I’ve been Stuck

Six months or so ago, as I wrote my last blog about safety and creativity, I realised how integral a well-functioning society is to the creativity of a population. A society where communities are and feel safe is a community where creativity and agency can thrive. 

This seemed completely obvious to me, and yet I’ve found it hard to write about. And that's the point of this post. 

I came to think about creativity and agency in communities because I was interested in why some areas seemed to have more active, inventive community groups than others, and I found myself in a space where trauma, neuroscience, structural inequality, spirituality (and more) intersect. This, combined with the numerous definitions of creativity, Big C, Little C, has left me with a beast of a concept and one I feel wildly underqualified to talk about. 

I’m not a Dr of psychology or neuroscience, nor do I have vast knowledge of public policy (yet!), but I feel comfortable reading and learning in these areas; it’ll take me a little longer, but I’ll get there. I feel underqualified because, honestly, who am I to talk about creativity in struggling communities, in places where some people experience insecurity in almost every aspect of their lives? And that has paralysed me. The terrain is unfamiliar, and exploring this subject means I'm making generalisations about people whose lives I haven't lived. I take that seriously.

So this is where I am at. I feel unsafe writing about this topic until I know everything. Huh, we’ve gone full circle, haven’t we? One must feel safe to create… to make, to have agency…

But forwards I will go, this subject will not stop nagging me. I know, that safety is integral to creativity. I know that creativity (in all its forms) is integral to living a full life as a human. 

When you put these together, questions abound around what it could cost to create a safe and healthy society? And why don’t we?