New Artisans - Can it be joyful?
New Artisans - Can it be joyful?
Day 5 of Alan Moore's 13 Design Questions
This may be the easiest of the questions to answer so far, with a resounding yes.
Most of us, via a combination of education, training and necessity, make our living through varying degrees of compromise. We identify and fit into those gaps in the market where what we are capable of doing makes us the best living we can, and once on that treadmill find it hard to get off.
We all though have those moments when we find ourselves doing what we seem born to do, when we experience “flow” - that point where the nature of the challenge and our potential meet at the very edge of our capability, and we find ourselves absorbed, learning, and creating with nothing else on our minds other than what we are doing.
The challenge is that many jobs are reduced, segmented and specialised in search of overall performance and efficiency, and the chances of finding flow in the small part we are engaged in is minimal. The very nature of creativity means that we need to be involved in something greater than the sum of its parts, and the nature of most work precludes that, and we are left searching for it outside of work in other, often transient and temporary places.
Identifying and connecting to the activities that offer “flow”, and in particular, activities which offer us that connection to something creative and long-term to which we can contribute requires space, time, and the right company. Often, it doesn’t require a leap into the unknown, but a different perspective on what we already do, how we can reframe it, and find a trail that offers to take us somewhere better, off the beaten path. That act of reframing, and the recognition that we do not have to be necessarily “enclosed” by mono-focal performance environments, can be a source of joy in itself, not just for ourselves, but catalysing it in others.
So, yes, I believe New Artisans can create a joyful experience.
I’d like New Artisans to be a joyful space, one where we can go for a while to escape the noise, spend time with those we trust, and find time to remind ourselves why we’re here and reconnect to it.