Listen. Really listen.

It’s been a tough week. Every so often I let the financial pressure of freelancing in a tough market get to me. With kids to support, this was always going to happen. But something that’s helped me through is no shortage of people around me who listen. Properly listen.

It starts with a burst of adrenaline, and then descends into an awful fight, flight, freeze state, as described in a previous post. The danger then is allowing every subsequent thought, or problem, both trivial and genuinely concerning, to be sucked into this debilitating fear vortex.

So I toss and turn futilely on the couch, trying to soothe myself with Studio Ghibli films, helping I might drift again. But I never do. Plan B is getting out for a walk, and summoning reliable and wonderful friends who help me. They listen. Some have advice from the same lived experience, but listening can be enough. We live in a world of too many surface level relationships. People without the bonds go off the edge. Loneliness is crushing.

On the dog walk, I talk openly about how I’m feeling. Not only does it help me, but it opens the floor for the other person to air their grievances, and many do. We build relationships. Eventually, I get my head together and address the quiet spells, seek solutions, press on.

My fiction series of short stories, Stories for the Apocalypse was, in large part, about exactly this. A society quietly collapsing as nobody knows how to truly let it all out in the right way. Writing helps. Several friends who’ve suffered far worse than I preached about the importance of unconscious writing – journalling.

This self expression is key. And being heard.

Trust me!

I've just wrapped up what I think might be the most fulfilling project – on a human level – that I've ever worked on.

Three years ago, Simon Dixon introduced me to Héctor Ayuso, founder of OFFF Festival, and a man who lives for creativity. Héctor booked me to speak at OFFF 2023, and we've since become good friends through our shared love of creativity.

We've spent the last few months working together to tell his story by writing and illustrating a book for 'Paradiso', (https://paradisofest.com/) Héctor's new creative retreat/festival. 'The Reason You're Doing It' called upon all the skills and personality traits I love to bring together. This is not easy: getting enough paid work to survive in the commercial world requires people who trust the underlying creativity and my ability to sell it when the blurring of disciplinary lines often causes fear. Below is what I wrote about this in the book.

I can't wait to share it with you all in late March at Paradiso!

"Artists are complex creatures. Aliens on our own planet; revered and rejected in equal measure. In a world increasingly transfixed by data, to choose this curiosity-led life is to face resistance. Distilling a multifaceted, ever-evolving practice down to something that will convince another to pay you to do it can be challenging. Reaching those who look past job titles to see the nature of the creativity, to enable the human is vital.

In 2023, I wrote a short story about an artist suffering a meltdown, chaining himself to a lamppost with his dog’s leash on a Tuesday afternoon as a tiny suburban cry for help. I wrote it for Héctor Ayuso in his penultimate year at OFFF Festival. He loved the story and the illustrations I made to support it. This was enough for him to entrust me to tell his life story. This is Héctor’s way. The reason he’s doing it. While I write, make art, and share the stories of others to promote creativity, I knew that under all of my endeavours was the joy of human connection. That’s what bound he and I. Why I’m doing it. During the first of six sessions together, Héctor in Barcelona, I in Salisbury, I asked him how the f*ck he held it together during those early years of OFFF Festival, carrying all that debt. He said “It’s the reason you’re doing it.” The call was being recorded, but I snatched up the nearest pen and scrawled it down. Something about this comment just screamed at me. After the call I took a photo of this scruffy lettering and sent it to him, to see if I’d been onto something with this instinctive siren. Two hours later he replied and told me to check my Instagram. There, tattooed on the back of his neck, red raw, is that scribbled note. I knew then that he too was an alien. So, I’ll dedicate this thing to him, all those he’s helped along the way, and the reason they’re doing it."

A matter of life and death

It’s always a slightly disconcerting experience walking through the places in which you spent your youth. Especially when you haven’t lived there for 20 years. After 6 hours on trains and in stations, I opt to walk from the station to my parents’ house and allow the echoes of days gone by to wash over me. Some are tinged with melancholy, others as present as this very moment. Time has a way of converging in ground zero. There’s a church yard to my right, up above the bus shelter I’ve caught a thousand buses from. All those graves and leaves, but no quiet. No quiet because there’s a teenage lad on a shitty motorbike, buzzing around the church and the paths between the graves.

There’s something I adore about this juxtaposition of the silence of death, and the vibrancy and antagonism of youthful expression. It’s primal and essential and it’s happening above ground and I love how life finds a way.

Ohhhhh creativity…

Ohhhhhhhhhh creativity...

Since I began working as a creativity coach last year, one of the biggest battles I've had is to reach people on their definition of creativity before they politely tell me to f**k off, that they're not paying me to help them with something that's already written above the door.

Many businesses tell me they've spent their budget on 'the tools' - which is AI and AI training. AI has its value, but it is made entirely of existing material. It will drag you into the sea of same if relied upon.

Humans are instruments of creation, not reconfiguration.

It's my challenge to smarten up and go in with a different approach.

On my way to the station this morning, I let my mind wander. The old unconscious began handing me thoughts about joining dots.

That's a big part of what I'm trying to do: help people to join the dots only they could join by using what's inside – their story; an utterly unique lived experience, invaluable and beautiful, and their personality, all the good, bad, and downright weird. Using it with confidence, passion, a deep understanding of what they have, and conscious command.

Most of us don't. We bottle things, censor ourselves, conform, and stray from the magic of discovery and play. That starts in adolescence as they start to dangle the words 'career', 'security', and 'grow up' in our maturing, half-grown faces.

But play, silliness, self-expression, and curiosity are the things that keep our brains in the state in which we see the line between the dots when nobody else can. That's what sparks ideas that not just land awards in industry, but enrich our lives and pave the way to a better future.

AI is on the rise and we're in the early stages of a revolution.

Every one of us, business or individual, is at a crossroads. That's sent me down some serious negative thought spirals recently as I see it happening in real-time, my industry plunged deeper into the unknown than ever before. Those who come through, organisation or freelancer, no matter how prevalent the role of AI in their practice, will be the ones who value creativity, understand its ways, enable it, employ it, sell it, and treat it as king f**king dick.

But I'm using the fear and seeking the joy, playing, joining dots, evolving my practice accordingly. Keeping my eyes open and my mind free enough from screens to bring me the solutions to the obsession with automation.

And more than ever, this world must be my art school, not an oppressive machine.

In 2011, I took off in a camper van to Serbia with 3 other talented friends and a video camera to make a documentary as we headed for Exit Festival. We had an idea, sold it to the Serbian British Council, and worked it out along the way.

Joining dots is what illuminates this life for me, so I keep following that thread. Now, I get to help others out of their own way and into that awesome forward motion.

If you’d like to work with me on this, head to the coaching section of the site and let’s chat!

Feeling, seeing, listening, deciding

Routines and schedules are largely your friend. I came through a testing week of financial panic and fierce anxiety last week, but emerging out of the worst of it, I saw the vital role of these evolutionary defence mechanisms in motion. It left me weary and wondering just how it got as bad as it did. Nothing really changed between Thursday evening and Friday morning, but as I pottered around the local arts centre, listening to Haruki Murukami, a calm came over me, and with absolute clarity, I knew what I needed to learn from this. Identify how I could turn the hurt into a new foundation, and the calm slowly shapeshifted into excitement and renewed self-belief. Routines and schedules had been lacking forever, and if I truly address that, I have all the tools to blast all the fears that sent me into tailspin out of the sky.

So I got to it, leaned on my wife to help me create some structure and identify my priorities. But when does structure and routine become the enemy? It’s a big question I can’t comprehensively answer here, but as I made breakfast this morning, I smiled and watched the kids on the other side of the room. My daughter sat on the sofa, deep in concentration, on a little keyboard music book, learning some basic nursery rhymes by following the numbers assigned to each music note. My son, a few yards away, talked to himself as he carefully pieced together a ‘venomised’ Doctor Octopus Lego kit. As I turned to check the porridge, I noticed their school reading books. I opened my mouth to summon them to the breakfast table to start our daily read-through, but I stopped. I stopped because I recognised that interrupting this moment would be silly. They were using various kinds of intelligence, independence, and imagination, developing their little brains, building self-confidence and fine motor skills, and of course, boosting aspects of their creativity. They love reading – my life is defined by storytelling and books, and they have followed suit to the point they moan at me to do it – but this free play is critical, not just to kids, but to every one of us if we are to remain attuned to our best self and our creativity. That’s where secondary level education falls flat.

Organisations and individuals who make room for, encourage, and truly value this self-initiated exploration thrive in the age of automation. The ones who recognise the benefits of routines, schedules, and moving forward with focus, but know when to hand over to joy, laughter, curiosity, and play – they’re the ones who don’t just bang the word creativity above the door and strap everyone to a rigid schedule, but build their entire operation on the meaning of the word.

The porridge was good because I kept my eye on it instead of flapping between books and the pan, the kids were vibrant, calm, and full of questions and jokes as we ate it, and as it goes, my wife came down from her shower and with her, they read well enough to front the CBeebies Bedtime Story segment.

How many of us?

I had to call some friends yesterday: friends who have felt the grip of anxiety. The work I have done has required maximum inner-strength because I allowed myself to spiral into a total financial panic. I find that once you enter full-blown anxiety like this, the vicious cycle starts. Everything is a threat, a monumental unresolvable issue. Then when fatigued and burned out from the total overwhelm, the anxiety comes back in waves, usually without a logical, identifiable cause that can be addressed and eradicated.

Two days in the paralysis of it, and finally, this morning, a breakthrough. The friends I called offered various bits of great advice, one of which involved spending time before you go to sleep thinking about the things that excite you the next day. I did that, forcing my racing brain to shine its spotlight on the things that would bring me joy. Even if the financial worry continued to lurk in the background – and it did – I could set my brain on a more nourishing pattern of thought. It wasn’t easy, but upon waking, despite the presence of adrenaline in my system, I sat up and pushed my mind onto the same things I’d fallen asleep thinking about. It didn’t bring glee, but it was enough to balance the fears and help me get up, get the kids ready for school, and get out with the dog.

From there I walked around the local arts centre gardens and listened to a cathartic chapter of my new Murukami book.

This morning I began to wonder just how many people like me – independent and specialist in their trade, leading with creativity – have to deal with this kind of mental health challenge because of the current climate of turmoil? Anxiety completely asphyxiates creativity because it reduces you down to either the bare functioning essentials, or, at best, it might be possible to get into what a friend described to me as ‘the dead zone’ - the idea that a soldier is far more effective with their back to the wall. For a while I did, and I’m sure others do, but if you’re highly sensitive, which I very much am, it can be catastrophic for progression or a resolution.

It’s a perfect storm out there. AI, tightening budgets and shrinking economies. On a good day, I know that I was always an outlier and must fight hard to find the opportunities, but on a bad day I have to fight not to admonish myself for being a specialist. But who isn’t? My electrician or builder friends can’t suddenly just pivot and go find a job that will pay them as well despite a lack of experience and relevant expertise! The trouble is, as one friend pointed out, plumbers will always have work because we are some way off AI toilets. But after 17 and 19 years in the illustration and creative industries respectively, now is not the time to be wondering whether we should have trained as plumbers after all. It always was about evolving and side-stepping, not melting down.

I’m feeling a little better this morning, and I have amends to make on a job from last year. If you’ve felt this too, I’d love to hear from you!

Back to school

Written by Ben Tallon

I was at a design festival in one of my dreams. I was panicking about whether legging off for a pain au chocolate and a coffee would cost me my front row spot. I threw my coat and bag on the seat and went for it. As I wove my way through the crowd after the first talk, two men were screaming at each other about how skint they both were – a game of one-upmanship. One got truly horrible and silenced the other. It feels unnecessary to detail what he said here (it was brutal), but this dream chased one in which bombs were involved.

Today is the last day of my Christmas holiday break and doesn’t my unconscious mind know it?!

Today I’m cleaning the studio – well, after this procrastination piece – and I’m trying to answer a few big questions in my head.

Strategy.

I’ve written two business plans in my time. One to get a grant, the other while running Quenched Music in Manchester after we accepted some help from a business student who loved music and needed some experience. I looked at neither after they were completed. This isn’t arrogance, but an illustration of the kind of brain I have. I often wonder whether there’s some neurodivergence at play, but it doesn’t feel significant enough to chase a diagnosis.

I’ve never missed paying my tax, never missed a deadline, and been a full-time illustrator (with add-ons – writing, original art, podcasting, art direction) for 17 years. The trouble is, I’m so bloody-minded about creativity that I chase the next exciting thing that moves into my mind like a dog on a frosty morning after the first thrown ball. This hasn’t led me wildly astray – I’m very comfortable with the unknown, and like to see how things unfold when I heed my instincts. But now, at 41, I’ve arrived at a junction from which, with a little strategy I could really help myself.

Since I stumbled into interviewing people in 2010, when I asked if I could write up a great conversation with Don Letts for the Quenched Music blog, I’ve not stopped on what became a fascination with human creativity. Not art, but the broader ‘having ideas that have value.’ I’ll never stop, but as a pleasantly long Christmas break and years of self-initiated works of passion, I’ve found myself in a place where I have both an established brand and website for my work as a:

A) Illustrator and artist

B) Creativity coach and founder of ‘The Creative Condition’

C) Author and writer

I did not know this is where I was going, but here I am. In love with all that I do, the author of my own life. Back on episode 211 of the podcast, Washington DC-based artist Chris Pyrate said to me, ‘I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m getting there.’

Well I’m here, and even with a monkey brain like mine, I can no longer hide from the fact that if I want to convert years of dog play into something that can financially sustain and illuminate this human, now I must make a plan and remember it exists after I’ve finished it.

Don’t get me wrong: I adore my mind and I’m totally at peace with the way I am, but that peace brings a certain clarity and ability to get out of my own way when I need to. That need is pressing!

Prestige and ball pools

Written by Ben Tallon

I had to check myself. My grown-up thoughts and the bent perspective on ascents. A New Year’s Day trip to ‘Jumpin Fun’ – a giant warehouse full of bouncy castle surfaces, obstacle courses, a ball pit, and a massive inflatable slide.

You get one hour for your booking and after 35 minutes up and down the massive slide, the kids and their mate retired to the ball pit, which you can play in after your allotted hour is up anyway. I thought about this and I almost spoke up to say, ‘What are you doing, dwelling in this free bit when you could be over there, on that mountain which they’ll kick you off soon!?’

But I didn’t. As I opened my mouth, the words were snatched away by a smile. The three of them were shrieking, cackling, vanishing under the balls, and firing back above the surface like giddy fish. Who was I to pressure them over to what I assumed was ‘better’?

Strange comparison, but I know many people in the creative industry who barreled after the promotion, only to – despite success in the new role – miss the joy of collaboration, play, ideas and the freedom to act on them artistically. In that ball pit, a storyline and a game, the rules of which were unbeknownst to us parents, unfolded, and they were one silly, mucky-socked organism, bonding, finding out, releasing something pure and important in a way us adults rarely do.

I felt good having paused for a split second, to see what was in front of me, the necessity of it, no matter whether it came with the price tag of the big draw over yonder or not. On the drive home, I thought about it a lot more, so I can stay vigilant when I put titles, accolades, and the wrong kind of success ahead of my joy of discovery.

Baby Gorilla

Written by Ben Tallon

Every night, right before the kids go to bed, I step into my role as ‘baby gorilla’, a character the kids handed me. It’s a simple creation involving a fantasy banana heist, differing each night. Literally, nothing changes – I’m still shambolically tired and their father putting them to bed, but when we hit the landing, two pairs of excited wide eyes are on me.

‘Baby gorilla! Baby Gorilla! What’s your secret?!’

There’s so much to manage between 5pm and their bedtime at 7.30pm each night that I fail to think ahead. This means that inside 10 or so seconds, I must beat my chest, curl my lips, and generate two imaginative methods of smuggling the yellow fruit into my bed without the knowledge of my fictitious gorilla parents.

There have been many benefits for my creativity since the advent of parenthood, but this divergent thinking workout is among the best. It’s a common comparison, but the athlete’s muscle metaphor isn’t misplaced when considering creativity – an ability that must be conditioned and maintained to get the most out of it.

And in that vein, coming up with new methods of getting these prized bananas to my ‘bed’ isn’t easy. Sometimes they’re ludicrous, such as tonight’s poor ‘I’ve hidden 20 of them behind the wallpaper’ effort. Other times they’re topical – circular slices of banana behind advent calendar doors. Then on occasion, the tactics uphold under scrutiny – helping my storyline gorilla parents do the laundry and tucking multiple bananas into sleeves and trouser legs.

Initially, I did this to indulge my children’s humour and develop their imaginations, but I found myself in a positive creative headspace each evening once they were asleep, as if the mental squats were paying off over a long period of time. During a pre-Christmas pile up of projects, I noticed how easily I was able to access conceptual thinking, and enter flow, and while this is not owing only to Baby Gorilla, it is playing a part. I used to worry how much time I’d have left for such personal development once the twins arrived, but being 37 when they arrived, I’d viewed my creativity as a part of my broader life for a good while, so I knew not to overlook the new opportunities children in my life would bring in place of the studio time I’d have to surrender.

It is now something I’ll weave into my workshops with businesses.

How long Baby Gorilla will remain a part of our daily routines remains to be seen, but he’s just one such character in an ever-evolving carousel of silly inventions, and I keenly await the conception of the next.

Boxing Day 1997

Written by Ben Tallon

I heard it said recently that you should look to frustrate your child at least once daily. The idea, of course, is that they gain early-life resilience to life’s trivialities; having to wait their turn, lose board games, endure a car journey without a tablet, and so on. I love that, and it’s something I’ve been doing since my two were born. I mean, with a twin, it’s pretty much inevitable that they’ll have to deal with roadblocks, but there are certainly times when I’ve felt the pull on my heartstrings and almost tried to smooth the way ahead, but recognised that a bigger life lesson could be taught if I step off.

While idling on Christmas day this year, I allowed myself to reminisce about Christmases gone by. Of all the gifts I was fortunate enough to receive in my younger years – a Sony Playstation, various WWE action figures, football kits – one that glows in my memory is a humble 1996/7 Leeds United yearbook. It was a basic publication – official club photos, player profiles with information I knew most of already, and a couple of interviews and foreword. Still, I’ve never been more obsessed with my chosen club of allegiance than then in a pre-internet hunt for anything to fuel the fire in my belly for football. So, I carried it around for the next week. Even outdoors, taking it on journeys. I looked at every photograph countless times and allowed my imagination to run wild. Every minute detail, from the yellow and blue band on the shirt’s arm, to the glow of the floodlight during evening fixtures. It all mattered.

Why am I telling you this? I lived a reasonably comfortable young life. My family was far from well-off; a thoroughly working-class family, but we had plenty of love, support, and community. I never went hungry, and my interests were encouraged. So I needed to get my frustration from somewhere. Football delivered. A win or loss would leave me utterly elated, or under a moody cloud respectively. Either could last for 3-4 days. I made scrapbooks from the newspapers I spent part of my £9 (paper round and allowance) income on, lovingly pasting down tedious 0-0 draws and 1-0 defeats in my scrapbook, alongside the odd, but all the more savoured win. Other than Match of the Day or the local news, I had to hunt down the physical print reports, and given my low budget, choose judiciously according to photograph quality and number of column inches afforded, heightening the pleasure of securing the goods. Then the sheer limitations meant I had to get maximum joy from the one report, seeing it from every angle, discussing it with anyone who’d listen, which meant new points of view.

That this awful season timed at the height of my 14-year-old adoration of the football club means the season glows in my nostalgic daydreams, but it made me work for every Leeds United goal, of which there were just 28. That Leeds United team is widely acknowledged as the most boring in Premier League history (9 x 0-0 draws in 38 league matches) but for me might just have been the most beautiful.

I’m grateful for my ability to take a lot of pleasure from a little. The simple pleasures. Routine frustration, even of the most trivial kind has a way of instilling this. It’s common in people who grew up without luxury of the material kind, and it’s been a bedrock in my creativity, helping me build a sustainable career with just my pencil case of pens, pencils, brushes, and a couple of inks and paints along with a scanner and laptop without ever feeling the victim. Driving it with ideas and a romanticism that characterised my football fandom in the late 1990s.

It has a lot to do with anticipation. The chase and the sense of possibility when chasing work, or nurturing queries, often amounts to an infuriating failure to deliver a commission. And yet I get back on the horse, time and time again, refusing to quit and apply for full-time employment even in the most soul-destroying dry spells. Could it be that Leeds United fandom has been an unlikely frustration coach, supporting my tolerance, patience, and ability to keep on?

The joy of the chase was enough, even if in the moments of defeat I might have argued it. I spent a tragic portion of Christmas Day 1997 imagining Boxing Day’s win at home to Coventry City. I had it all sketched out. 1-0 would do, but 2-0 or even 3-0 wasn’t unrealistic. In these days, I’d wake early on a matchday and fail to get back to sleep from buzzing anticipation, and, given I’d only just begun to go to games without my dad, most of these involved mere local radio coverage. Dreary school lessons were tolerable because I could sketch team sheets in my exercise book. 98% of my identity was pinned to the club. In high spirits that Boxing Day, I clock-watched while sitting with the family before creeping off to my room with my dad’s transistor radio, through which Radio Leeds brought me the delight of an opening Leeds goal in the 9th minute. Then, as has become the calling card of Leeds United over many decades, they capitulated and lost 1-3. I almost cried. A simmering internal rage weighed me down and left my Christmas break in ruins. But all of that build-up, that fantastising, nourished my imagination and my ability to generate a state close to bliss just by thinking the right thoughts.

You can laugh, but this kind of sitcom misery has, save for a handful of seasons in the early and late 1990s, been a constant frustration sensei. I would have shed it at a moment’s notice, given the opportunity to swap with the fortunes of then all-conquering Manchester United, but I’m delighted it was so. In the same way all of that romanticising was not lost in the wreckage, despite a torrid year of commissions scrapped at the 11th hour, often by the way of ghosting, I approach 2025 with a bag full of learned lessons from not getting access to the easy road, feeling stronger and more supple than ever before. By wringing every bit of joy and exhilarating anticipation from the chase, and sitting with the fallout of the frustrations, I add colour to my overall creative life experience.

As it goes, on Boxing Day 2024, Leeds United cantered to a one-sided 2-0 win away at Stoke City. It came easily through my streaming service. When it finished, I smiled, checked the updated league table on my smartphone without having to work for it, messaged a friend, and went to bed feeling only a small ripple of pleasure.

Energy diversity

Written by Ben Tallon

The school invites us parents in for an afternoon nosey around our kids’ classroom on the last day of term before the Christmas holidays. My two are in reception – ages 4 to 5. Fortunately, thanks to my freelance situation, I don’t have to seek any permission to get away from work and I’m particularly excited to see just how fired up all the kids are ahead of their first dose of ‘last day sillies’ ahead of the Christmas holiday.

It doesn’t disappoint. There’s a crackle around the place I’ve missed. This was often present in workplaces – both in my days of employment (deceased 2008) and in shared workspaces since I went into business for myself. Of course, it’s more inhibited in the adult world. Kids scream louder, run faster, and jump around more. Some have to be ordered to calm down.

Later on, I message a parent friend who messaged my wife to apologise for an outburst from her little one. It was nothing – a little wallop to each of my twins, something to do with a bag of Haribo; a mere overspill of chaos energy. I tell her not to apologise again, that I adore this environment of learning to be human. One year I took leave of my senses and puked all over the living room floor all because I simply couldn’t handle the overwhelm of Christmas. I also recall being thrown down a full-sized staircase in nursery by an overzealous friend. The pre-frontal cortex, the bit of the brain used to manage impulses, isn’t fully formed until humans are 21. So, is there any wonder 4-year-olds occasionally manhandle one another and make wild choices?

This child reminds me of myself at the same age: lots of physical energy, strong for her age, and excitable. I tell her mum that I love all of it, that the range of characters in my kids’ friendship group has already accelerated their development, and physical resilience had previously been a concern for me. It’s challenging enough for parents to manage these little balls of energy without having to worry about the playground parent social dynamics.

This gets me thinking about something I decide I’ll term ‘energy diversity’. How incredibly valuable this can be in the creative process. Of course, this slips easily into the necessity of broader diversity, but in particular, in an environment providing psychological safety, a well-balanced team of minds with varying types of energy will thrive. It might already be a consideration in businesses, but in a world where extreme human characteristics are rapidly demonised or shied away from, I can’t help but think that the most powerful energy combinations are not made.

I think school works as a model. The kids I learned the most from in secondary school were the antagonistic ones. They had no idea about this form of teaching; a missed opportunity I lament. In a recent discussion with drama and English teacher Abby Lucas, she highlighted the fact that the kids kicked out of the other subjects are the first at the drama class door because their chaotic ways, often brought about by early-life domestic issues, are powerful when converted in a subject that values the resulting dirty energy. English, with a broader emphasis on all forms of intelligence – kinesthetic, interpersonal, and so on – could follow suit. For Abby, the curriculum is tighter here, and she has less room to act sympathetically to individuality.

My energy was placid. I had a sense of humour that appealed to the class clowns, but didn’t alienate the quieter kids. I like people, and enjoyed being a part of it all. An in-betweener of sorts. This meant that away from jostling front-facing scenes, the class clowns showed me a quieter side, and they were always far smarter than academia gave them a chance to show. I was empathetic, and my parents always encouraged me to look beyond the facade of surface behaviour to see what was really going on with a person, and access them there.

At 14-years-old, I had no way to consciously know or change this, so eventually, we were filtered into groups according to academic performance and ‘potential’, and the cross-polination I seek in my life and career now was snuffed out. This has been the way for centuries.

We have a way of perpetuating it in the world of work, particularly when employers fear characters who might cause uproar by ‘saying the wrong thing’ or making people uneasy with a fast-paced brain perceived as threatening intensity.

In ‘The Creative Condition talk’ I explore the idea of ‘like-minded’ people, how we must shirk this as a singularity, and fertilise our social networks with energy diversity for the benefit of optimal creativity and ideas generation. And I want it for my kids. To have it, there’ll be a few tears, fall-outs, and the need to avoid limiting myself to the safe, ‘like-minded’ parent clusters at drop-off and collection time.

Mighty pup power, Ryder sir!

Written by Ben Tallon

I sat drinking my coffee this morning. 6.30am. The kids straight into a big 'Mighty pups' game. The kitchen table became the arctic, shelves various bases. One massive flow state, imaginations snowballing. Pure magic and a superb blueprint for what all creative meetings should be!

Sometimes I join in, but today I recognised I would only have punctuated the purity of the play, so I read my book and listened in. This state of mind is so natural for kids, but we too readily surrender it and shut down ideas as adults. Part of my coaching work is to show ways around that.

It isn’t something we do consciously, but over time, we accumulate fear-based characteristics and inhibitions like iron-filings. I refer to this as ‘the maturity trap’ - the herd mentality that makes us frightened to ‘make a dick of ourselves.’ But if you remove the social norms, isn’t it much more dickish to cut ourselves off from the joy and release of play, of the laughs we get from hijinx, imagination, and curiosity that helps humans stay invigorated and attuned with the world around us?

In my recent chat with Disney’s former head of innovation and creativity, Duncan Wardle, Duncan spoke of the need to disarm people in professional settings, to lead with topics that bring about laughter and release, instead of agendas and job titles. To free them from their ‘river of thinking.’ By this he meant company cultures and accepted norms that shoot down good ideas, or different thinking. He said that if you start with a topic such as ‘favourite childhood toy’, people very quickly loosen up, and the joy in the room opens the door between the fully-conscious state and the unconscious that brings out our lived experience and ideas-generating capacities.

Even in the school playground yesterday, as the kids pinballed around, fired up on the last day before the Christmas break, Mr Ramsey, the deputy headteacher stood grinning in his Santa pajamas, his beard painted red and green, adorned with twinkling festive lights. Every passing parent whooped and expressed their admiration of his commitment, and while the kids fawned over this, I saw that the infectious lightheartedness achieved exactly what Duncan Wardle was on about: it created unity, lured out our invaluable childhood selves, and everything ahead of us, no matter how turbulent things are in the wider world, felt possible, and magic.

Big Santa slippers

Written by Ben Tallon

I message a close friend to see if he’s on the couch yet. This isn’t pleasantry – I need to know that he is.

This particular friend works like a dog and he’s passionate about his craft – code – which means he doesn’t take much time off work. So he commits to his Christmas holiday break in a big way. Each year, I’ve found myself taking increasing amounts of vicarious pleasure from my vision of his idling. We met last weekend and I nodded along as he detailed what TV shows he had queued up, what he’ll be snacking on, and how long he intends to be horizontal.

This ridiculousness began when he found a way to make his passion his profession. Caught in the classic self-unemployment trap: work long hours, say yes to too much, burn out, we both cherished the chance to down tools and recharge during the Christmas period. That was until I became a father of twins in 2020. No more was my Christmas break anything to do with relaxation or rest. 5am rises, wailing babies up at all hours, and general daily subservience evolved into the current cannonball Christmas excitement as they approach 5. As this friend now enjoys the fruits of older, independent sons, he has regained full control of his Christmas patterns, so I indulge in his well-earned sluggery. It’s the closest I’ll get to a fireside with a good book and a whisky for the next decade or so. This is how it has to be.

So, what in all likelihood is not that spectacular becomes, in my mind, a magical showcase of lazing, the sort so decadent that has not been seen since emperors of ancient wherever took the piss, decadence in robes, lurched over joints of meat and half a vineyard of grapes.

In my message, I asked him if he had massive Santa slippers on. I knew he didn’t, but he once sported a pair of big gorilla slippers in our teenage years, so I took a punt; pure fantasy as I close my eyes and picture him shuffling back to the sofa in them with a new plate of filth.

The funny thing about all of this is, there’s a bizarre lesson about the power of thought. I’m setting my mind on a better course – actually improving my mood with this silliness. The warm glow of the Christmas tree lights does – if only marginally – elevate my mood. As does the fact this friend is having a positive experience.

Having watched Stutz, the tremendous documentary about psychotherapist Phil Stutz and his methods of supporting the mental wellbeing of his clients, I read his book The Tools. Since then I’ve been spending my waking five minutes practising his ‘grateful flow’ exercise: a meditative tactic to override any negative thoughts with a series of better imaginings of things you are grateful for. A ladder out of the spirals we tend to send ourselves into. This is often owing to negativity bias; an evolutionary self-preservation mechanism that served us well during the times of bigger predators and the likes, but in today’s 24-hour news cycle world, is routinely hijacked, keeping us on edge, frightened, and panicked.

After a tough few years as a fatigued new parent, I have far more control of the trajectory of my thoughts, and it’s something I work with my coaching clients to improve because it has a huge bearing on our ability to create optimally.

A few of them might even get a Christmas card with my friend’s Santa slippers covered in Twiglet crumbs and droplets of sherry, shortly after passing out in the blue glow of his gargantuan Christmas tree in front of another Star Wars binge.

Creativity, the only compass

Written by Ben Tallon

The Christmas rest looms and I find this week brings on many reflections.

Today is the 2nd day of talking to a new arrival in Salisbury on the dog walk. Another artist/illustrator/lecturer/designer-ish hybrid. We get chatting about the hard task that is creative education in this age of data obsession and hyper-capitalism. This conversation starts because she asks how my deadline is looking. Last week the deadlines were several owing to a much-needed pile-up of projects at the end of one of my quietest years.

This week I’m illustrating the biography I’ve ghost-written, but as a short story. My exclusive focus is on this one brief – a bit like the best kind of college project.

She’s curious about how I ended up on such a hybrid project, and we get talking about the need in 2024 to lead with creativity and not a job title. A coaching client of mine goes under ‘designer who animates’. We’ve been exploring an idea of his; an opportunity he’s spotted to bring a project management aspect to his practice. This is good for him because he’s got great initiative. He attributes some of this to his father, who always gave him a long leash, and instead of feeding him easy answers, encouraged him to work things out, and take the lead. He’s an example of this; a person with some core skills, but crucially, the initiative and vision to take them to places and people who value them, packaged with his personality.

This, I tell the new friend, is what I’ve been doing for years. It’s hard at times because I never know what to call myself. Illustrator, artist, writer, coach, educator, I don’t fucking know. ‘Creative’ doesn’t cut it because, as I’ve written and talked about extensively, it’s far too general a term, often bracketed as either time-wasting or mere artistry. So I pick a hat, and wear it confidently depending on the outcome I’m hoping for according to who I’m talking to and how I can best bring something to their table.

Anyway, on this brief, I’m truly alive because it demands all of the traits and skills I most like to dance between, mixing like a witch’s brew: empathy, sensitivity (I’ve spent 8 hours listening to this person’s wild ride through life and it’s my job to turn it into something alive, and as restless as he is – dictating and transcribing won’t cut it, he came to me for my creativity), writing (prose style, non-fiction), illustration (conceptual in part), art (I’m as much artist as I am illustrator), design (we’re laying out the book between us), editing, storytelling… I’m boring myself now, but my point is this: no one vocational course can teach this and in 2024, nor should it try. I didn’t simply learn to illustrate on my degree – I went to the pub a lot and basked in the stories shared by my lecturers about absolutely anything from the obscure and eccentric, to culture, politics, whatever. This carried into the studio. My love of storytelling had been in me since the earliest of ages, and the course they built fostered it and showed me many ways to use it. But today, when any action must be justified financially to avoid damnation by politicians in newspapers and paranoid well-meaning parents, this more diffused, natural, fun nurturing of personality, interests, and hidden abilities is the work of the devil.

Creativity and personal development must be at the core of any creative education because automation and increasing big tech dominance are revolutionising the creative industry. No matter how shit we think generative AI looks – and in my opinion, it’s obscenely soulless – it is a cheap solution for many with passable results when boxes must be ticked. It will impact every singular trade and already has been doing: illustrator, animator, designer, filmmaker, writer: by no means mortally threatened, but now faced with a ubiquitous, affordable competitor, heightening the need to bring far more than visuals to the dance. But true creativity, the kind where our life stories, experiences, ideas, and view on the world are called upon to drive these skills? Less so.

And that’s what we natter about as the dogs bark and run around. Courses need titles and structure, and students want guarantees and certainty when they’re paying silly money for a degree, but now, more than ever before, an art school approach where self-initiated exploration, play, and curiosity are fostered and grown is essential to prepare the next wave of industry talent for the world in 2025 and beyond, to instill adaptability when things move so fucking fast. But there’s a huge gap between the two mindsets and neither of us knows how it will be bridged, so in the end, we just watch the dogs and remark on the way they bark more than the others.

Ryman Shakeup

Written by Ben Tallon

It’s quiet in Ryman Stationery on a Wednesday lunchtime. I’m looking for the finest fine liner available when a loud voice smashes the fragile peace, asking the man on the till if he can come and reach a box folder down. The cashier protests that he cannot leave the till because his colleague is out for lunch, but this is snuffed out. By the time the cashier and the loud customer appear at the till, I’ve chosen my fine liner (0.03 nib) and sidle up behind a lad in a high-vis orange jacket who is now waiting to be served. He appears slightly younger than me.

The loud bloke makes eye contact with both of us and I notice a familiar wildness in his eyes having grown up around many of these characters.

Then the inevitable addressing.

“LADS. GO. AND. GET. YOUR. PROSTATE. CHECKED. DO IT TOMORROW!”

The man on the till is reeling, his terrified smile so empty it hurts, his silence so desperate. I’m already smirking because I love these wildcards, the ones who refuse to allow society to slip into a gentrification/big tech coma.

His advice is sound, his only real flaw is the volume at which he bellows it, right here in the middle of town, when the man behind the till just needs to ride out lunch hour in the trenches. It’s that impish refusal to sanction even this minor plea for mercy that delights me.

“I’M TELLING YOU, MINE… IT SWELLED UP LIKE THIS–” and now his hands come up, big shovels poking out of his weighty overcoat sleeves like a Lego figurine, and it’s as if he’s hoisting up a record-breaking sized fruit in a local newspaper.

“IT CREEPS UP ON YOU, AND THEN YOU ARE FUCKED.”

It’s on the savagery of that last word that the cashier’s head drops, and all I can do is giggle. When prostate man leaves the store chuckling, the lad in front gets out his phone and starts to google ‘prostate check’, also giggling.

All the way home, I think about the liquid-gold value of that dirty energy, the mischief, the abandon, and the different way of being, how it’s completely overlooked by most people when it comes to considering creativity, and how much better it could be if everyone could gain my appreciation of outliers.

My very own sunrise

Written by Ben Tallon

Later leaving for the morning dog walk than I would have liked. Older and wiser though, so I don’t fret; just stay present to see what that brings. It brings the most beautiful sunrise which is there one moment, gone the next. It’s so tranquil, and rich, the way it paints the top of 7 trees along the edge of the small meadow an orange straight from a Monet winter… well, sunrise.

It’s been a few weeks since I banned my phone on this walk, and my energy is good, brain less scattered than it was back then. I stopped in the woods, stood and watched the same orange sunlight dappled on the leaves, took a deep breath, and grew aware of two small birds flitting from branch to branch close by. The dog watched me, eager to get to the bit where the ball comes out of my pocket, when it’s game on.

I obliged. Then when I arrived at the seven trees, when he’d busied himself chewing grass, all was still again. I thought about it as I watched the stunning colours. It occurred to me that this was just for me. Of the entire human race, currently around 8 billion, only I witnessed this sunrise on those trees, from right here, up close, beneath them, and the moment was perfect and spiritual. As it dissipated and turned, yellow, as the sun hid behind low clouds, I walked on and thought about how profound that is. Even now, with hyper-connectivity, with 1000mph lives and algorithmic homogenisation of cultures and ideas, each of us remain unique, the authors of stories that can be whatever the fuck we make them.

To feel that so clearly in nature felt phenomenal, even if I did then have to pick up a pile of dog dirt with a little cornstarch bag afterwards.

And there really is no way that the immersive scene, the feeling, the smell of the damp grass, the gentle breeze on my skin, and the bird song, could ever be portrayed or replicated. Not AI, not Monet, not Murukami (the closest I can offer in terms of the sheer dreaminess of the moment), not any shitty camera phone capture, or decent camera shot, for that matter. Nothing. Don’t get me wrong, somewhere
down the road, it’s likely I’ll use the experience in a story, an illustration, or a metaphor, or something, but first it has to be experienced in the fullest. Then storytelling can use the ingredients to make something new. The closest we can get to the here and now. But why settle for 2nd best?

It all counts

Written by Ben Tallon

I’m in a reading frenzy. Reading, listening… same thing, isn’t it? Audiobooks entered my life during early twin parenthood when I couldn’t keep my eyes open for very long at all when the babies fell asleep. The dog walks became my little escape, sitting in the woods listening to stories. Since then, they’ve stuck around, primarily to consume books as part of this ongoing study of creativity at a speed I can’t manage in my preferred physical format. Audio is great for long drives, or while working on something that requires little conscious thought too, and last night, having finished Dr. Rageshri Dhairyawan’s brilliant Unheard, I realised I had no new non-fiction to begin. I noticed a misplaced guilt creep in while considering Haruki Murukami’s new novel, The City and Its Uncertain Walls. This is the trappings of the obvious approach and the first step to falling in line with everybody else.

OK, in my defence, my range of non-fiction is wildly broad. I’d never restrict my learning to books on design, art, and creativity. I’ve read plenty: they’re beautiful and inspiring, but if I stop there, that’s just the literary algorithm, isn’t it? Giving me what I want. No, what I’m predicted to want. Like the insufferable football fans who endure the violent pumping of their team only to hold up a phone, pointing to the ‘Xg’ (Expected goals) statistic as if it shows who really won, calculated from all kinds of bullshit stats including number of boots to have stamped upon certain blades of grass. Or something. Maybe not. Sorry. You get the point though – vary, enrich, vary, enrich, vary, enrich. There are thousands of great, more established coaches than me, but I’ve enough life experience to know that counts for nothing as long as I do it my way. So I fill my head with anything remotely interesting to ensure I see things differently.

So, what is the end game? Because that’s important. It used to be to become a full-time illustrator, and in my youthful naivety, I just used to look at a lot of contemporary art and design. No surprise that during that time I struggled to find my own feet and chased trends. These days, professionally and in my life, I adore learning about the world I inhabit, worlds beyond, and (to me) the most beautiful thing in all of it – creativity. However creativity is comprised of infinite and ever-changing elements, and they differ for each person. If I just read about creativity, I get booksmart. I’ll be an intellectual ramrod, able to tell you all kinds of interesting tidbits of theoretical information, but will that benefit my coaching clients when something bad happens in their personal lives? Or when some twat in their workplace yanks their hair and runs off with a promotion. I don’t know! I’ve been self-unemployed since I was 25 and I’ll be 42 in February! But whatever they come to me with, I pride myself on empathy, understanding, and crucially, my ability to put the exact circumstances into my large skull, knowing a solution will emerge, a solution another coach could never have delivered in the same way. A solution tailored for them, relevant to their lives, here and now. Not a regurgitated Rick Rubin quote, as brilliant as they are. They belong to Rick. Saying it back to someone without great reason is silly. That’s why people have LIVE LAUGH LOVE over their bed and wonder why the passion is like a wet match. Too far? Maybe. It only matters if the right dots are joined in quoting. The last podcast of 2024 is with the fly fisher and author of Fly Fishing With Leonardo Da Vinci, David Ladersohn. It’s phenomenal, and will probably bring me a dismal amount of downloads, but I’m long past caring. David told me that Leonardo loathed people quoting the work of others for this very reason. What I learned from a lifelong businessman and fly fisher, only time will tell. But the moment I second-guessed my instinctive pull towards the Murukami book, I pressed ‘buy now’ because one day, somewhere between a fly fisher, a great fiction author, and a moment in the dark on the end of my bed when I was supposed to be packing for a long drive north, I’ll be able to do something I otherwise wouldn’t have. That’s enough for me.

If my coaching sounds like it might help your creativity, head to the coaching section of the site and get in touch, we can have a natter!

Are you listening?

Written by Ben Tallon

The detachment from much of my social media feels good. It comes with downsides: slightly fewer podcast listeners (though it’s a minefield trying to get a real sense of the causes and effects of that, and that now deeply embedded sense that you’re missing so much good stuff. The thing is, when I check it, this is rarely the case. Every time I go away anywhere or spend more than a few hours without access to my smartphone, my brain is certain there’ll be so many pressing matters awaiting me, and while here and there, a decent email containing paid work might have landed, or mild personal life concern, this belief is never founded on anything other than my conditioning at the hands of tech companies.

On one Friday night check on the way home after a night out, I saw previous podcast guest, Yasmin Ali (see episode below) share a book called Unheard: The Medical Practice of Silencing by Dr Rageshri Dhairyawan. This got me right off the bat and I bought the audiobook before my key was in the door. It’s about listening; predominantly in healthcare, given Dr Dhairyawan’s role as an HIV and sexual health doctor, but its broader themes – why people go unheard, knowing a person, culture, and shared challenges – are relevant to creativity. One huge downside to the overuse of tech was that I’ve found myself, at times, less than properly present. I’d forget conversations, my mind elsewhere, and the subsequent self-loathing was fierce when I upset the person trying to talk to me. This still happens after a mentally demanding day, but now I know when it’s time for a little downtime to get some cognitive function back, as opposed to allowing my mind to be pulled in a thousand different directions by those online vacuous time thief platforms.

Following on from The Anxious Generation, Unheard is something of a cautionary tale; I find the future state of our relationships un-nerving. If none of us can hold our attention long enough to apply ourselves to anything, where does that end? Dr Rageshri has written a corker – a wonderful document of how poor listening, preconceptions, biases and cultural assumptions result in stark, troubling physical realities for too many people. It’s a brilliantly written rallying cry for more time, patience, and compassion between doctor and patient in the face of overwhelming pressures from every angle for besieged healthcare workers. I was delighted, just as I sat drinking in her stories and making notes – to hear her wax lyrical about the power of the arts to support greater listening, understanding, and well-targeted action for positive change.

With any luck, Dr Dhairyawan and I will soon get to chat for The Creative Condition!

Seeking the social in media

Written by Ben Tallon

I’ll turn 42 next year. A full life might be 82. Or 70. Or 75. I don’t bloody know. My point is, that if I get a full outing, I can see this as half-time. Sit down in the dressing room, take the bollocking, feed on the praise for the good stuff. Then it’s back out to kick on. When I signed up for Twitter in 2009 I was 28. In the mindset of a person who feels life is all ahead, perhaps there’s a risk of spending too much valuable time scrolling and interrupting the good stuff. I certainly did that a little bit. Thankfully I never saw any value in sharing my personal life on the internet. That’s all mine. But I crashed a few flow states by ‘just checking’ how the artwork or comment I’d shared was being received.

Now at nearly 42, that clock ticks louder. This isn’t morbid, it’s incredibly positive. I talk to my deathbed self daily to make sure I’m seeking maximum enrichment in my life and it’s one of the first tasks I set my coaching clients. That way when the systems designed to drain my attention by engaging my brain reach out with their resource-intensive tendrils, I chop the fuckers off and get back to drawing, reading, writing, and after work, playing with the kids or staring at a wall so my unconscious can do its invaluable job. Anything but mindless screen gazing.

I want to remember things as I traverse the world around me. Notice changes. Glean ideas nobody else, not even AI can have. Feel things. Know things, trust I’m here with a purpose. ‘Data subject’ is how some big tech companies actually refer to humans these days. That should tell you what they care about. Too many times I’ve walked or travelled somewhere and not even remembered the journey. So, fuck that. I’m smelling the trees and touching the earth each morning before my eyes enter any screen.

It’s time to reconsider my relationship with social media. I’m not leaving, but I want it to nourish, bring about meaningful conversations with real people, and I’d like to stay in control of it. That way, the 2nd half of my life stands a chance of matching what – all considered, thanks to creativity and good people – has been a pretty beautiful first-half runout.

The Big Kid Behaving

Written by Ben Tallon

Just steam in, get the fucking money, and get out. It belongs in a Guy Ritchie film, but this is the kind of self-loathsome self-talk I must carry out to keep myself organised and sane. Since an early age, I’ve struggled to apply myself to anything that doesn’t excite, intrigue, or amuse me. It costs me in the sense that I operate at my desk – painting, drawing, making, ripping, recording – under the shadow of loose ends that will slice my mood like paper edges. Brain? Neuro stuff? Maybe that’s Pandora’s box of its own, but I haven’t yet gone there. Either way, when I do get in there and attack the niggling banality of whichever murderous chore I must commit, I feel exhilaration like no other. This morning I had five emails and one LinkedIn message to reply to, and I needed to stop putting off logging onto my banking. Last week it was sending my accounts for 2023/24 to my accountant. I can’t help but feel this must be rife in the creative industry, given the value of our extremely broad range of brain types when it comes to our currency: imagination, innovation, ideas, and so on. The flip side is that we have a tendency to make monsters out of the mundane.

The exhilaration following the completion of my accounts last week and my admin tasks this morning emanates from the blue skies behind the heavy grey clouds. With a brain like mine, happiest when making and innovating, with all that adult shit cleared, I can wholly immerse myself in the play I need to exist. Today, 4 illustration projects and a biography I’ve written in a short story prose format. Without the weight of the unwanted, I can put the music on, light the room, and disappear into flow states and imaginative wormholes. Had I been the big kid I am too often, today might have degenerated into sullen meandering through social media mazes and irritable subpar creations. It still might. But probably not.