Why Your Best Work Is Shaped By Your Invisible CV: Lived Experiences & Creativity.

This Easter weekend, I decided it was time to introduce my 5 and 6-year-old kids to the BFG. The original (of course,) voiced by David Jason, with a soundscape that still gives me chills. While watching, I found myself wondering: How much do the seemingly insignificant moments of our past shape our creativity and ideas today?

I used to watch The BFG on repeat until I was probably far too old. Now, as I curled up on the sofa with my two children cowering under blankets from the wonderfully designed bad giants (Bonecruncher, Childchewer, Gizzardgulper), I mused, how much did this film (and perhaps also The Dark Crystal) influence my enduring love for sci-fi artwork? I've never found an explanation for it before.

The scene where the BFG mixes the potions to craft The Queen's dream has always filled me with a quiet thrill at the possibilities in alchemy, potion making, and experimenting. The sense of magical combinations has stayed with me since rewatching, especially while I’ve been thinking about the creative process and the art of idea generation.

Mixing Dreams: How Ideas Are Brewed

The BFG follows at least the first two steps of what we know to be the framework for idea generation. He gathers his materials (dreams he catches with a net), organises and examines them, and then blends them to create fully formed dreams.

It’s known that crafting a truly original idea or innovative solution mirrors a potion-making process: a careful blending of different ingredients, each adding tension, depth, or surprise. Researchers at Imperial College London have called this combinational creativity.

Most ideas that come out of a combinational process will seem novel and innovative at first, when in truth they are an amalgamation of concepts reshaped into something new.

How is it then that the best ideas, the art that resonates deeply within, feels more than a simple formula?

The Secret Ingredient

If idea generation is at its most simple is the rearranging of parts until they make sense; then the quality and variety of the gathered materials matter.

My working theory is that gathering is more than a conscious collection of materials. The act of gathering is influenced by and includes unconscious elements that are part of you. Your upbringing, the street you grew up on, the songs you played on repeat.

What you gather isn’t neutral; it’s already shaped by lived experience. The perspectives you inherit, and your unconscious biases and assumptions all play a part in the materials you notice in the first place.

Similarly, lived experience colours how you examine your materials and research. The relationships you create between the materials you have collected will be influenced by, well, everything that has made you uniquely you. It shapes how you process ideas and alters how you use the materials you collect.

In short, lived experience guides what we collect, informs how we interpret it, and affects what we create.

To push the BFG analogy to its limit, imagine if among the BFG’s collection of dreams, there was a bottle labelled Lived Experience. A swirling mixture of memory, intuition, and unseen influences; this ingredient, instead of blending in, shapes how the dream takes form.

My Lived Experience and Creativity is Different to Yours. And That's a Good Thing.

My lived experience as a cis female, growing up in the fens with a Greek/Scottish heritage in the late 90s, is different from yours, probably. Though maybe you and your best friend also walked to school sharing headphones, listening to Brim Full of Asha. Walking smoothly so the CD didn’t skip and your earbuds stayed in. Or perhaps your soundtrack was entirely different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM7H0ooV_o8

Our experiences significantly impact how we relate ideas and create connections. They’re the forces that overlap the gathering and examining stages of idea generation. Currents that pull ideas in unspoken directions.

---

Relating to others' ideas

A few years ago, I was working with a client whose ideas just astounded me. My role was to untangle and refine his ideas and vision, helping translate them into a coherent product line and business strategy. The thing is, at first his ideas seemed inexplicable; I found myself lost. I was unable to follow his logic.

As our relationship grew, we got chatting about his memories growing up in an East London block. Of late-night conversations dissecting songs with his godfather and his relationship with his parents. I started to understand. His upbringing wasn’t just background; it was the cornerstone of his inventive approach.

Crucially, what set him apart was that he seemed to knowingly call on these parts of himself, embracing memory, nostalgia, and even the part others might try to outrun. His work was undeniably his own. His lived experience and creativity were as one.

Embracing the whole

Digging into these parts of ourselves can feel confronting, especially when we might have tried to distance ourselves from who we were “then”. Could this bravery to embrace the whole of us be what separates good from great in terms of creativity?

Could taking some time to reconnect with your inception story help with Block? There surely is strength in recognising and using your unique perspectives when you’re examining your research. It is the lens which only you have.

---

Our Invisible CV and the World of Work

Reflections on "embracing the whole" hold powerful implications for professional environments.

This might seem like a bit of a leap, but if we consider that we are all innately creative and that the process of idea generation is reflected in all problem-solving environments, then it's logical to examine the significance of recognising and using our unique perspectives within business environments.

I like to think about lived experience as our Invisible CV. Our CVs typically begin after university, implying everything before is irrelevant, as though the formative experiences we had at fifteen don’t still profoundly shape us.

Our Invisible CVs carry our experiences, which won’t pass through an AI screener but still inform our work style, what we pay attention to, and how we solve problems. We all (should) know diversity matters – full stop. Diversity is good for society and good for business. The Invisible CV is another way of thinking about why diversity of lived experience matters.

Hiring for Hidden Ingredients

Let's agree for now that our Invisible CV influences what material (research) we gather and how we examine (analyse) research. It follows then, that the right data analyst for your organisation will be the one who can ask the right questions and intuitively knows which data to request.

Sure, they need to know SQL. But when AI can do an ever-increasing amount of the legwork, the true value of a great analyst for your organisation is informed by their background, experiences, and their ability to empathise with and see meaningful connections within your data.

Recruiting for invisible CVs as deliberately as we hire for visible ones creates teams with diversity of thought and experience. Teams enriched by shop‑floor wisdom, migrant stories, and kitchen‑table epiphanies. My bet is they spot emerging risks and opportunities long before a homogenous group can.

It's worth touching on, that beyond the office, respecting lived experience means treating citizens as co‑designers, not passive recipients. When residents sit on planning boards, steward participatory budgets, or join citizens’ assemblies, they bring the nuanced questions and inferences only they can supply. Shaping more responsive, community-driven solutions. But this deserves more attention, and I've already strayed too far from my original point – lived experience is the secret ingredient to great ideas.

---

My Invisible CV

So what’s on my invisible CV? “Watched the BFG one hundred times” for starters. I’ve only just figured out it's influenced the art on my walls... Also, GALT Octons – does anyone else remember those?

But in a professional capacity, here’s a taster of what I’d list:

At thirteen, I had my first job in a chip shop (£1.50 p/h!!). Working for a boss who hid our wages in inappropriate places taught me to trust my gut and spot problematic power dynamics.

I've spent summers working 12-hour night shifts at a frozen veg factory. Amongst a whole load of niche knowledge about which brands to buy in Iceland, and a fascination for specialist engineering (a machine which spots beans which are too pale(!)), This job gave me empathy for those balancing family life with exhausting work. An insight that's invaluable in human-centred design.

Another key experience was working behind the bar of a dying pub in a dying village close to Boston, Lincolnshire. I used to travel up from London on the weekends to help my mum out. The conversations I had with the locals lent me a richer understanding of how and why communities feel overlooked and excluded. Reform won one of its first seats in Boston (and is still gaining seats in the area.) These insights continue to inform my approach to inclusive design today.

---

I’d genuinely love to know what's on your invisible CV. How does it influence your creative practice and the work you do? And, how do you choose to embrace it?

Rearranging the Furniture: A 5‑Step Framework for Idea Generation Anyone Can Use

Idea generation is like rearranging furniture, a mental reshuffle anyone can learn.

My Mum does this thing we call Gerbilling. No- not that. It’s where she impulsively moves all the furniture around in a room to the sound of Hall of the Mountain King, fuelled by strong tea. I’d say it happens 4 or 5 times a year. Not insignificant.

We call it Gerbilling because when we were kids, my brother had two identical brown gerbils called Wallace and Gromit who lived in a fish tank full of soil. Wallace and Gromit would dig cool little burrows that we could see through the plastic sides of the tank, only to demolish their tunnels a day or two later to rebuild in a slightly different configuration.

Back to my Mum, if you asked her, she would say she just got bored of how it looked and fancied a change. Fair enough. Recently though, I’ve realised I pretty much do the mental version of rearranging furniture for a living.

What’s Your Creative Process?

Being able to understand your own creative process is tricky. A bit like trying to look at the back of your head with two mirrors. You can catch a glimpse, but it’s difficult to see the whole thing. Where do great ideas come from?

Historically, creative people have been somewhat cagey about how they generated their ideas. Act of God, divine inspiration, or, like Coleridge, allegedly from a dream. We don’t always fully understand where or how ideas are generated, and let's face it, the lore and mystery of a mysterious inception story is a great bit of spin.

The thing is, though, the process for idea generation is quite simple. Once I figured my own out, I did a little research and found it to be almost verbatim the five‑step formula James Webb Young laid out in his 1940 classic A Technique for Producing Ideas. And I don’t think it's a coincidence.

Idea Generation is Rearranging Mental Furniture

I noticed the pattern in my creative process while updating my portfolio. Despite transitioning from fashion design to service design, I found myself returning to the same creative practices; only the elements had changed.

Instead of physical materials like metals or fabric, the “furniture” to be rearranged was data, research insights, and user behaviours.

My creative process, I realised, goes a little like this: gathering, dumping, arranging, rearranging, leaving it and doing something completely different, rearranging it again, and then refining. Along the way, elements are ditched and limitations are sought to refine the outcome further.

James Webb Young's 5 Steps, Simplified

Phrased within James Webb Young's less chaotic 5-step plan, it looks like this:

1) Gather: Collect materials related to do with your project, i.e. samples, essays, techniques.

2) Examine: Look at the materials you have gathered from many angles.

“[Look at them]…as it were, with the tentacles of the mind. You take one fact, turn it this way and that, look at it in different lights, and feel for the meaning of it.”

3) Step away: Basically, go and do something else. Let the idea stew.

4) Let your idea come to you: The Aha!' moment. 

“Now, if you have really done your part in these three stages of the process, you will almost surely experience the fourth. Out of nowhere, the idea will appear. It will come to you when you are least expecting it.”

5) Refine your idea based on feedback: Not as easy as it sounds, as you have to somehow hold onto the essence of your idea but allow it to grow, develop, and flourish within the limitations it must exist in.

“Do not make the mistake of holding your idea close to your chest at this stage. Submit it to the criticism of the judicious."

For many years, I worked with some of the most creative minds in the music and fashion industries; I honed my craft through conversations with them and seeing how they worked, yet I’m still surprised that it can be boiled down to the concept of rearranging elements, moving the furniture around. Like I said, it’s difficult to see your process.

Anatomy of an idea: The photo series that helped me figure out my creative process.

Fig 1) Gathering and examining my components. Fig 2) Arranging and rearranging Fig 3) The finished product after refining and understanding limitations. Fig 4) Get featured in Vogue and make it look like creativity is innate and you're just fantastically talented.

The Accessibility of Creativity.

Once you realise that the process of making and coming up with great ideas is a framework that can be taught rather than divine lightning, the game changes a little. Theoretically, anyone who can collect, connect, and iterate can invent, as long as they can meet their work and limitations with openness and curiosity.

When idea generation no longer feels out of reach, creativity becomes more accessible and something we can all learn to do, provided we have the right environment to do so. (See Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own)

When we can come up with ideas, we can imagine different futures.

When we can imagine a different future, we are far more likely to create it.

Original Thinking: A Democratic Muscle

“Great things are not done by impulse but by small things brought together.” Van Gogh

Creative thinking helps us see beyond the status quo and imagine alternatives. I am hopeful for a future of citizen-led action, where people truly have the power to determine the quality of their lives. This future needs contributions from people with every kind of lived experience who believe they can shift the foundations to rearrange the furniture of society until it truly reflects us all.

At its heart, "rearranging elements" is an experimental process; it’s not a quick fix for idea generation, but one where we patiently explore and research. Where we must sit with uncertainty, learning not to jump to the first ideas but letting the process play out. Testing hypotheses, embracing failures as we go, and finally collaborating to refine the concept.

What has to be true before this kind of idea generation can happen? Which hidden factors set the stage? These questions deserve attention because original thinking is the democratic muscle we all need to train.

But for now, the next time a problem feels immovable, try Gerbilling: look at what you have – no, really look – now shift it, turn it upside down, and then come back and look at it with fresh eyes after a cup of strong tea. Let me know if it helps.

Thinking Aloud: Creativity and the Act of Making.

Here's a bold claim to start the blog off: I’ve recently come to the conclusion that reconnecting with our innate creativity is vital for a healthy society. There, I said it. This blog is a space for me to explore and think aloud about the intersections between creativity, citizenship, good design, beauty and being human. I hope you'll join me for the ride.

Creativity and The Act of Making as an Ancient Rite.

I have been fascinated by the need to make, to create, since my mid-20s, when I started to question what was driving me to stay up to the early hours carving, conjuring jewellery. Transforming simple materials into beautiful, balanced forms. 

I named the collection I made in those early hours Ancient Rites because in that quiet darkness, I felt, in ways I couldn't explain, connected to those makers who came before. Maybe it was sleep deprivation, but what I was doing felt like it was one of the most essential aspects of what it is to be human: the act of making. I named pieces in the collection after totems, neoliths, and artefacts. I was fascinated by what compelled ancient man to make these monuments. Beyond religion, did they feel the same need that I was feeling? Why did they make?

The Disconnect

As my jewellery business flourished, this primal impulse to make waned. I had ideas, but they didn’t flow through me in the same way. It felt like creativity was coming from a different part of me; the work was good, but affected by knowing someone was watching. I had customers, PR agencies, and buyers keen to see what I’d come up with next; I had price points and value propositions to meet. The connection with something beyond me was gone. I found it easier to design and be creative for other people. Give me a problem, I’ll solve it! Tell me you want to create a world of designs that link sci-fi sea goddesses that also have a hint of 90s rave scene energy? Great, got it, can do. (By the by, this is a genuine job brief, and yes it was brilliant to work on.) 

What Is It To Be A Maker?

Fast forward 10 or so years, and my understanding of creativity has evolved. I’ve had children, left the fashion industry and started exploring what it is to be a maker, a creator in a non-tangible realm. This led me to a world of design thinking, service and research design and then onto design for social good. All nebulous terms and sectors, but spaces where I’ve found myself pulled back to my early obsessions with creativity and the act of making. This time, though, framed through the lens of agency, citizenship and ownership of our collective futures.

Why This Blog Exists

My notes app from the last 4 years is full of random thoughts jotted down in the gaps between making dinner, settling sharing conflicts and sorting the laundry. I recently took the time to go through them; in all honesty, I was looking for content ideas to do with service design for LinkedIn posts. What I found was years of musings about creating. Lightbulb moments where I figured out my creative process, thoughts about the link between seeing ourselves as creative beings and consumerism, and ponderings on the impact of Western art being dictated by the ruling classes on the subject class, the devaluing of folk art. Is beauty important? What is it to make and create to a fixed brief? Is that true creativity? The list goes on.

If I’m not making sense and these thoughts sound jumbled, that’s because they are. They are a knot of “what ifs” and “huh, I wonder”. I hope that this will be the space to explore them. I’ve ummed and ahhed about starting this project. I’ve been hoping that I would find the answer, that things would slot into place, and I could write a couple of neat posts with clear theories about the nature of creativity and being human, but I just have even more questions.

Make It In The Open

So after a bit of thought, in honour of Good Services, I’ve decided to “make it in the open”. Also, it is my experience that sometimes, you just need to get started and see where the journey takes you.

I believe that every human is innately creative and that to disconnect from this part of us is harmful to our mind and body, our environment and our society. So I will end this first blog as I began it; this is a space to explore and to think aloud. I’m interested and open to learning about every aspect of this subject in the hope that maybe we will find some common truths to help guide us through the choppy waters of modern life.

Desk shot from 12 or so years ago in the heady days of creative flow.