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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?