(contemplative music)
-: Creativity is fundamental to the human spirit
and all of our endeavor and knowledge,
from finding out how to harness fire,
to evolution, to profound discoveries,
like going to the moon and harnessing electric cars,
the technology we use to communicate now.
That's all creative.
You have to think of things that don't exist.
You have to think about how to harness creative thinking
to solve problems.
And that's why creativity is important,
because it is fundamentally what makes humans unique.
-: There's two ways to look at it.
It could be simply seen as a remedy,
a place for expression,
but also this place of, like, giving to others,
providing knowledge,
and then that being a platform
for other people to act with it.
So there's different levels to that kind of importance.
It's really up to you, like, what you see in it, I think,
and what you want to get out of it.
-: It has so many layers, right?
But it's like a muscle,
so you keep on training it
even though you might be like working
and doing something creative
or your job might be, like,
you might have very different job
where you think like, "Oh, I'm just doing my job.
I'm not doing anything super creative."
But it's how you approach things.
The beauty if you train this creativity muscle
is that you make a more interesting world.
-: I think it's important for creative people to exist,
because we provoke thoughts.
'Cause if you always follow a certain set of rules,
then we can never see things
from a different way and then you can't really evolve.
-: They have the ability
to find different solutions to problems
that may not have been thought about.
I have a bit of a kind of a guilty pleasure
for reading, like, post-apocalyptic books
(Hollie laughing)
and I always wonder, like,
what would I do in the new world?
And, you know, I have no real skills
in, like, kind of building or, like, mechanics
or anything like that.
But then I realized that the ability to think laterally
to solve problems in ways that are creative and exciting
is is probably a pretty decent skill to have.
-: Yeah, it's, like, outside convention, isn't it?
We, like, look at things at different angles
and not just think of it full on.
And I guess, like, it is the element
of being able to think like a child again.
-: Being able to observe in a different way,
I think observing creatively
is sometimes where you see the solution.
So it's not necessarily always about making,
it's about observing and seeing things
from different angles and, yeah,
then you can kind of sometimes come up with a great idea,
because you've kind of pieced a few things together
that might not necessarily be observed by everyone.
-: I think everything that the we are talking about here
is about imagination,
the ability to find a new way of doing things.
-: You know, without them it would be a bit boring.
Like let's put it straight.
They pretty much design the world we live in,
so you can't really imagine a world without them.
And whether that's designing the past or the future,
it's everywhere.
Ben: You know, if you look around the room
and try and find something that hasn't been designed.
-: Yeah, the classic, isn't it?
Yeah.
-: There' maybe one thing behind you
that hasn't been designed,
but even if you look at it,
-: My plant.
-: Plants don't grow like that
in nature, right? -: Yeah.
-: That's been designed, you know?
To have have human impact on anything
is huge.
And everything that we interact with on a daily basis
is designed,
so for people to not see the validity
in the creative and design industry,
for me, I think has always been a bit bit shortsighted.
-: And when they say things like,
"The creative industry is not a place to get a good job.
These jobs aren't valid.
They aren't places to go and earn lots of money."
Where are these people gonna spend their money?
At the cinema, looking in art galleries, purchasing art,
sitting on amazing furniture.
I would hope that the future changes at some point
more positively towards the creative industry.
I think we do a pretty damn good job
and have a great role for the country.
-: The implication is creative disciplines
are less intellectual.
I know a lot of smart people in this industry,
and they're smart on different levels.
Academic smarts only works to one level.
When you're solving problems like true problems,
you have to solve them in the real world,
which is really gnarly and complex and difficult.
And you can't do that academically.
You can't do that from distance.
You've gotta get in and problem solve.
Creativity is a tool to overpower those difficulties
to make greater change.
And if you get hold of that,
you can make the world a much better place.
-: I also don't buy the fact
that there are creative people
and not creative people. -: Yeah.
-: Everyone is kind of creative on the level.
Creativity could be just different ways
that you think outside the box, no matter what you do.
So you could be a creative mathematician,
because you've come up with this new method
of working something out.
Like that's creativity.
-: A lawyer is being creative,
an accountant is, well, hopefully not, (laughs)
but there is to some degree creativity.
-: But I guess for us,
we're more trained to think in this way.
We are more trained
to know that we are thinking in that way.
Whereas some people,
they're subconsciously doing these creative things,
but they don't realize that they're doing it.
-: You can create as a hobby
or you can create as a way of living.
You can do either.
I don't see why you have to compromise though.
I don't see, I'm not a big fan of like side hustles
and being creative over here and here and here.
Why can't you just everything be creative?
I'm a professional creative day to day,
and I might express myself in lots of ways outside of work,
but I am just a creative person.
And I'm thinking about work creativity
and how that affects my life all the time.
It gives meaning to my life, and I really enjoy that.
And I don't see that I have to separate those two things,
but of course it's fine if people want to.
I remember at school, certainly,
there was a very sharp line drawn
between the academic subjects and the creative subjects.
And I remember being better at the creative subjects
and that being a problem
and being kind of pushed in the other way.
And it wasn't until I got out of school
that I realized there was a creative industry,
and that actually being good at art
didn't mean you had to become an artist.
There was a whole kind of commercial industry
that actually there was plenty of jobs with.
-: This is the amazing side of technology these days
is that it gives you the ability to express yourself
in ways that you wouldn't necessarily be able to otherwise.
And for me, this is why I believe
that it's always a case that it's idea first
and execution second.
-: Yeah, 100%.
-: You need to have that idea first
and then, whether you're gonna draw,
whether you're gonna get on the tools
and kind of bring it to life digitally,
it always needs to be founded in that strong idea
-: It is amazing, isn't it?
That there is an industry called the creative industry
which kind of creates a walled garden
of where you can be creative.
And then inside that, there are the creatives,
and they're the ones that are creative.
But actually as we've just discussed,
everything from science to any other aspect of life,
you can be creative in that.
So isn't that interesting
that maybe we need to break that wall down
and there is a job for the industry and maybe the world
to say that everyone is creative.
So I think, there's something in the ability
to kind of move beyond the creative industry
and infuse everyone with the ability that's latent in them.
(bright music)