WILL WE SEE A RISE OF THE CREATIVE CLASS IN WALES?

The American academic Richard Florida, whose work should be compulsory reading for every economic policymaker in Wales, stated in his seminal book “The Rise of the Creative Class” that “access to talented and creative people is to modern business what access to coal and iron ore was to steel-making.”

Given this, you have to wonder why politicians and policymakers are not doing more to encourage greater creativity in the economy. Indeed, that was the subject of research released last week by the software company Adobe.

The “State of Create” report was commissioned not only to get a handle on how important creativity is to the UK economy but, more importantly, how its affects people in their everyday lives.

The main finding is that whilst a high percentage of people in the UK agree that creativity is the key to driving economic growth, we are not living up to our creative potential as a nation i.e. 63 per cent of adults consider themselves to be someone who is creative but only a third feel they are living up to this potential. And what are the main reasons for this perception? 


Four out of five believe that there is an increased pressure in work on being productive rather than creative. In addition, risk aversion is seen as a barrier with ‘playing it safe’ being the strategy usually adopted by organisations which results in those who are innovative and entrepreneurial having their ideas stifled by those who are less creative. They also feel that there was a lack of time to create new things and that they cannot afford to be creative. Indeed, a third of adults wanted more time in the workplace to think creatively and to be trained to use different creativity tools. 

And for those companies that have encouraged such thinking, there has been commercial payback. Take, for example, the policy of internet giant Google which lets its employees spend one day each work week focusing on their own projects and which has resulted in creating half of the company's new products and services. 


Nearly two thirds of the respondents also believed that creativity was being stifled by the UK education system and whilst young people are seen to be more creative than those over the age of 35, they need to be given the opportunity to develop creative skills even within a formal educational environment, especially through greater use of social media tools. Several prominent commentators have supported this view on the limitations that education places on the encouragement of creativity. 


For example, the educationalist Sir Ken Robinson, in his now famous 2007 TED lecture, pointed out the many ways in which our schools fail to recognise, much less cultivate, the talents of many brilliant people, arguing that “We are educating people out of their creativity."





A more recent article by Richard Florida also raised similar concerns. Arguing that the current system of primary and secondary education remains an obsolete 19th Century model that was created to churn out workers for factories, he proposed that we need to pay much more attention to early childhood learning as these are the most critical years when creative abilities are shaped. Indeed, it raises an important issue regarding the debate over whether rote learning and test preparation is stifling the future creativity of our young people. 


But it is not only education that it critical to encouraging greater creativity in the economy. Florida also argues that it is cities that are the main economic and social organising units of the so-called Creative Age, as they “speed the metabolism of daily life, accelerating the combinations and recombinations of people that spur innovation, business formation, job creation, and economic growth”. 


Such a view is timely, given that a Welsh Government taskforce this week proposed the creation of two large city-regions centred on Cardiff and Swansea, a development that could, if managed properly, potentially encourage a greater level of creativity in Wales that could make a real difference to our economy. 


Certainly, this new economic approach should ensure a more joined-up approach to sub-regional economic development. However, if it is to succeed, then such a strategy must not only focus on infrastructure developments alone but on ensuring that enterprise, innovation and, most important of all, creativity, are the key drivers that can reboot the Welsh economy over the next decade and beyond.

A CHILDREN'S CREATIVITY CENTRE FOR WALES?

As you read this, I will have arrived back in Wales from a week of intensive visits to the USA.

It began in Silicon Valley with meetings at Microsoft, Electronic Arts, the Irish Innovation Centre, as well as conversations with a couple of Welsh-run technology companies in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We then flew to Missouri in the middle of the country to meet up with the Kauffman Foundation, the World’s largest charity devoted to entrepreneurship and finished with a series of meetings at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the East Coast of America.

It was a hard slog, especially in crossing various time zones during the week but was well worth it, especially in terms of partnerships with both academia and business in areas such as educational technology and enterprise development.

However, one of the most eye-opening experiences we had was nothing directly to do with the business community but, nevertheless, has the real potential to make an enormous difference to the development of an innovative economy.

On May 6th, we made a visit to the Children’s Creativity Museum, a hands on multimedia arts and technology centre in San Francisco. Established in 1998, its mission is to nurture creativity, collaboration and communication to inspire new ideas and innovative solutions.

It does this through transforming the way children between the ages of 3 and 12 learn, encouraging them to imagine, create and share through a variety of interactive activities that helps to instil a love of learning and building creative confidence at a young age. These range from a design studio, where kids learn how to manipulate photos, illustrations, text, and symbols using photoshop software, to an Animation Studio where children build characters out of wire and clay, choose scenery, and then film their own stop-motion animation movie that they can then share with friends and family.

It also has an Innovation Lab to foster design thinking skills from a young age and encourages kids to think creatively, develop problem-solving skills, and nurture a prototyping mindset through what is known as a “Mystery Box Challenge”. This is similar to the scene from the Tom Hanks film Apollo 13, where NASA scientists in Houston have to save the astronauts only with what is on board the Apollo capsule stranded in space. In this case, kids are given a box full of different objects and then challenged to create various new ideas which can range from a ladder for a fish to inventing a space suit for a shark!

The other way that the museum makes a real difference is by engaging with the local creative and business communities. Not only does it have artists in residence who work with children to develop and showcase exhibits, it also brings in technology companies from the area to share and test new concepts with children. It was a fantastic experience, more so because of the hundreds of children actually taking part in the various activities in the museum and clearly enjoying and learning from their participation.

With many organisations now realising that the knowledge and competences needed to compete in a 21st century workplace includes "soft" skills such as creativity and innovation, critical thinking, communication and collaboration, it would seem that the Museum has found a real role to help develop the workforce of the future at an age where they haven’t even started thinking about their first job. The question for me is whether we could set up something similar in Wales? We already have the groundbreaking Techniquest to help children develop a better awareness of science and engineering but could we also do the same for encouraging creativity? The Museum in San Francisco would love to help and collaborate but I think we could also be more engaged with organisations in Wales to make this happen.

For example, how could the Heritage Minister, through the Arts Council, ensure that this is supported by the Welsh Government. Could those in charge of BBC Wales consider how they could use their vast expertise and facilities to support such a concept?

What about technology companies such as Sony, who could contribute their digital video knowledge to the centre? Individual knowledge-based firms could also help out, especially those in the independent TV sector such as Tinopolis, Green Bay and Boomerang. Dinamo TV, which makes the popular Rastamouse series, is a leader in their field of animation whilst Bangor-based Gaia Technologies has 3-D educational software that is amongst the best in the World.

So there may be an opportunity here to develop a Children’s Creativity Centre in Wales that not only builds on the original concept but adds a distinctive Welsh flavour by showcasing our fantastic creative industries sector to help develop the workforce of the future.

Certainly, if creativity and innovation are what will differentiate successful economies in the future, then we need to start developing those skills in our young children at the earliest age possible.