Month: December 2017

Creativity is the greatest asset a nation can possess

Irish Times Creative Ireland Poster In recent months, discussions about artificial intelligence and automated technology have become commonplace in parliaments, boardrooms and households around the world. People are worried about how digital change will affect their jobs, their industries and their nation’s economic output. The increased automation of many professions signals these as legitimate concerns, and leaders need to prepare their citizens accordingly for what lies ahead.

Recent research suggests that creative jobs are far less at risk to automation than other areas of employment. This is largely because they require uniquely human skills – an ability to think in a way that computers, at least for the present, cannot.

It is partly for this reason that industries with creativity at their heart are now among the fastest growing in the world.

It’s already the case that in the UK, the creative industries contribute more to the economy than the automotive, oil and gas, aerospace and life sciences industries combined.

The sector is generating £87 billion a year and employment is growing at four times the rate of the workforce as a whole – with one in 11 people now working in ‘creative roles’. These are exactly the kind of careers that ambitious young people yearn for. In every sense, the days when anyone could credibly claim that creative industries lie at the margins of the economy are, thankfully, long gone.

The burgeoning ‘creative-tech’ sector, built around innovations such as virtual and augmented reality, 5G, 3D printing and other new techniques, is increasingly being recognised by government as a means to keep innovation strong, and to ensure industry will be competitive in a crowded global marketplace.

Industries such as games, animation and visual effects, which rely on a mixture of creative and digital skills, are driving much of the growth in the UK and elsewhere through a combination of inward investment, and the export of their products and services to companies around the globe. For example, three of the most successful film franchises in recent history, Star Wars, James Bond and Harry Potter, have been based in the UK – the beneficiaries of both a well-developed system of tax reliefs, and the consistent quality of its skills base and infrastructure.

The phenomenal success of the sector has meant that the best creative companies in the UK are increasingly finding themselves growing businesses that require visionary and effective leadership, people ready to seize the opportunities of the digital age rather than befuddled by its challenges.

Research conducted by Creative Skillset in its 2015 report Creativity and Constraint found that leadership and management skills for creative leaders, especially in micro companies, was sorely lacking. Transitioning from “successful creative” to “successful entrepreneur” can present new and unexpected challenges when seeking to drive commercial growth. Thus, the development of future leaders in the creative industries needs to be dramatically improved. Post-Brexit, this will be particularly true for us in Ireland.

Recently, Ireland’s creative sector has enjoyed more attention with the country’s national economic debate, particularly with the launch of initiatives like the Creative Ireland Programme and the Whitaker Institute’s Creative Edge Project, which deserves enormous praise in its intention to “increase the active participation of local creative firms and organisations in global markets; and boost their ability to attract and utilise local emerging talent . ..” Similarly, the strategy announced by the Creative Ireland Programme has underlined the need to value culture as “a means of fostering a more sustainable future for Ireland, including through economic and social policy”.

This strategy correctly identifies Ireland’s unique creative heritage, and the need to develop it for a 21st-century global audience. It is increasingly obvious that Ireland has the talent and imagination to become a serious global player in the creative economy, but this can only be achieved if strategic planning evolves into concrete action.

Creativity is itself about turning complex ideas into practical, and marketable solutions.

It’s essential that government and evolving industry nurture, not only their own creative muscle, but also the necessary degree of focus, tenacity, resilience and business acumen required to drive Ireland’s native creativity to international success.

It is vital for politicians and business leaders to start prioritising support for the creative economy and investing in research and development. A reassessment of the role of creative and arts education alongside technical and science disciplines would be a good place to start.

Beyond this, there must be an acknowledgment that creative organisations themselves need help in adapting to the pace of change presented by the digital world.

We must foster both a creative workforce and creative leaders.

Therefore, we must help creative entrepreneurs to balance the demands of running a successful commercial enterprise whilst maintaining creative excellence.

In July of this year, I was delighted to be appointed to the House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, and have found myself on a steep learning curve in coming to terms with the economic, ethical and social implications of advances in this sector. What has become abundantly clear is the need to harness the imagination and curiosity of young people if we’re to create a workforce that can exist harmoniously with the evermore automated industries of the future. Here again, we must acknowledge that it’s not just about developing this new workforce, it’s also about moulding the people who will lead it.

If our creative industries are to be the pacemakers of tomorrow’s economies, then their leaders will, of necessity, be among the architects of our future.

Such a generation of would-be leaders must be equipped to assess change, and look across their entire sector to exploit the extraordinary opportunities this rapidly evolving digital world has to offer. Those who can successfully demonstrate this complementary skillset will be the men and women who’ll deliver the final piece of the jigsaw that determines the success of Ireland’s creative industries.

A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to visit Pixar Studios in California, and spent some time speaking to animators and creators about their work. They generally believe that creativity requires us to loosen controls, accept risk, trust colleagues, and pay attention to anything that smacks of “fear”. They rightly see a fear of failure as the enemy of creativity.

Putting these things in place doesn’t necessarily make the managing of a creative culture easier; but as the co-founder of Pixar Ed Catmull, once said, “ease isn’t the goal; excellence is”.

Transforming Ireland’s creative industries so that they can compete on the international stage will require organisation, hard work and determination. If the digital world is to prove a positive force in creating opportunities for Ireland’s young people, then cultivating inherently human qualities, such as adaptability, social intelligence, creative thought and leadership, will be crucial to ensuring prosperity in the years ahead.

In other words, creativity – in how we think, work, and lead – is the greatest asset a nation can possess. Let’s embrace it.

Activities Education

How to be an extraordinary student in any school

Source: Nord Anglia

Nord Anglia students in the class

British film producer, UNICEF ambassador and educator, Lord David Puttnam shares personal insights from his childhood and the problems he faced with traditional schooling growing up. As Chairman of Nord Anglia's Education Advisory Board, Lord Puttnam envisions an education which encourages students to achieve more than they may have thought possible.

Being a student can sometimes be difficult. Each day, young people are met with a host of challenges, whether it is navigating the social landscape of the teenage classroom, meeting the expectations of aspirational parents and teachers, understanding new academic concepts or steering a course through the labyrinth of contemporary social media. Being an extraordinary student is even more difficult, and indeed rare. But, I believe it is achievable – a goal that teachers, parents and (of course!) students themselves, can realize if the ingredients are right.

My own experience at school was neither extraordinary nor challenging. At age 11, I was awarded a scholarship to my local grammar school, much to the relief and pride of my parents. I turned up on my first day eager to impress, with every intention of being a success. However, my teachers failed to respond to this enthusiasm and quickly dismissed my capabilities, concluding rather early on that I was ‘not university material’. As the days and months progressed, I sank into a form of bored stupor that would only lift five years later, when I collected a very modest certificate and literally fled – without having ever received one word of what could honestly be described as ‘constructive encouragement’.

This experience – and my realisation that it must have been mirrored by those of thousands, possibly millions, of other students – has been a driving force behind most of my career, particularly my work in improving the quality, the reputation and the relevance of education.

Our expectations of ourselves are formed very early on – frequently to be reflected back later in the form of ‘underachievement’. So, I’ve sought to help those many students who’ve struggled to find sufficient self-belief when surrounded by indifference. If we focus on improving (and constantly updating) the way knowledge is imparted, consumed, and valued, we can help these young people during the most formative moment of their lives – their education.

So, how can students be extraordinary in any educational setting?

Firstly, the students themselves have to decide – “do I wish to be the architect or designer of my own future – or am I going to allow myself to be the victim of decisions made by others; people who may be a lot less interesting, and who – quite possibly, don’t share, or even understand many of my values – the things that really matter to me”.

In other words, it is vital for young people to take ownership of their own pursuit of knowledge, to surround themselves with friends who encourage and share their curiosity, and to challenge how they think. The right friends can support and even inspire the very best in each other’s school work.

This will be further facilitated by a diet of thoughtful observations, from differing viewpoints – students should read what they can, when they can; question what they know, and where their knowledge comes from; and, ask why they believe what they do. Such critical thought will supply the type of understanding needed to participate, socially, culturally – and usefully, with other similarly ‘engaged’ people, in school and the wider world beyond.

From this point of view, Nord Anglia’s Global Campus initiative offers its students a wonderful opportunity to explore a world beyond the local and familiar. By collaborating with other schools across the globe, the programme expands horizons and helps to develop valuable skills needed for university and professional life. Similarly, Nord Anglia’s ability to offer students an opportunity to work with experts is a hugely beneficial. Members of a young person’s community – be it their parents or other role models – have an important role to play in supporting students’ innate inquisitiveness and encouraging them to ask questions. I was one of those fortunate kids who, as a result of being blessed with parents who never wavered in their belief and support, felt unprepared to accept the fate my school had consigned me to. In that, I would suggest, I was a comparative rarity. Our sense of identity, and capacity to develop, is formed from the cultural knowledge we learn, first from our parents, then from teachers.

Perhaps the question should therefore not be ‘how to be an extraordinary student’, but instead, ‘how not to be an ordinary school’. The impetus is on us – the educators, leaders, policy-makers and families of these kids – to ask how we can be better. One way to help students is to embrace the immense power of the most recent digital learning technologies.

We desperately need a generation of well trained and confident education professionals, comfortable with the implications of living in a digital society, but also keenly aware of the huge new challenges it’s likely to bring. People like this represent the most promising foundation upon which we can build a sustainable and even a successful society in the 21st century.

We have to bring ourselves to see digital technology as 'transformative', not simply as some kind of useful 'add-on', but as something that's already fundamentally changed the nature of the way in which young people, and indeed their teachers, go about their daily lives. If we can do this, we may well have found the catalyst needed to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Activities Europe

Lord Puttnam considers Patarei Sea Fortress for Arctic 30 Film

Patarei Prison from the sea view in Tallinn, Estonia

While in Estonia in November, Lord Puttnam visited the Patarei Sea Fortress to assess its suitability as a setting for his next film project, Arctic 30. Built in the nineteenth century, the fortress acted a prison from 1920 to 2002, and so is typical of many Soviet-era detention centres. It now acts as monument to victims of communism and Nazism, and has an important place in the history of the Republic of Estonia. Lord Puttnam is producing a film adaptation of the story of the Arctic 30, a group of 30 Greenpeace Activists who scaled a Russian oil platform in an attempt to ‘Save the Arctic’. They were subsequently imprisoned in Russia and endured many months there before eventually being released. Puttnam said Patarei Prison would be a good location in which to film this sequence of the story, describing the fortress as appropriate both historically and emotionally. His plan to film at this site was met with widespread approval from the Estonian Film Institute, and was covered in the national Estonian news (see clip below).

Activities Media

UK film sector must set example on harassment

Source: Screen Daily

Lord Puttnam, president of the UK Film Distributors’ Association (FDA)

The Oscar-winning producer of The Killing Fields, Chariots Of Fire and Midnight Express was speaking at the FDA Christmas reception on Wednesday (Dec 6).

He said: “If there’s just one valuable thing to come out of the sorry accounts of predatory abuse in our industry, it is… not just the widespread shock and revulsion. More than that, it’s a shared determination that we’ve come to a point at which this type of behaviour will no longer be tolerated. Let’s all make sure that determination remains rock-solid.”

He said that the UK film sector “has to set an example of what a wholly trusted working environment can look like.” He added: “Our expectations of ourselves, and the sense of opportunity we offer to everyone, must be, and be seen to be, of a very high order.”

In his speech, Lord Puttnam also outlined the challenges and opportunities resulting from the growth of artificial intelligence in the entertainment industry.

He said: “Whatever your views about ‘robots’ and ‘artificial intelligence’ taking over our lives, this new age of automation is heading our way – fast. It’s only a question of time before the entertainment sector will have to be re-modelled to accommodate ever-faster transformations. For example, for good or ill, we are already seeing the programming of cinemas by audience algorithms.”

He added: “As I know from my work on the House of Lords’ Committee on Artificial Intelligence, algorithms only operate on an accumulation of ‘past probability’, therefore will only look for ‘hits’, which leaves little room for our annual surprise successes.

“I’d argue that removing the ‘human instinct’ in an essentially creative environment may save on costs but will lead to all of us losing out in the long run.”

Puttnam is currently in development on his first movie in more than 15 years: Arctic 30, a climate change-themed feature about the experiences of 30 Greenpeace activists who were thrown into Russia’s prison system after protesting against drilling in the Arctic.

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