Wealthy Family

During coaching sessions, or informal chatting, it happens quite often to discuss the importance of coming from a wealthy family, which is seen as an absolute advantage for pursuing the creative career one wants. It seems that a wealthy family is all one needs to have in order to start a successful profession in the arts. I would like to question this assumption.

Being wealthy helps to get into the best schools, master courses and it might even allow the person to finance his or her own projects: if you have the money to fund your own production, say a book, an exhibition, a film, what else can you ask for? Family wealthy also provides you with the social links that one needs in order to become a well-spoken, networked, high-status cultural producer: in short, if you belong to a rich family, you will have access to powerful people, which can go a long way, as everybody knows.

It will give you not just more means, but also good habits, psychological finesse, travelling, and also traditions: well-established roots, family identity, a sort of model ‘how to stay and move in the world’. If you come from a rich family, you’ll become someone quickly at ease within the environments where decisions are made. Unfair, but true.

Now, what possible advantage could one get from NOT belonging to this category of people?

First, one has more motivations to get out of a disadvantaged situation, and more drive to achieve his/her goals: if you come from a poor environment, you don’t already have what you need, and you are more willing to commit to get results. Basically, you have more of that ‘primary energy’, which you cannot get anywhere if not in real need of something. The disadvantaged person knows very well that nothing will happen if s/he doesn’t make it happening. No fear, no scary about anything. Do not underestimate this strength.

Secondly, paradoxically, the poorer enjoy also more freedom to make his/her own choice, because no tradition to follow exists. You can easily see that if a family has a long and important tradition of lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, etc., the pressure put on financial value and social status is so high that will be a problem if someone wants to become, say, a photographer, or a graphic designer. The demands to keep up that ‘family value’ will override any natural inclination of the subject. There is too much to loose, from a risky choice that departs from the tradition.

A third, fundamental aspect: the disadvantaged person might not be attached to any particular location in which his/her family lives, precisely because s/he has nothing to loose: having anything specific which anchor him/her to the family place, will provide the flexibility to search the locations offering the best possibilities. It will be easier to head for the places where the natural inclination might get fulfilled, either through study or work.

So, back to our coaching sessions for artists and creative people: take the assumption that a wealthy family is important in career-succeding with a grain of salt: to start advantaged, is not always better.

Add to Onlywire

On Project Making

I’ll try here to outline a few basic facts for setting a creative project, like an exhibition, a research, or a writing piece. Being just only an outline, each single point has to be developed, broadened and deepened as much as you can, and linked with your attitude and experience in dealing with the subject. Let’s start:

1. Take upon only ONE project at the time. You might have many brilliant ideas, but make an effort in asking yourself which are the more urgent and important for you, and which, for instance, can bring you a financial fee, or a further step in a commission.

2. Once you have chosen the subject and the form your project will have, compare and couple your expectations with A) your budget and B) your deadline. Reverse your idea: money and time constraints are not limits, rather possibilities. They are powerful tools to get you focused.

3. To structure your project, you must go from the simplicity of the original idea (probably just an intuition, or a single-line image), to a whole complexity of inputs: lateral thoughts, external links, people feedback, practical and intellectual consequences, additional researches, etc. This process – to be contained in your time-frame – will make you relatively confident of your knowledge, and will give you different perspectives on the subject. After that, you have to re-compress your material into one, single, high-impact simplicity of expression, in which your work re-gain a goal within a system.

4. Execute your project to a completion, including details, feedback and final evaluation, within the reasonable time-set you planned in advance.

5. In your execution:

- Use simple words, in a direct way. No jargon.

- Be synthetic in your communication to partners and public. Attention requires brevity.

- Make an effort to TELL something, not just to present it. Be sure the structure of your project is clear and follows a logical course, or give the tools to understand if it’s illogical. No concepts or displays understandable only to their creators.

- Do not underestimate your public. Give them a topic which is valid and open to the dialogue, with you and among them. Offer great value for the audience’s time and interest. They could easily not come back if you are delivering poor content and/or form, and you’ll never get them again.

- Offer the audience something to bring home with them. It doesn’t have to be expensive, or cutting-edge: even a well-design leaflet, a postcard, an Internet address, a printed title on a string of paper. A bit of marketing doesn’t harm anybody, without exaggeration.

6. When you approach the next project, understand it as a whole body of knowledge, and not as a task, or assignment you have to make. This is fundamental also for activity like administration, fund-raising, or preparatory work.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Add to Onlywire

Time passing

I had once a colleague, Maria her name, who every evening read the newspaper of two years before.

And anyone at work putting up funny faces when she was telling this, making a bit of fun of her, saying, you know, she’s a nice girl, after all. I no longer would put a funny face. Reconsidering a bit this little fact, I would say that two years delay in reading the news seems to me a luxury, which very few could afford, and the majority still deny to themselves.

In skimming a paper just a week old, the higher relevance every article, title, person and editorial cut had at that time, the more surreal and bizarre it appears now. I believe Maria was, ans still is, much farther than me in having understood all this a decade ago.

I don’t have any more contact with her, but I would like to know if she still reads the 2005 newspapers. Truly. I learnt from you, Maria, in all these years, that distance, temporal more than spatial, makes things cleaner, and maybe more honest, somehow. Not just clearer, we all know this, but more human, closer to our reach.

Some days I really think I cannot keep the pace, that I’m running up and down without knowing exactly what for, and then, maybe I should get home in the evening, and open a newspaper of 2002, or 1997, stretch it out, skip the weather forecasts and the sport section (but you never know), and read the articles and feature of how my life changed in the meantime, what I was facing in the future, and how could I got out of trouble.

Realizing soon after, while balling the paper for the recycling bin, that I don’t remember to have done all things things at all. Maybe then I’m still into them, or maybe I never got into them in the first place. Let’s see it tomorrow.

Add to Onlywire

Simplicity

This is something I have written on ten pages A4, taped to the wall opposite my desk, to create a vertical totem. First of all, it’s not mine. the laws of simplicity have been nurtured and published in a marvellously-crafted little book by John Maeda, an MIT design guy from whom there is a lot to learn. First for his modesty.

But it’s not to talk about him that I started this post. It’s to give you a precious tool, the first of the series to come, which goes like that: do simplify whatever can get simplified.

At the cost of seeming banal, do take the path of simplicity in whatever you are doing, or planning to do. You’ll always be in time to complicate the matter, personally or through someone else. If you want to get close (at least) to achieve what you are planning, cut the 30% of your planned expectations, and consequently reduce to at least 50% your planned actions.

This is not a call for banality. It’s a call for concreteness. And getting concrete, means having results. Having results, means producing consequences. Producing consequences, means injecting stimuli for another projects, and future achievements. Not to mention that, having finished a work, means getting paid. Sounds good, uh?

Here are the 10 laws on a string: for more details, visit the lawsofsimplicity website:

First round – the basics to get simple:

1. Reduce: either shrink, hide, or embody (the simplest way to achive simplicity is through thoughtful reduction: when in doubt, just remove – carefully). Lessen what you can and conceal everything else without losing the sense of inherent value.

2. Organize: sort, label, integrate, prioritize (organization makes a system of many appear fewer: and working with fewer – objects, concepts, functions – makes life simpler). Everything is important, but knowing where to start is the critical first step.

3. Time: again – shrink, hide, embody (savings in time feels like simplicity: this is really about reducing time). When time is saved – or appears to have been – the complex feels simpler.

Second round – here comes the hard work:

4. Learn: basics are the beginning, repeat yourself often, avoid creating desperation, inspire with examples, never forget to repeat yourself (to easing the process of understanding: relate – translate – surprise!). Difficult tasks seem easier when they are ‘need to know’ rather than ‘nice to know’, so connect deeply to the greater context of learning and life.

5. Differences: simplicity and complexity need each other (acknowledging contrast helps to identify qualities that we desire). Figuring out the rhythm of how simplicity and complexity occur in time and space holds the key.

6. Context: what lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral (ambience: that which appears to be of immediate relevance may not be nearly as important compared to everything else around). When there is less, we appreciate everything much more.

Third round – if you are aspire at changing the world (almost):

7. Emotion: more emotions are better than less (just the right kind of more: ‘feel, and feel for’). Achieving clarity isn’t difficult. The true challenge is achieving comfort.

8. Trust: in simplicity we trust (lean back, and trust the water. And just enjoy something). Trust unquestionably, but be open to undo-ing that trust whenever deserved.

9. Failure: some things can never be made simple (knowing that simplicity is elusive in certain cases is an opportunity to make more constructive use of your time in the future, instead of chasing after an apparent impossible goal). One man’s failed experiment in simplicity can be another man’s success as a beautiful form of complexity.

A final Intuition:

10. The one: simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful

(which may be ‘coupled’ with 4 more keys in attempting simplicity, such as: more appears like less by removing it far away / openness simplifies complexity / power: use less, gain more / technology, as professions, can disable the average person.)

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Add to Onlywire