Creativity for creativity’s sake

Outside my day job as a website project manager, I spend most of my life dedicated to music. I’m a horrendous musician, though. Hopefully any recordings from my high school band are never found. No, I exist firmly in the realm of the fan – all my money goes on gigs, shirts, festivals, records, train fares and venue pints.

I’m lucky my partner is the same.  Although the art forms she’s most devoted to are crafts and making – which is how she makes a living – we bonded over our shared love and hate of different bands, and spent some of our first dates at gigs.

We’re lucky we’re able to combine our love of music with our day jobs. I get to work on the websites for theatres and music venues, and she gets to take her craft workshops on the road to music festivals.

Spending a couple of weekends a year helping her run workshops between bands is always a treat, and I come away with a renewed love of the arts and music communities. As June arrives and festival season begins, I’m feeling motivated to learn something from it.

Creativity is community

I love how the arts bring people together - especially true in festival season. Thousands of us in a field, united by similar music tastes and a desire for the rain to hold off.

And within this community, festivalgoers seek out an even more personal subculture. Dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people pass through our workshop space in a weekend, saying how excited they are to find our little corner, eager to talk to fellow crafters about what they’re making, or the bands they’re seeing.

Creativity is healing

The thing that resonates – both at festivals and my partner’s workshops – is how powerful creative activities are in supporting wellbeing and mental health. Creating, making, moving, communicating – these are healing activities. 

They help people switch off their brains and focus on something new. They help people learn skills and build confidence. They provide spaces to talk and connect. They give a purpose and a focus to a social space that isn’t powered by alcohol – and where talking isn’t essential for connecting. 

When someone tells us they found an anxiety-free safe space among the festival crowd, that’s the biggest compliment.

Beware of creativity as an industry

While I’m no blind devotee of the Frankfurt School - Adorno could have lightened up a bit - I do think they were right to sound the alarm about the ‘culture industry’, seeing creative endeavours as in service of capitalism.

Even the high art they would have considered above capitalism at the time – fine art, theatre, opera, classical music – isn’t immune from this today.

If you’re reading this, it’s likely the arts, culture or heritage pays your salary in some way. And when budgets are tight, it’s reasonable to focus on activities and artforms that make money, but we should never lose sight of encouraging creativity for creativity’s sake, divorced from any monetisation.

We need to value community 

I speak to many venues across the UK struggling with the challenge of being all things to all people. As well as being places for people to buy and sell art consumption and to make enough profit to keep the venue afloat, they want to maintain a valuable community space that benefits the local community.

Through economic necessity, the former always trumps the latter when it comes to website real estate and marketing budgets. Community activities on offer might be craft workshops or art and dance classes or amateur theatre groups – all valuable, creative, exciting programmes, often sectioned off away from main venue listings.

Although I understand the reasons, I wish venues prioritised these acts of creativity for the sake of creativity – and community – more than they do. 

What can be done?

As with all problems, I like to focus on what I can change in my own community. So here’s what we can do on venue websites to encourage creativity for creativity’s sake.

•    Change the language: Too often, community groups and creative activities are described in ambiguous ways. Are generic terms like ‘take part’ or ‘get involved’ self-explanatory? They could mean volunteering. And does a more formal term like ‘creative engagement’ speak to someone uncertain about coming along? I prefer more specific phrases like ‘get creative’ to attract people to such activities.

•    Be clear but flexible on pricing: It’s not always possible to offer free services, but if there is a cost, don’t shy away from it. Make the cost clear as early in the user journey as possible so people can make an informed decision and actively seek out what they can afford. And I wish more venues would offer no-questions-asked low/no-income ticket price options. From my experience, only rarely do people exploit this, and the benefits of improving inclusion make the risk - of someone using the cheaper option they don’t need - worth it.

•    Improve visibility: If you don’t want to prioritise such community events, make sure they’re findable. Use an SEO keyword-driven approach to writing copy about them so people can find them through search. Share them on your social feed. Seek out local community groups on other platforms and share details there too. Get the word out.

Simple things – but ones venues often forget. And if these things help even one person to find safety in creativity, you’ve made a difference.

Lauren James is Head of Content and Web Projects at Splitpixel.
 splitpixel.co.uk/  
@splitpixel

This article is part of a series contributed by Splitpixel to share expertise on how to best apply accessibility and inclusivity principles in digital spaces.