jonnybaker

wishful thinking

a blog i have been tracking for a while now is wishful thinking. i first came across it through bob carlton via a free book on time managing for creative people.

anyway the first thing to say is that there is another free book - this time on creative management for creative teams. it's aimed at people in creative business but (as you'll know if you follow this blog) mission, church planting and leadership all require creative thinking, skills and teams and are both what we need and something i am passionate about. here's a quote from the intro:

Creativity needs more than bean-bags and Playstations. And if creativity is your business, you know there’s a lot more to it than ‘thinking outside the box’. For one thing, you probably have to think inside a few boxes - such as the budget and brief, and your client or audience’s tolerance levels. So while you need to encourage blue-sky thinking and risk-taking, you also need to make things happen on time, on budget and to keep the end users happy.

Give people too much creative freedom and they may have a blast working on the project - only to end up frustrated when the client or audience ‘don’t get it’. But if you play it too safe, your creatives will feel constrained and everyone will be underwhelmed by the final result.

Not an easy balancing act to pull off. Even before you factor in a few creative egos. Plus the fact that creative people are not satisfied with just doing the job - they want to be challenged and inspired on every project, every day. They want opportunities to learn and hone their skills. And if they don’t get them in your team, sooner or later they’ll start to look elsewhere.

on the subject of creativity, he interviews roger von oech - see my review below. the thing i found most interesting in this interview was the question about limits or constraints actually helping the creative process. i really relate to this and think it's a mind shift that's useful if you are in any way involved in the emerging church - you're likely to have restraints around time and budget and people and maybe geography. rather than being a problem this could be an opportunity for some creative thinking?... my friend mark waddington is the person who introduced me to the idea that constraints and creativity were not mutually exclusive...

authors in the age of conversation also looks interesting but dare i add another book to my growing pile?...

killing good ideas can harm your future

this is kind of a negative way of looking at it but it's still fun...

ever had a good idea killed off by someone or a group?
want to see it burned in the fire in style?

then look no further

two movies of a focus group looking at fire and wheel

time management for creative people

bob sent me a link to time management for creative people

creating passionate users

love this piece from kathy sierra - don't aks employees to be passionate about the company
(ht richard). here's a quote...

People ask me, "How can I get our employees to be passionate about the company?" Wrong question. Passion for our employer, manager, current job? Irrelevant. Passion for our profession and the kind of work we do? Crucial. If I own company FOO, I don't need employees with a passion for FOO. I want those with a passion for the work they're doing. The company should behave just like a good user interface -- support people in doing what they're trying to do, and stay the hell out of their way.

creative leadership

gave a lecture for a salvation army conference church on the edge gathering leaders involved in mission and church planting. you can download the pdf of the slides i used if you are interested - creativeleadership.pdf. the title was creative leadership in the new environment: imagination, improvisation and innovation.

one of the slides i used was a picture that was in friday's guardian of a church being moved on the back of a lorry - the caption suggested it was a response to a dwindling congregation somewhere in canada. that seemed to be a metaphor for our problem - if it isn't working we transport exactly the same thing down the road and do it the same way or with a few tweaks rather than creatively re-imaginging what church could look or be like in the new environment. before anyone asks, no i don't have any notes - the slides are what i used to remind me of what i wanted to say. was fun to be able to try out ideas from the starfish and the spider...

the gift [5]: art and prophecy

one of things i remember from reading matthew fox's original blessing many years back was a connection he made between art and prophecy. he pointed out that art is clearly powerful and can be tied up with prophecy because totalitarian regimes tend to silence artists.

hyde makes a similar connection. he says that we think of genocide as the physical destruction of a group. but it could easily be applied to the destruction of the genus of a group by the destruction, or silencing of its art which kils its creative spirit.

in the comments on previous posts there's been some debate on the point or use of art. so i thought it worth throwing that thought into the mix...

that's me done for now on the gift. i thoroughly recommend it. i end with a quote i love from angelou that hyde quotes:

we survive in exact relationship to the dedication of our poets

the gift [4]: blind gratitude

thanks everyone for the comments on the previous gift posts... 1 | 2 | 3

there are two really good ideas in the first chapter. the first is on motion. the gift must always move. whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away again or something else should move on.

the second is related. the simplest gift exchange is reciprocal giving. but gift exchange gets more interesting when it moves in a circle. when a gift moves in a circle no one receives from the person they give to. hyde says this about it

it's as if the gift goes around a corner before it comes back. i have to give blindly. and i will feel a sort of blind gratitude as well. the smaller a circle is - and particularly if it involves two people - the more a man can keep his eye on things and the more likely it is that he will start to think like a salesman. but so long as the gift passes out of sight it cannot be manipulated.

i love this idea. how it applies i don't know exactly. but it would be wonderful to live in a community that applied these two notions. when you have been gifted or given to pass it on, or pass on something equivalent or better - keep it moving, bless someone else, be generous. and even better pass it out of sight so that it goes round the corner so that the community gets surprised and experiences blind gratitude.

the gift [3]: wise blindness

one of the terms i came across in the gift that i love is wise blindness. it is in a quotation hyde uses from rainer maria rilke. it's getting at the idea that when we create if we get too analytical we'll lose the giftedness of what we are doing. i guess the most obvious case of this is when a performer suddenly becomes self conscious and tongue tied in front of an audience. this actually applies in lots of areas of life - standing back and being analytical robs the moment of its magic. there's a great folk tale that hyde tells...

a brief entry in a mid nineteenth century collection of english fairy tales tells of a devonshire man to whom the fairies had given an inexhaustible barrel of ale. year after year the liquor ran freely . then one day the man's maid, curious to know the cause of this extraordinary power removed the cork from the bung hole and looked into the cask. it was full of cobwebs. when the spigot next was turned the ale ceased to flow.

in other words the gift is lost in self consciousness. this isn't to say that there isn't a place for analytical thought. but the creative moment isn't it. wise blindness also applies to the sense that poetry or a song or an idea comes to use from beyond ourselves, from god or whatever it is we believe is beyond us. best just to receive it as a gift. i actually think this is the best approach to the whole of life - life's a gift. the planet is a gift. friends are a gift. family are a gift. live out of gratitude. faithless say it better actually in the track i want more

...hills to climb sights to see seas to cross
friends to make hands to shake the world is yours
foods to taste sounds to hear love to feel
seeds to sow things to know fish to reel
space to quiz stones to lift
life's a gift...

i was thinking about wise blindness in relation to photography and mark's killing our darlings. i like the process of thinking a bit about photos and what makes a good photo and have enjoyed a couple of books on the subject, but actually when i am looking through photos e.g. the top 500 interestingness ones on flickr on a particular day, i prefer blindness - in other words i just like what i like and that isn't the moment to worry about why. the photos are a gift.

there's a parallel with worship and i am the worst culprit here. i get analytical way too quickly rather than worship in the blade of the moment, receive what others have prepared as a gift and offer my own gifts.

Technorati Tags: the gift

the gift [2]: artists are poor

i had a conversation with joel yesterday about what he wants to after a-levels. he is brilliant at art/design and is thinking of doing a foundation year at an art college when the time comes and then some kind of art degree. he did work experience a while back at one of the uk's leading advertising agencies and had a good time. but i was interested to hear him reflecting on that and thinking if he did art that he really didn't want to end up somewhere like that. i may be stretching the conversation for the sake of making a point (and the gift was very much in my mind when we spoke) but i think joel was sensing the tension between art as gift and art as commodity/commerce in service of the market.

a dilemma for every artist is how to do your art and survive when your art probably isn't going to make you money or not a lot. hyde suggests that that issue is resolved one of three ways - artists take second jobs to support their art; they get patrons who sponsor their art (and of course those patrons money comes from the market economy as well); or they manage to create some income via fees and royalties. but whatever way they do we all know that

no matter how the artist chooses or is forced to resolve the problem of his livelihood he is likely to be poor.

artists who are rich are the exception and if they do find a way to make some money everyone starts having a go at them for selling out! the most famous artists often only make money and are really recognised after they are dead!

banksy is an interesting example of an artist living with the tension of both gift and market economies. as a stencil artist nearly all of his art has been gift, sprayed on walls for anyone to see, often subversive and cheeky. he must have lived hand to mouth for years or earned money by day to buy spray paint for his art by night. but in recent years he has become famous and has worked out how to make some money from his art - he's published several booklets and one larger book, sells limited edition screen prints, and banksy originals now fetch quite a sum. i read an interview with him where he was asked about this and he replied that it was frustrating to sell something for £100 and then see it on e-bay for 10 times that the next day so you just up the price.  there are also plenty of places to buy a banksy print that is a photo someone else has taken of one of his stencils which i guess is inevitable.

i have sensed recently that people who loved banksy's stuff have started feeling as though he shouldn't be entering the market in this way. but i think he is a shining example of someone who keeps the spirit of gift alive. he keeps doing free stuff - gift out in the streets. even the stuff that people are buying is endued with the spirit of gift in my view. i loved the gift of his stencils on the apartheid wall in palestine. and i was delighted to see that he has a shop on his web site that is full of free stuff - images that you can download at a high enough resolution to make a desktop or print (well a small print). you can feel the tension though between gift and market but he seems to have found a way of keeping the gift alive and turning market wealth back into gift wealth.

it's made me realise what a hard time we can give underground artists of any description whose art is for sale in some way, even though the chances are most of those artists will struggle. i think we should do everything we can to support artists and encourage them to develop and pass on their gifts and work with the spirit of gift very much alive. after all, our culture doesn't help artists, and i think the church doesn't see the point in supporting artists or chooses to invest elsewhere. creativity and art are some of the greatest gifts.

i was also thinking about proost which we set up to be a way we could pass on the gifts of alternative worship, our own music and art, and that of other artists to a wider audience. but of course it circulates in the market and gift economies. we are currently revamping it for later this year. the gift has helped me realise just how important it is that the heart of what it is about must be gift even though there are commercial transactions - and i hope that it does genuinely continue to be a site where the spirit of gift is alive and artists can offer their gifts to a wider audience as well as converting some market wealth back into support their art through transactions that take place there.

we're crap at making money and always have been so the gift has encouraged me that we might well be artists...

dumbness of crowds

the dumbness of crowds is a really interesting piece by kathy sierra at creating passionate users, a blog i came across via roger.

she makes some great points about the tendency to misquote what wisdom of the crowds is all about. lots of people working on an idea or product won't lead to something better. in terms of creative ideas i have observed this in many contexts. ideas tend to spark when you get 2/3/4 people together. as soon as you get 8/9/10 or more there is less edge. it's a good point for alternative worship groups who often plan in quite big groups. we have changed the way we plan grace to being smaller teams and i think it works better. the danger with this article though is that it will equally be misread as saying individuals are better than groups - not so either. it's all about context. a challenge for groups is increasing creativity and particpation. this doesn't necessarily mean everyone doing the same thing, but equally it doesn't mean a few individuals doing everything and the rest of the group doing very little.