Who gets to call themselves Creative?

Years ago, I had this big realisation about creativity, one that, quite frankly, horrified me. It undermined and contradicted everything I knew to be true about the nature of creativity.

At the time I was working in the events industry, freelancing with a number of different agencies, all of which had their own creative departments – the much-celebrated heartbeat of each and every organisation. Those who belonged to these departments were labelled as; The Ideas People, The Talent, The Creatives, the driving force of the entire agency, and as so, treated like demi-gods. One of the problems though, when you label a person or an entire team as ‘Creative’, is that by default, you inadvertently label everyone else as the opposite; not creative, not talented, not ideas people. And the other problem with sticking these sorts of labels on everyone, very soon…they actually start to stick!

Labels are the equivalent of a mental filing system; they help our brains process and organise the world around us, they make quick categorisations that bring order and structure to an otherwise disordered and chaotic world, but labels also distort, dilute and limit the world around us too. Especially, when it comes to the label’s we stick on ourselves and on our own creative identity. By labelling ourselves as ‘not creative’, we dilute, distort, and limit who we are, and what we are capable of achieving.

As a result of these unhelpful labels, I noticed that there was a ‘creative class system’ appearing. There were the ‘creative ones’ and then, there was everyone else! The ‘ordinary folk’ who, in the face of so much celebrated and proven creativity, were, by their own admission ‘not creative at all’. A label they’d willingly stuck all over themselves and one that was so sticky it had become an ingrained part of their identity.

Around the same time as I was having this realisation, a younger female colleague came to me for some career advice. We chatted for a while, and then I asked her if she’d be interested in doing a job similar to mine.

‘Oh my god, YES’ she’d enthusiastically replied. ‘I’d love to!’

Until that was, she thought about it for a moment longer, and then, sounding more like a deflating balloon, came the all-too-familiar disclaimer…

‘But, I couldn’t … I’m not creative.’

This girl had put a label on herself that was not only diluting and distorting how she saw herself but was also dramatically limiting what she was capable of. She was rejecting her creativity, and in doing so, destroying her creative confidence and all of her creative potential along with it.

And she wasn’t alone in doing this. I started noticing it everywhere. Basically, anyone who didn’t have the word ‘creative’ somewhere in their job title, didn’t feel credible or entitled to call themselves creative.

This undermined and contradicted everything I knew to be true about creativity because I’ve always believed that WE ARE ALL CREATIVE. It’s one of the great joys and privileges of being human. Yes, it’s true some people are able to access and express their creativity more readily than others but that doesn’t mean they have a monopoly on creativity. People who are able to own their creativity, do not own creativity, and they certainly do not provide a benchmark for other people to measure their creativity against. Measuring your creative potential against another person’s creative results (often without ever witnessing their creative process), is the surest way of making sure the label ‘I’m not creative’ never, EVER comes off. It’s like adding Gorilla Glue to the back of it – it’s going to be stuck on there for life.

There is no creative class system. We do not need these unhelpful labels to put people’s creativity into a neat little filing system in order for our brains to understand what ‘type’ of person you are. Creativity is not black and white; it’s a fabulous spectrum of colour and patterns and shades, and it lives, within all of us!

The question then becomes, not whether you’re creative or not, but rather, whether you know how to access your creativity or not.

Every time you label yourself ‘not creative’, you reinforce that distorted, limited identity of yourself and as a result, you build a block around your creativity - cutting off your ability to ever access it. In the end, the only thing you’ll ever end up creating is a self-fulfilling prophecy; you don’t think you’re creative – you reject your creativity – low and behold – you’re not creative!

To access your creativity, and dismantle this block, you must give yourself permission to call yourself, and think of yourself, as a creative person. You don’t need to wait for someone else’s permission. You don’t need your creativity to be acknowledged or validated by other people before you give yourself this permission. You don’t need to prove that your creativity is as credible or deserving as someone else’s. You don’t need to wait until you have proof of your creative capabilities. You don’t even need to feel particularly creative. There are no conditions.

All you need to do is reject the label instead of rejecting your creativity, and instead grant yourself permission to call yourself a creative person, because the truth is, you are.