Does ‘Creative’ Work Free You From Drudgery, or Just Security?

A quote from the marvelous TV show Mad Men says it best. Upon coming back to her daughter's apartment to find her crying, discouraged at not being able to get acting work, Meagan's mother (played by Julia Ormond) says, "The world cannot support that many ballerinas."

YouTube pays .0002 per stream. It is owned by Google, a near-trillionaire corporation recently reported to have parked $23 billion off-shore to avoid taxes. Facebook and Instagram may provide platforms for certain “influencers” — is that “creative?” — but despite a bottom line in the high billions, neither pay anything for content. There is still money to be made in the creative arts. It just isn’t going to creatives.

One size doesn't fit all. There are levels of creativity and talent. I am an artist who gets comments such as "Well, you've been doing this your whole life...that is why you can paint the way you do." To quote Arthur Rubinstein, "You cannot learn talent." It is true that everyone has a creative core that can be developed and that can only be an enriching, broadening, rewarding experience. But I have seen people take one course in art and run out to galleries with their portfolios . No, it takes much more than that. It's work, work ..and the love of it.

Creative is a horrible and inaccurate word. Everything is problem solving.

When the book, "The Rise of the Creative Class" came out, as a freelance illustrator, I was very excited. Looked for it at the library (cause you know artists can't afford luxuries like, uhm, books) and flipped through, anxious to find out how I was "rising." I couldn't find anything about artists, so I looked up "Artists" in the index........nothing. A book about the creative class with nothing about artists. Well, there you have it. Late stage capitalism has even corrupted our language. "Creativity" has become the realm of hipsters, hucksters and opportunists. As an actual artist the best you can hope for economically is to keep marketers and interchangeable middle managers in McMansions and SUVs by providing them with "product" while you're ripped off by China. You don't even get health care. No 401K. So I quit. I lived off a modicum of royalties, now a small inheritance. I will no longer contribute to such a farce.

I am full time professional artist who owns a small creative company with 4 employees and the starving artists myth is just that - a myth. The majority of greatest artists in history have been shrewd businessmen, hard working marketers, and managed large staffs of employees. From Michelangelo to Warhol, walk through the museum and with few exceptions, your will see the work of hard working managers . If you treat it like a business it will treat you like a CEO. Making art is work and the arts are a product every civilization wants and needs, it follows the same economic principals and any other business in the end. Poor economic outcomes usually reflect the artist's own lack of self-esteem rather than the market's need for the arts. I would love to see fewer artists statements telling me why you made it and more telling me why I should buy it as basic start. I'd like to see more artists collecting and buying what they expect others to buy. "Starving artist" is simply an excuse for "lazy, self absorbed, artist". Get over yourself, get to work, stop whining, do what you love, and change the world .

Being creative and being a maker is where it's at anymore. Everybody wants to be the cool kid.

Reductionist to the extreme. And certainly one of the highest displays of bourgeois snobbery - perhaps hidden by the lipstick of ‘creative writing’. It’s a shame the author doesn’t investigate why in fact there are so many of us in our current culture yearning to express our creative freedoms rather then condemning us for it.

T.S Eliot, an acknowledged great creator, referred to Ezra Pound, another universally acknowledged great creator, as “Il miglior fabbro”. The best “smith” or “maker”, not creator. After all, the lions share of traditionally defined creative enterprise is indeed indistinguishable to the creator, from actual work.

I am a "creative", an illustrator. I spent years in school, even after I got my certificate. I draw every day, and keep my journals for future inspiration. I spend every day working on acquiring and honing skills - not only reading anatomy, drawing and design books, but doing exercises that I design from them. I always work on adding to my portfolio, and culling items that do not make the cut with me anymore. I cold e-mail and cold call people for work. Finally, I realize that people who do not pay for work do not appreciate any of what I do. Some of my work is not only really creative, but really compelling as well. Some of it is not - and the liberating thing that I know about what I do is that I am not a genius, there are others who are better than me, and that I will always be striving to do better work. Being a "creative" is a humbling experience, but also, if taken seriously and honestly, a truly ennobling one as well.

I am an engineer and a seamstress by hobby. Both require creativity, but very, very different forms. Not all creativity is the same. Skill is the difference. What most people think of as creative work is skill based, one that creates a sense of flow. The song writes itself. This story pops out of my head. The fabric spoke to me. Getting that flow requires skill and practice. The engineering skill is about laboring over the details, making sure everything is just so. It is not a job where flow is involved, though you think very creatively. Due diligence is the antithesis to creativity, though it is needed to make sure that creatively works. Where the "creatives" fail in this piece is that lack of laboring over the details. You may be able to create flow in your work, in your social media outreach, but unless you can realistically focus on the details, you will fail. The Fyre festival could have been a success in the hands of less "creative" people who cannot see past the flow of "now." They ripped people off because they couldn't face the reality that real world stuff is hard and doesn't come skill and talent. You cannot create something big off ideas alone. You've got to be able and willing to work it. Due diligence isn't fun but it's the foundation for most success. You can't build most things by relying on skill alone. Living creatively means being able to live off the proceeds of selling your skill. That is why a creative life can be so precarious.

Many years ago, I called a repairman to fix my garage door. After his work was done, and as I wrote him the check, he asked if I am from India, and I said yes. This led to the most amazing conversation about creativity I have ever had. Turned out the repairman was an artist -- a creative. His particular niche was making small wooden animals by hand and painting them. He said he studied photos and videos of tigers to make his small wooden tigers as realistic as possible. In answer to my question, he said he sells his creations in the town's summer artists' and artisans' fair. I saluted this creative man that day and think of him often. He was a garage door repairman in his day "job," but that was what allowed him to pursue his real passion. And, his creativity enabled him to connect with a customer with whom he would outwardly seem to have nothing in common. I hope my words of appreciation for his repair work and for his creative work meant something to him. Our creativity lies as much in making new things as it does in supporting (through words and money, when possible) the creative endeavors of others.

I teach design. Creativity and talent are the two attributes of good designers. One's a mystery, the other mostly bogus. Although I can set up the conditions for it to occur, I have no idea how to teach creativity. It's an a-rational leap, and easy to see how it has been linked to the gods. Talent, on the other hand, would be better termed "affinity." Some people have an affinity for certain kinds of activity. They like the doing of it and they spend a great deal of time practicing it. You cannot measure creativity, but talent can be measured in hours.

The article makes many good points but is overly cynical. Sure there is hucksterism, over-commercialism, fads, wishful thinking, superficiality, and poverty wages and huge odds against financial success. But the very appeal of the term shows part of its value. We seek to go beyond drudgery. Perhaps there is more potential to do that, and that search may very well demand doses of courage. It doesn't help that the article doesn't really go beyond conventional views of "creatives" as artists, or those seeking to borrow from that connotation. We may be leaving possibilities for creativity on the table. The worse part, though, is that we probably need creativity--urgently--for our survival; to come up with new ways to address our severe social and environmental problems. The current ways aren't working! We need people to merge the old and the new, conceive what no one before them has been able to do, put ideas from multiple fields together, question conventional categories and practices. Of course, they need that mysterious spark; some level of a support system, including from those less creative; and a patron or two wouldn't hurt. The fewer the distractions life imposes, the better. It might not even look like what "creativity" is supposed to look like. Therefore, even nominally creativity-supporting institutions might need to re-look at their actually counter-productive practices. We don't need even more limitations to true creativity. Too much cynicism is not helpful.

Reductionist but correct: there is near-infinite supply of people who want to "create" instead of "work." There is some but not limitless demand for their outputs. So, the clearing price for such efforts is very low. And only those who are truly creative or inspirational (and are lucky enough to have patrons who agree) or those who understand that such "creative" vocation itself is very hard and disciplined work - these are the ones who "succeed" conventionally.

On of the biggest cons of the modern world is when 'creative types' promote their work on chat shows and online and talk like what they do as God-like. They do this in order to maintain relevance and make money. And the irony it is that often the work is very formulaic and not that creative at all.

Better to be a tax lawyer.

We can all be creative in many ways in our own lives, in how we do our jobs, how we speak, dress, decorate, act, spend our free time. But there is a limited pool of resources available in the economy to spend on the products of creativity, and most of those resources go to a very few who create (and self-promote) better than everybody else. As has always been the case, most creative people will struggle to make a living at it; this has not changed with this latest generation; social media does not increase the resources society devotes to the products of creativity. So please, proudly create, and make yourself a better person by fully exploring your creative potential. But in the meantime, get a job. We all need a place to live and food to eat. Many jobs require creative problem solving, but are not creative in the narrow artistic sense of the word. If that's a shock to your sensibilities, I'm sorry the people you learned about life from never told you the truth. It's time to grow up now.

Add to this the overuse of the word curate. These days creative wannabes curate everything from socks to dinner napkins.

“Besides, shouldn’t you be grateful to earn any money at all for doing something you love...” If every musician, or every NGO worker, got a dollar every time he or she heard that....they’d be gazillionaires.

I like your article. Your arguments actually holds for every buzzword that turns up on the shelves of airport bookshops. The books are written with one purpose in mind. To fill the pockets of their authors. Relating content is not their primary goal.

As someone who is theoretically creative (I’m an architect), it is amazing to me the number of times clients tell me that if it was not for their jobs as lawyers, accountants, business managers, hedge fund thingy guys, they could do what I do. They could listen to co-op board presidents and DOB inspectors (creative listening), they could figure out which plumbing valve fits inside the wall of a shower and which toilet fits on which roughing (creative plumbing), and most creative of all, they could sit in amazement and listen to the very important needs of people who are able to afford architects (creative envy-anger repression, sometimes called acting). The grass is always more creative on the other side of the fence.

There are all gradations of bringing creativity into one's life, including pursuing something as what is known (now used pejoratively?) as a hobby. The software programmer who evenings stars in community theater, the woodcarver who carves ducks on weekends. If the programmer can get paid to sing at weddings, or the woodcarver sells his work from time to time, they have a part time side gig or career. But it seems to me that becoming inspired to make one's living from that creativity is not something one can learn from a seminar, as the passion must be total, and internal. For myself, I HAD to act and sing, and accepted the financial tradeoffs that would likely come from that choice (and did). Friends of mine, literally with Broadway experience, wanted a more stable life and find enough creative fulfillment soloing with the local church choir. It's just different strokes for different folks, but every single full time creative person I've ever met has spoken similarly to what I've shared: they KNEW they HAD to live creatively. It wasn't a choice, it was in their bones and blood from the very beginning, and they didn't have to learn it from a seminar.

creative work is privileged work for those with private incomes private wealth and other means of support. creative work is a vow of poverty for anyone without means, and the barriers to entry -- the free internships, the low wages -- all but guarantee that creative work remains available only to those privileged enough to be able to afford it journalism, too

As a copywriter who rode the employment / freelance roller coaster while raising a daughter, I can speak to both the up and down sides of this way of life. I didn't remarry and had to support myself singlehandedly. I have been hardworking and (I hope) talented and resourceful, but I always teetered on the brink of penury. My kid endured car repos, searches for coins in the sofa cushions, rent panic, etc --- but also the opportunity to see a movie that I wrote being filmed and a few heady nights in Beverly Hills. As a copywriter, I put up with blatant sexual harassment from lordly creative directors and grueling pressure to think up that immortal headline or else see my job end that very day. But there were also years of great crazy fun in the agencies, lasting friendships, and some true accomplishments. Silicon Valley fnally rescued me with its insatiable need for creative prose, and I have finally reached a point where I'm financially comfortable --- it could all change tomorrow, but that's true for many people besides "creatives." All my life, I wanted to be a writer; nothing else called to me. That meant selling my abilities to business while writing short stories on the side --- my perennially emerging novel has been accepted for publication (I refused to self-publish). My daughter is grown and we have a great relationship, but she would never want to follow in my rocky path. I know there are countless others whose professional lives basically map to mine.

Those who praise creativity do not understand it. Creative people do not conjure forth only unicorns and twinkling rainbows for others, but with equal frequency crevices, obstacles, and darkness for themselves.

There's nothing "complicated" about collecting money from people for seminars without booking a location - it's a hustle, pure and simple. Ms. Calloway appears to be an Elizabeth Holmes wannabe.

Well put. The cult of "creativity" is far too commercialized, and stands largely on a puff of thin air... Yet holds a dangerous (and profitable) allure to bored cubicle dwellers worldwide!

I’ve been a successful self-employed freelance writer with no other source of income for 33 years. Creative work is work. If you want to make a living at it, it’s hard work that requires putting in long hours and meeting the needs and demands of other people. Would-be “creatives” often seem not to understand that. It’s not easier than holding down a regular job; it’s harder.

As we are increasingly being worked to death, it makes sense that people seek relief through something enjoyable like creating things in the world at many scales. However even that activity has now been commodified and is being sold to us like so much other useless junk. From crafting to entrepreneurship, business has channelized people's wild individual impulses into very narrow options that promise much and deliver little, while making a profit for the 1%. We are far down the slippery slope of degrading every decent human capacity, from work to creativity to civic engagement to spirituality and transcendence. All of these arenas are targets for business models and the tools of user experience design. Nothing will escape the tenants of value extraction ad nauseum. Just like we have destroyed the natural world because we did not understand the importance of its subtle complex forces, we are hollowing out the wilds of our own humanity because they look like an untapped market.

This is an essential concept for industrial and post industrial (Information Age) economies going forward. all people are not equally creative. Not all creations are valued beyond one's own notions. Not all valuations find a market. Not all markets fund enough to pay the rent, buy food, clothing, transportation and insurance, not to mention the raw materials needed by the creative spirit. But in return for being freed from grinding, repetitive, soul-drying jobs that used to earn enough to pay the rent, etc, our collective spirits will rise up and up, circling higher into the skies until we can catch a glimpse of the billionaires' homes, before the wax melts and we fall to earth. There to be ground down repeatedly until our souls are dust under the boots of tax-free haven protected Kapitalist plutocrats. The gig economy, zero-hour contracts, part-time work without benefits, making tchotchkes for fun and profit, trickle-down economics.......to quote someone who had the economics very, very wrong, but understood the imbalance of labor and capital, "Workers of the world, UNITE!"