Quite a few people have shared with me that they long for creativity to be their central, sustaining effort. My sense is that folks are feeling transactional and burned out in their current employment. Much of traditional work, and employer-employee relationships more generally, aren’t working for them. They’re looking for something more balanced, respectful, human-centred, and well, creative.
But I’d suggest that ‘creativity as job’ might not be the only solution to this problem.
Creativity scholar Daniel Harris writes about the ways that creativity can be both “disembodied” (as structured, organized and even standardized), as well as “embodied,” as human-centred, imaginative, and emotional. In today’s knowledge economy and political climate, where efficiencies and productivity drive the boat, the “disembodied” side of creativity and working generally have dominated. The importance of creativity to address complex business and social problems is well trodden territory, alongside it’s cousin collaboration. But what’s often forgotten, and what Harris advocates for, is a continued connection to creativity’s humanity- and arts-based roots. My sense is that this is what people long for when they opine about making creativity their job.
However, as soon as you turn to discussing “something” becoming your “job” you are also talking about making money by sharing that something with someone for what they “need” or “desire.” It is absolutely possible to make money while being creative (hello, Taylor Swift?). Money is needed to sustain a decent and stable life – yes, that sounds completely obvious, but don’t discount the importance of this (what “a decent and stable life” looks like for you is distinct to your values, of course).
I am not suggesting money is either “bad” or “good” – it is required. But I would say that turning your creativity into a commodity has potential ramifications – specifically, that commerce and transactions can overtake, well, you; literally “selling” parts of yourself for other people’s uses and pleasures. There is always the potential for this monetized relationship to move beyond sharing into trivializing and even exploiting, especially when there is very little money involved.
How to address that problem?
First, I’d encourage you to be practical about your everyday needs and how you can “professional-ize” your creative work. It is possible to meet people’s needs and desires in stable and sustainable ways, and also guard your own humanity, which is the source of your creativity. Set clear boundaries, develop healthy self-care practices, see your career as having stages and take breaks from your professionally creative work as you need to. See your audience as an important long-term relationship, where money becomes part of the mix in your conversations and services.
Let me also add this nugget:
You don’t have to turn creativity into your job.
If you desire more connection and less feeling like a cog, more wholeness and less like a piece of the transaction, more authentic collaboration and less defensiveness and concern about being thrown under the bus – you can develop your creativity outside of your paid-work, and frankly, even within your paid-work, in whatever small ways that are available to you. And build a community of like-minded people who want to do this too.
Here are some ideas:
- You can develop a regular creative practice just for the heck of it.
- You can see and nurture creativity in others.
- You can work in small creative or humanity-centred ways in your workplace, so others feel seen and connected (and likely this will come right back atcha!); if you are in a position to do so, you can shift broader, more formal work practices in these ways as well.
- You can pay and support professional artists, to ensure we all live in a creative and culturally-rich society – go see a show, buy that craft, share about it on social media.
Of course, we need good, creative workplace leadership here too. If your leadership values those transactions and the bottom-line without balance, then your working life will be structured accordingly. The need for humanity- and creativity-centred leadership is for another post!
This problem isn’t necessarily going to be completely solved by turning your creative practice into your job. But it could be helped by building a world that is humanity- and creativity-centred, where decision-making and processes happen with structure, organization and standardization, as well as deep connections to our humanity.