Happiness

As the famous ad nearly said "happiness is a tutorial with Mark, the mild tutorial."

Yesterday I held a tutorial at St. Martins with a group of students and chatted to them about their project about alchemy. It was one of those tutorials that fill you full of hope and enthusiasm for the future, much more than I had on Friday.

The students were really enthusiastic, wanting to learn and really pushing themselves. At one point they looked at the obvious route for the project but then they realised that by pursuing this route they actually wouldn't learn too much and they quickly shifted their focus back to the idea that isn't fully formulated, that will push them, that's risky, that will give them sleepless nights but ultimately that they will learn something from.

This is the whole point of the course. Let's get intelligent people pushing themselves and working on things that put them at risk of failure. Let's get them in the mindset where failure is a good thing, because only by risking things, trying things and releasing ones self from your internal gatekeepers can you add something unique and special. (Yes I can get deep when I need to.)

Something I'm looking at for my PGCERT is how people can keep these beliefs in their professional life. This, however, is not as easy as it sounds seeing as though the majority of employers employ people to carry out tasks, and not for the inherent qualities they can bring to the team. Personally, I've been lucky in that respect but I know a lot of people haven't.

We need a sea-change in the creative industries. We need to have the balls to tell clients what they need - even if it isn't what they think they need. We need to employ people who have a genuine intelligence and who can disrupt the status quo. If we continue to employ people who do as we say, who fit into pigeon holes, who play the corporate game then we will progress at a much lower rate than if we take risks, if we fail, if we're happy to fail and ultimitaly if we have confidence that what we're doing is right and good. Right and good for us, for society and for the client... though not necessarily in that order.