The Storyteller

Dave Grohl named his recent book The Storyteller. I loved that.

Stories are my quite possibly my greatest joy in the human condition. The limitless nature of them. The escape, the shapes, sizes, and styles. The tears, laughter, and rage they can stir in us despite absolutely nothing else changing around us.

I grew up on them. My dad, who grew up in a breadline poor family, and his brothers learned to use them to get their adventures. They have great imaginations, and take so much pleasure from stories.

Stories become our binding culture. Humans, it is said, cannot truly know more than somewhere around 150 people. After that you need a myth, a narrative, a binding mantra. Hence religion. Hence football fans referring to their collective club entity as ‘us.’

It’s why bigger businesses – agencies – have buzzwords like ‘disruption’ to bind their staff and unite them in common cause.

I found myself waiting for a coaching client on Oxford Street, outside Primark. Instead of going on my phone, I decide to people watch, look up and around. There’s a bus stop on the other side of the road, the building behind it boarded up and covered in graffiti and fly posters. For a minute or two I watch how people interact with the Donald Trump illustration (It’s not complimentary) Then the several floors above catch my eye. These windows, while not church old, are of another era. Maybe the 1970s. I wouldn’t know. But they are clouded with dirt and dust, which obscures whatever might have once been going on inside. There’s nothing in there now – no lights, no people moving around, no obvious contemporary use – and it gets me thinking. Could artists stage a takeover? A theatre troupe who might put on late night performances for intimate audiences of friends and peers? Homeless people?

Then there’s an assassin, Jason Bourne, The Day of the Jackal style. And just like those dreamy church imaginings of sleepovers by candlelight, I’m in there again. My client arrives and I’m yoinked back into 2025 Oxford Street and my challenge to help realign her creativity, passions, and personality, but an idea has hatched. A storytelling workshop idea, putting this storyteller nature of mine to good use to help businesses and people. Ah, beautiful active boredom….

Vestibule

I like the associated words, even if I don’t know what they mean. Vestibule. Catacomb. Priest Hole. It used to conjure images of people in cloaks in shadowy nooks, conducting secret business.

I went to a Catholic school, but I’ve never been a religious person. I like the belonging it gives people, and I find all religions interesting, but church was incredibly boring. Until the age of 12 or so, my dad occassionally took me on a Sunday morning. It was annoying because it meant I missed Goals on Sunday, and the service – the readings, the hymns, the genuflections and dry disc of bread – took forever.

But it had a huge upside. I realised this on Sunday, as we used our free resident of Salisbury access to the cathedral to take the kids and dog down for a look around. It’s grandiose. In a city the size of Salisbury – quaint, and more of a small town than a city – it feels like a gothic, religious Independence Day when I look up at the colossal structure. It’s 800 or so years old.

And I find it happening again.

Laura is reading a sign about some old king’s tomb to the kids and my attention drifts over to a tour guide surrounded by 20 or so people. In mere seconds, her voice, imparting genuinely fascinating information, triggers a sleepy feeling in me. Conditioning. Years of lectures, and sermons, and tour guides in tourist attractions have created a learned brain behaviour. So I look up.

Above us, maybe 30 or so feet (Though in these buildings, depth perception is distorted so it could be much higher), there are arched windows on an upper level. Stone, spotlit corridors run behind them, and the shadow cloaks are in there again. I smile, recalling those Sundays, when I’d stare at the ones in my local church and my dad zoned out too. Back then, I’d imagine how cosy it could be to spend a night up there with a friend or family member. I’d have a sleeping bag, and find a corner, and if it was raining outside, I’d listen to it driving against the thick stone exterior, and all that history. I’d light some of the little candles and it would be dreamy.

I spent a good bit of time conjuring these narratives between 1988 and 1999 when I left all forms of Catholic institution, but clearly, as the narrative picks up anew, I never lost the sense of wonder these beautiful buildings awoke in me.

Active boredom is a scarce creativity fuel these days. We’re never far from something to keep us in our conscious brain state and ultimately, ideas are worse for it.

The five-year-old’s lunar broadcast

‘What? Do you know what I mean, though?’

No, well, sort-of. My poor wife has to suffer my neurotic bursts of grandiosity every couple of weeks. I’ve noticed a pattern that needs amending. Off the back of a testing spell – be it eco-anxiety, financial panic, overloading myself with projects that could have waited, I’ll find my groove again, and everything is possible.

This time I’m plotting an assault on BBC Sounds producers because my vision for The Creative Condition has grown. I’m a lifelong audiophile, which played a major role in starting the podcast that grew into the brsnd and cause in which you, dear reader or listener, are now immersed. Or playing in the background. And in this frenzied world of constant streaming content, who wouldn’t want a Yorkshireman exploring creativity tucked away on some 1am graveyard slot on the BBC?

When I feel this stuff, it is with such passion that I blather on as if my wife had been in my head, sharing the years of germinating ideas before the mature and burst out of my face in a multi-sensory, quickly spreading ambition virus.

She reminds me that having not been made aware of this long-term thought process, I must realise that making sense of its sudden birth is a challenge. I stop and start to laugh, seeing her very fair point.

My challenge, of course, is to save a little of this beautiful wonder, this energy and willingness to dream, so I don’t repeat the pattern that invariably ends up in a burnout on the other side.

Like my two five-year-olds, one of which stops half-way through finding a clue in her treasure hunt, and shouts a request for the building of a ‘tent’ in the front room.

‘That’s me, isn’t it? That’s my brain, right there…’

‘Yes. A five-year old who is suddenly certain they’d like to broadcast for the BBC from the surface of the moon.’

Weight Watchers Coach?

While fine-tuning my LinkedIn profile to make sure I’m as juicy as possible in a stupidly loud online meat market, I added ‘coach’ to my list of skills. Just ‘coach’. Not ‘creativity coach’, or ‘career coach’ or ‘business coach’. I mean, I’m not either of the latter two, even though there are certainly aspects of that, but only coach is asking for trouble.

I haven’t been approached to carry 60-odd people to London Victoria for a more affordable rate yet, but I’ve begun enjoying a certain dubious thrill of seeing what they do send me as suggested professional opportunities.

The first was a Weight Watchers coach in Wiltshire. What happens is, my imagination takes the title and quicker than an AI image generator, plays a HD video in my head of what that looks like. It gets silly very quickly. I’m like latter-day Diego Maradona – full tracksuit and whistle, shuffling around a church basement, telling people about my own reckless and recently addressed sweet tooth, before descending into the psychology side of creativity – the small gains, the manageable goals, the value in the dark and light and grey of our personality. But no. I have no place advising anyone how to drop pounds.

So, I don’t amend the skills settings and wait.

Southampton youth team football coach is next. I’m 14 again, the last years of the delusional professional football dream. I’ve interviewed Ben Ryan, the Olympic gold medal winner as Fiji men’s rugby 7s coach. That looks good on paper. I do adore sports psychology and I have strong people skills thanks to my storytelling-driven observation and empathy. And it’s the full tracksuit again. I’m in full red this time. Having watched Kaos with my wife, Laura, recently – a beautifully stylish retelling of Greek mythology starring Jeff Goldblum in several enriched tracksuits – I entered a minor mid-life crisis by doubling down on a previous threat to ‘treat myself’ to a tropical print Adidas number and thick gold chain like a Mafioso uncle, in which I’d march around Salisbury seeking peak respect based solely on it.

But something in all of this silliness stands out because I’ve come to learn that even the most whimsical trains of thought can pack value – there is something of a general ‘coach’ inherent to my personality. I take a lot of joy from helping, motivating, guiding, and refining people. Storytelling is my biggest thrill in life, and working out a person’s arc is becoming a total fascination, even if they don’t see it themselves. None of us do, not for decades at least. But coaching – the kind I’ve fallen in love with – is about becoming that hovering narrator, succinctly capturing the instinctive and natural behaviours and bottling it as trusted, actionable advice at the right times. Or something like that.

Next up, ‘gymnastics coach’. This time I’m in court, in a black tracksuit, representing myself against the lawyers of the people with legs where their ears should be.

Little panel of gloom

I’ve reached a point where I land on some social media sites with my hand held up to cover the little panel of news headlines. That’s how destructive they can be. Each morning, despite enjoying Scott Mills as the new host of BBC Radio 2’s breakfast show, I prepare the family breakfast each day bracing myself for the latest update on which leading global dick head has said or done something outrageous and frankly stupid.

Calculated, yes. The news and the reported action. Do I have my head in the sand? Maybe. I picked this cause of elevating and teaching creativity because this daily bombardment of bad news was pushing me close to some kind of personal collapse. Collapse. That’s the title of a record I’m designing the artwork for. In a creative exploration sense, that’s a juicy brief. But too many people are battered incessantly with this abandonment of morals and head-scratching lunacy until they can no longer create. Not sustainably, at least.

This came up during an interview with LOVE Creative founder David Palmer. He pointed to the bleakness of the Manchester scene out of which emerged Joy Division, The Happy Mondays, and so on. And he’s right. The negative emotion spectrum is incredibly valuable and the bedrock of so much great art of all kinds, ideas, and innovation that could not have been brought about any other way. But I also believe that this is unsustainable in the long run. We are human and there are limits to our resilience and the kind of responsive creativity our pain brings on.

On my bad days, I cannot access this at all, and this doom overload leaves me sat grinding my teeth, staring out of the window.

So, I hold up my hand. Sometimes, I lunge for the plug when the radio news comes on. I have to curate my news consumption, and be kind to myself, even though our evolutionary negativity bias makes it so easy to heap on another ladel full of big tech presidential politician prickery.

Treasure Hunt

I’m interested in Friday night and Saturday morning. It used to be that the former bludgeoned the latter when my weekends were built on going out and drinking too much. The energy switch from the working week to downtime, or family time, or whatever it might be for each person, provides many clues about character and personality. It’s a subtle thing, and not easily observed in others, but it’s there if you want it.

Some escape into the weekend. Others triumphantly stomp into it, the general of a life they love, confident in their direction and gushing with silken imaginings of what next week will bring, and how this weekend can celebrate or nourish it.

These days my Friday nights are lower-key. A single whisky and a cup of tea is not unheard of. Not in succession either. At the same time. Have that! What of it? What are you going to do about it? Hm? And Saturday mornings… the simple pleasures. I’ll doze on the sofa in front of a Batman cartoon with the kids and then get on the coffee, knowing there’s a chance of finishing one uninterrupted since they are now five years old. But in amongst all this, I’ll carry around whichever book has me all excited. I’ll reflect on the week’s highs and lows, think about how the next one might shape up, and find ways to get excited about it despite the turbulence seemingly everywhere. I’m a purer, less professional self, and the feelings I get with a moment away from the desk are often valuable insights into the flow of my creativity.

Years ago it was chaotic. Who, at the age of 19 or 21, has a conscious awareness of these feelings? Not many. And yet I loved to watch the weekend versions of people. How did their dress sense change? What did they choose to do with or without money? How did music fit into their plans and influence behaviour? Were they bothered by the sporting calendar? Were they assertively social – organisers and cheerleaders – or passive? Happy to plug into whatever with whoever? And on the murkier side of all this, how did they feel come Sunday night? Was their dread temporary because they were on a better path into a longer-term future aligned with this weekend self, or running from something they felt they could not escape?

The other day I walked past a can of Oranjeboom sat on a wall. Oranjeboom is a Dutch beer with its roots in Rotterdam. I began cackling and stopped. My wife asked what was funny as I took a photo of it before taking it to the recycling bin in the park. I told her about a friend of mine who while at university in Leeds, discovered that you could get four cans of the stuff dirt cheap in Home Bargains. I put pressure on him to come out, and after futile protests of being broke until his student loan landed, eventually agreed to come out.

He turned up and declined all drink offers. Fair enough, I thought. Nice to see him anyway and the sobriety might help him come bath night. After two pubs, I noticed that as we walked between venues, he’d run off and return several minutes after we’d ordered. So I ran behind on the third vanishing. I watched as this dark hunched shape didn’t piss into a bush, but stooped and began digging into the earth. After 30 seconds or so, he pulled up a vessel, at which point he noticed me watching and burst out laughing.

“Fuck’s sake mate! I panicked then, thought you were a mugger!” As he emerged and the streetlight hit him, I saw his muddy fingers wrapped around a still-cold can of Oranjeboom and fell about laughing.

“I told you I was skint!”

“How many of these have you hidden?”

“Eight. One between each pub.”

By this point, we’d been going out for over two years, so he knew the likeliest trail and our hometown wasn’t the biggest place. He was fit, so if he needed to run further to get at his loot, it wasn’t a problem.

I’ve never forgotten the surge of misplaced admiration I had for his innovation. This budget side-quest he’d put in place as we all carried out a predictable central plot. And the ludicrous contrast between his stylish outfit, a vintage denim jacket, and Converse shoes, and his building site fingernails, dark with the dirt of one who isn’t afraid to sweat and defy convention for his pay.

A silly story? Maybe. But we can only learn so much through practicing the skills that define our career choices. These downtime deeds are just as valuable as we seek to understand ourselves; our needs, quirks, thrills, and unique way of navigating our lives.

Fear creativity

There are fewer words more loaded than ‘creativity.’ Saying it to people – even in organisations who live and die on its effective use – is like shouting ‘Voldermort!’ at the Hogwarts breakfast bar. I’m not exagerrating either. It’s massive.

I remember going into an exhibition in TATE Modern and ducking, fearing my head was about to be knocked off by the word MOTHER, which hurtled towards me. A 3D, 25 foot long installation of the word was a conceptual piece to represent the intimidation children can feel towards the matriarchal figure. If it had been ‘CREATIVITY’ they’d have needed an aeroplane hangar to house it and do the seismic connotations attached justice.

People just don’t understand it. Even at the top of the creative industry. Those attachments to artistic talent are unbreakable. It ruffles feathers, placing crushing pressure on people who are very much creative, but shun any notion of wearing the label because their perception of what a creative type is is so far from the simpler truth.

Anyone can be more creative.

When you break it down into lighter words such as ‘playful, silly, imaginative, making, flippant, energised,’ people are far likelier to step forward and express themselves.

If you can associate a word with feeling, culture, ideas, and lived experience, then it clicks, and becomes more than something people have been convinced they are not. Something that should not be named.

Talk to me, Pogus!

I was 22 in 2005 when I moaned and groaned about the injustice of making illustration students write. I didn’t protest to anyone but a couple of adjacent students and myself because deep down I got it.

Eventually, I took my medicine and landed on ‘graphic activism.’ I didn’t really understand the term, but I liked the antagonists. I loved people with something to say. Always have done; from a loudmouth in the pub to historic figures who changed the world.

20 years later I stumbled across the images of Pogus Caesar. The moment I saw the overturned car in his iconic images of the Handsworth riots, I had to talk to him. Pogus moved to Birmingham in 1953 from St Kitts, and I needed to hear his story.

It’s funny, isn’t it? I didn’t suffer any of the prejudice he faced. I don’t have to open my inbox to abusive messages about the colour of my skin – one of my closest friends recently told me he does. We weren’t well off but we weren’t breadline poor, and love was everywhere. If it wasn’t growing up in comfort, it was growing up relatively safe, with enough time to daydream and wander towards the things that made me feel something.

But we have a decent spread of empaths in the family. Some days the world feels too much because of that sensitivity. The whole fabric of my life is enriched, for better or worse.

That’s why I wrote about activism, and that’s why I speak to these people who had to work through a lot more than I ever had to deal with. My battles were largely internal. My art – written, spoken, drawn – this cause of championing creativity, is the outward expression of those mental skirmishes and my desire to contribute what I’ve learned to the trials of important creators like Pogus.

I might not have been made to feel unwanted, but the hurt I feel through knowing that good people routinely do… is fuel enough.

Intergalactic council tax

Scientific American is the second news source to put space litter in my imagination today. I have a writer’s brain and this is far from trivial. It means I’m out and about tittering in public, drawing disconcertingly familiar attention bordering on concern.

I don’t know what other people daydream about, but I doubt many others are thinking about floating refuse collectors in high-vis spacesuits. Or mutating alien condoms. Or dirty vapes from which the saliva of misguided teenagers conjoin with wires to form AI-organic intergalactic troublemakers.

It brings about alienation from my task sheet and displacement in a creative industry that I often feel could use a mind like this in more ways than I’ve worked out how to action.

These last few days, it’s become apparent that my current direction is about resolving a relationship with the industry I love that has a certain fissure running along a bit I’ve never noticed before. At times it’s threatened to branch off in many directions, and maybe it already has.

But there are meetings lined up. Meetings about coaching work with not just individuals, but agencies who I believe I can help. Agencies outside which I spend a lot of time peering through their online windows, yearning for a taste of that collaborative energy, and a little more time outside my space-litter-sullied head.

From time to time, we all need to peer at those we feel drawn to and assess them thematically. What is it that they have, or do so well, which we shouldn’t seek to attain in its literal form, that speaks to us on a level that language cannot always express? And in what ways, despite my particulars – my budget, location, schedule, and skillset – can I start to bring them into my creative ecosystem?

This way, those cracks heal.

Chinese Space Bra

Sometimes when you say things out loud, they confront you in a way that hides when it lurks only in thought. With a solid night’s sleep I’m more optimistic about life, and the kids are telling us about China, how – according to Miss Healy – the latest astronauts say you can’t see the Great Wall anymore. On any of the days last week, my vulnerable, panic-stricken brain might have taken that and created some sort of pollution smog monster. But today they ask if their mum or I have been to China.

I share tales of an artist residency in Beijing in 2018, how I drew on the walls after wandering around and collecting imagery of points of interest.

Laura says, “You drew on products too, didn’t you?”

“I did.” The kids stare with fierce curiosity now. “Trainers, t-shirts… I did this bra, actually…”

Laura’s eyes widen.

“What, Daddy? What?” They say it in unison. Now they’re really in.

“It was some Olympic athlete, gymnast I think. She’d bought it in Victoria’s Secret and wanted me to draw her doing her thing on the cup.”

And nobody really knows what to do with this, me least of all. That’s when I start to cackle into my porridge – the absurdity of all this. A 17-year career of highly unpredictable breaks and opportunities, governed by some sort of chaos deity, maintaining my perpetual sense of terminal decline because who, leading a freelance career of this nature, could ever feel secure this way?

Creativity sets in motion a sequence of effects, ideas, and far-reaching culture collisions, and when it flows, it’s beautiful, but never, ever, look to it for anything less than bloody ridiculous when you set out to do it on your purest terms.

Book shop moods

To put a bow on a challenging week I go to London and carry out a brilliant four hours with Satvir Sitoha, working through her creativity in a PIT STOP coaching session. Satvir is a designer who likes to illustrate in her own time and wanted to re-centre her creativity. We split the session in two and during the lunch break, I suggest we eat, then go to Waterstones near Tottenham Court Road station. I want to do this to observe the books she is drawn to and discuss her feelings.

There are many clues about our personality and creativity in the culture that speaks to us.

After we part ways, I have time to spare in Waterloo station, so as ever, find myself peering through the Foyles bookshop window.

After a while, my eyes dancing over the titles on display, I grow aware of my mood as it flips and flops according to the tone of the subjects. There’s something about the Nazi mindset – topical following Elon Musk’s troubling behaviour this week – and another book about factfulness, how the world looks better when you bypass the monstrous quantity of emotionally triggering headlines and doomsaying. This pattern repeats as I go inside and browse the store, and it’s a reminder to nourish, not bombard our brains.

While researching a book jacket illustration commission several years ago, I had to consume imagery of the Los Angeles homeless problem. It pulled me into a funk so desperate, I felt utter futility in anything I tried to do. And in the next click, an image leading to an article in Positive News about a new business-backed build of tiny bright coloured houses in rows to help the homeless community while they awaited help. Not a silver bullet, but a reminder that work always goes on to address our collective problems, and a reason to feel a modicum of hope and optimism in the battles at hand.

Crucial if we wish to create from the right place, with meaning.

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.