest of us, it’s easy to be uncreative. If we fall asleep at the wheel, doze off into default mode, our interactions become shallow, scripted and unsatisfying. Leaving us lonely.

But we can consciously create connection by simply asking ourselves, in any interaction could I be a bit more curious, appreciative, vulnerable or engaged with this person in this moment?