What's art got to do with it?

Many years ago, I started my career as a magazine maker. Looking back, I realise art was always there. Some of my colleagues had studied journalism, but many others came from art academies. And whether we wrote about fashion, homes, gardens, food or just people, we found our inspiration in the realm of designers and architects, poets and writers, dancers and composers. We fuelled our creativity by surrounding ourselves with cool people who kept exploring boundaries and never stopped bringing in new ideas.

It wasn’t a big step for me to move from there towards places where creative thinking was needed to be more innovative and adaptive, in order to catch up with the fast-moving world. However, when I started to work with large organisations on systems change, for them it wasn’t as obvious to bring art in as it was for me. Because somewhere we learned there’s this distinction between professionalism, business targets and profit, and creativity, beauty, playfulness and activism.

Why on earth would we need art, while businesses and organisations already have so many challenges, and the world is on fire? It sounds like a fair question while watching the daily news and hearing over and over about war, injustice, abuse, poverty, climate crisis, refugees… However, if there is ONE thing I learned in the 40+ years of my career - and especially in the WE program where we work on improving human rights in the supply chain - it is that this is exactly what we need while working on complex issues.

We need art

·????? To bring beauty where it is most needed

·????? To activate and connect with our body and all our senses

·????? To be present

·????? To express ourselves

·????? To dance with painful realities and hope

·????? To unravel complexity

·????? To create and observe

·????? To bring abstraction where useful and clarify where other languages fail

·????? To provoke and unite at the same time

·????? To open up courage in a non-hierarchal way

·????? To recognize and value different qualities in each other

·????? To have access to our cultural potential

·????? To build on the wisdom of our collective stories

The good news is that art is everywhere and in every one of us. Just start with bringing it into to your life and work from wherever you are. If you need any help, reach out! I am still surrounded by many cool people who practice this every day. They use drawings in business, theatre in factories, documentary photography in facilitation, haikus in coaching, aikido in centred leadership, and communication activism at the work floor.

The artist within us will help us see what we tend to be blind for. Bringing art into your work life will help to amplify, zoom in, zoom out, frame, take things out of context or connect the dots in ways that will open total new perspectives. May you be happily surprised.