On creative careers
I'm going to be blunt here. Creativity should be something that people disagree about. It is not just one thing, or just one area, or just one process. It is the basic means for the human mind to do its work.
Whether you are a mathematician trying to prove a theory, a chemist trying to synthesize a compound, or an artist working on a painting; we are all using creativity in our jobs and our daily lives. Some of us use more of it and some less. But as far as I am aware, there is no physical impairment or genetical disorder that stops a person from being creative.
Whilst creativity and earning a living by creating something beautiful existed since the dawn of times, the more explicit concept of creative economies has been developed in the early 2000s. John Hawkins makes the case for the creative economy as the foundation of a society that sources its growth and profits from new ideas. A creative economy implies the use of creativity and innovation across all industries, while the process of creating novel ideas, knowledge and other creative outputs is lead by creative people within creative industries.
In 2014, creative industries in the UK produced about £84 billion in GVA, which is about 5% of the economy; while employing 2.2 million people, or 8% of all the jobs. In London, 29% of all jobs are feeding directly into the creative economy. The representation of women is quite low though. The 2012 Employment Census of the UK’s Creative Media Industries reports an increase to just 36% in the share of women working in creative jobs.
According to the British Council, the type of activities that are within creative industries revolve around the "trade [of] creative assets in the form of intellectual property". These include art, fashion, textiles, film, television, radio, publishing, advertising, marketing, games, visual effects and animation. Conveniently, the UK has set up a body to support and encourage the development of creative skills and creative people: Creative Skillset.
We all know about TV anchors, models, movie stars, or ballet dancers as creative people. But behind all the amazing and often shocking movies, adverts, or greeting cards there are loads of people, taking on different tasks that bring the creative outcome into the world. I used the Creative Skillet's job search to find some unusual roles:
If you like shopping and movies, you could combine those two into an interesting job - a production buyer. You would not only have a chance to read a movie script before it's filmed, but also imagine the production set, and source all the props. If you like budgeting more than shopping, and planing all design aspects of a production, then a production designer would be something to look into. Catherine Hardwicke, the director of Thirteen and Twilight among others, started as a production designer. But this was not until she realized that architecture was not the kind of creative work she wanted to pursue.
Creativity is the ability to imagine an outcome and use any means available to materialize it. In a broad sense, we are doing that every day, no matter where we are in our lives, or what job we have. As we grow older, we lose some of this imagination. It is only natural, as the connections to our frontal lobe, or more logical and planned thinking strengthens. If you are one of those people who blurt creativity, and with every year you've got more, then arts, marketing, movies, fashion is for you!