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Overhaul and more updates!
Thank you all for your continued support and patronage here at Easy Gigs.
We’re very happy to see the continued positive effect that so many of you are having through our content, courses and services.
There are going to be a lot of updates coming soon over the site and business - Check back here soon for more!
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(Quick note: Several of the previous blogs were created at masters degree level, gaining distinction and merit grades!)
Cultural Creativity, Fame & Riches and Networking
If you've read the previous post - You and Your Creative Process - You should now understand what the creative process is, why you need to be engaged & developing yourself during your changing state and maintaining useful habits.
Let’s talk about what happens now you’re regularly making creative resources!
Show the world your creative resources - Become culturally creative
Previously we discussed Csikszentmihalyi’s (1996, p.8) meaning of creativity - "a process by which a symbolic domain in the culture is changed" and how this itself is not a definition of creativity as a whole - It is in fact a definition of cultural creativity.
Cultural creativity can allow us to gain potentially gain social recognition, new audiences and payment in the process. In order to be culturally creative your work needs to be completed, seen and validated by others.
If we create a great musical composition that is never shared or heard, why would people become a fan or pay you for something that has only been witnessed by you?
Why do you want to be seen and paid by others?
Explaining our innate drive for social dominance, power and high quality lifestyles with the thoughts of Herzberg (1959) Maslow (1943) McClelland (1961) Murray (1938) and Ryan & Deci (2000), we can conclude that pursuing a career as a cultural creative could provide the finance, social mobility and options that can come from being recognised and financially rewarded for services provided to others.
Rohn (1981, 00:10:10) explained that we get paid for bringing value to the marketplace. While creating creative resources to be enjoyed by other people it is important to be aware of what their needs and wants are – Bilton (2007, p.5) notes “if positioned too far “outside the box” creative thinking is novel without being valuable and can no longer connect with the assessment of it’s value.”
If something is too far out of a persons understanding or comfort zone they may reject it entirely – meaning the creative resource could fail to become an object of cultural creativity.
“Rich and famous”
The drive to become rich and famous – a status earned by successful cultural creatives – fulfils a lot of human needs. Much like success, the definition of how rich and how famous an individual needs to be to fulfil their needs differ from person to person.
Being famous, defined as “known about or by many people” (Oxford University Press, 2006, p.248) would be a byproduct of achieving cultural creativity on a larger scale. Being known about by many people would also provide a larger potential audience to sell creative resources too.
Financial riches would equate to having a larger number in the bank than most which provides, in our society, the ability to buy and consume higher quality goods and services in line with our wants and needs.
On this understanding it stands to reason that if you’ve:
- Created something that is recognized to be culturally creative
- Addresses a need or desire
People will want to acquire it for convenience, pleasure or other motives.
Physical or digital sales of an artist’s repertoire/ merchandise or taking patron donations is an example of how to collect the financial reward for the value you’ve brought to the marketplace by being culturally creative.
Networking – being a part of the world around you
Worldometers (2018) estimate there is 7-8 billion people on earth. With Narkiewicz (2018, 00:29:19) summarising the individuals position as “a node in a network” you would benefit from understanding your position in this vast network of human beings, how you interact with it and how other “nodes” would interact with you. Each person will have their own needs, predispositions and established networks for you to navigate around.
In today’s digital age, independently building an audience can be as simple as a few mouse clicks to create an advert that targets Facebook’s 2 billion users (Statista, 2018) or sends digital press packs to influencers, reviewers and bloggers etc online via social media platforms and email.
Christakis & Fowler (2011, p.xi) argue it’s “[not possible to] be friends with absolutely anybody. People are constrained by geography, socioeconomic status, technology and even genes to have certain kinds of social relationships and to have a certain number of them.”
With new experiences and training - creating an alteration in personal value – developing the self makes it possible to reach more than currently capable in the present moment (you yourself could become a culturally creative product in this process!)
Find people you can get along with and work on your relationships, expand your networks and continue to grow personally to attract new people.
Collaborations create different creative resources
In the next blog we’ll talk in much greater detail about collaborating with others in this support network you will begin to build and develop your relationships with others.
References
Bilton, C. (2006). Management and Creativity: From Creative Industries to Creative Management.
Christakis, N., Fowler, J. (2011). Connected: The Amazing Power of Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention.
Herzberg, F., Mausner, B. and Snyderman, B. (1959). The motivation to work.
Locke, J. (2018). You and Your Creative Process. [online] Available at: https://medium.com/@jakklocke/you-and-your-creative-process-c8622f210ff [Accessed 04/11/2018].
Maslow, A. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation.
McClelland, D. (1961). The Achieving Society.
Murray, H., McAdams, D. and Barrett, W. (1938). Explorations in personality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Narkiewicz, A. (2018). Ask Akira #023 🤔 How To Stay Positive. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHCdGcqf1LI [Accessed 04/11/2018].
Oxford University Press. (2006). Little Oxford English Dictionary.
Rohn, J. (1981). How to Take Charge of Your Life. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGIjuVbGP_A [Accessed 04/11/2018].
Ryan, R., Deci Edward. (2000). Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being.
Statista. (2018). Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide as of 2nd quarter 2018 (in millions). [online] Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ [Accessed 04/11/2018].
Worldometers. (2018). World population. [online] Available at: http://www.worldometers.info/ [Accessed 04/11/2018]