sustain:if:able kiwi

the fragility of creativity

On Sunday, on the way from Oxford to Gatwick to Aberdeen, I took some time to enjoy the British Museum, including Room 95, Chinese Ceramics. An entire room, shelf after shelf, wall after wall, of Chinese pottery. An extraordinary range of colours and shapes, tracing changes in style over the centuries.

Chinese ceramics are the most advanced in the world and a recurring word was innovation, the ability to keep refining, adapting, improvising over time.

It was beautiful.

Yet fragile.

Perhaps the two go hand in hand.

Can you have innovation and creativity without fragility? How does it change things if we see our fresh expressions and pioneer leaders as ceramic? Creative and fragile.

And the irony, that at some point creativity needs to be set – fired, painted, presented. You can’t keep deconstructing, playing. Both pottery wheel and kiln are places of creativity. At some point you need to stop. Interesting.