By Bastien Chazalette Zaco

 

Be creative

 

It is a typical autumn week at SCA, it is cold, almost, freezing outside and a slight veil of mist mixes with Brixton pollution surrounds the St. Matthew Church. Like all the other days of the week, on a Thursday morning, all of us wear a comfortable pull-over and even blankets are appreciates by some of us. We are seating on the sofas waiting for the end of the song that will ring the start of the day. Today we are pleased to receive Patrick Collister who came down the pit to talk to us. Papers and pen in hands with a hot coffee mug on the side from which flee to your nose a sweet and brown smell. It’s now time to open your ears and prepare your brain to get flood with a huge amount of useful information or personal anecdotes. 

One of the subjects of the day is Creativity, it is a subject that goes around the studio quite often, to be honest, and, it’s not that bad for a communication school. What is interesting, is that every time, creativity is on the table it is subject to the personal interpretations of the mentors and the students. A subjectivity that Patrick is well aware of because at one point he asked us to individually write down our definition of creativity, with a rule: 100 words not more, not less. Quite an interesting experience. First of all, you have to think about the big picture of what it means to you, of the different process that you need to apply to create, of all the points you want to talk about and it’s not an easy task to make it fit in an imposing number of words. So you start scratching, and scratching again, and, eventually, you arrived at your 100 words of your definition of creativity. But more than a definition, everybody knows, that write down on this piece of paper it’s also one of the main reason for his presence here.

As much that I liked the exercise which gave us a condensed picture of what is usually a big mess in our brain, I also think that creativity, beyond all the technical descriptions, meanings and process is simply the ability to forget all this pragmatism and just put himself in different mental states, which, combined together, allowed you to come up with something “new” from a multitudes horizons. You need to put yourself aside and think like someone else. You need to become someone else. You need to be a lot of different things. You need to be. 

So here is a non-exhaustive, unexact, unfinished, unreal but very personal list of the different “Be” I think relevant to a good comfort trip to creation. 

_ Be kind

Be cool

Be loud

Be proud

Be free

Be er 

Be normal

Be special

Be quiet

Be smart

Be nice 

Be here 

Be there 

Be them 

Be you 

Be everyone

Be everything 

Be nothing

Be sad 

Be bad 

Be good 

Be curious 

Be active 

Be happy

Be angry

Be hungry 

Be brave 

Be slave 

Be magic 

Be banal

Be scandal

Be peace

Be optimistic

Be mystic 

Be reasonable

Don’t be

Be clear 

Be fearless 

Be frighted

Be tall 

Be small

Be cold 

Be bold

Be courageous

Be spontaneous

Be outrageous

Be ingenious

Be inventive

Be creative

Be Creation