Using Creativity To Bridge A Gap Between The Generations

‘To bridge the gap between the way things used to be to the way things are today. Not a new generation to replace an old, but all generations growing together. To learn and benefit from each other’

 I read this little snippet on Twitter the other day and thought it was very fitting for the state of our creative sector in the midlands.

Now how many people have stopped reading there? How many of our ‘multi-cultural, all ages’ city have stopped reading because they are tired of hearing and reading about Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, Google+, WordPress etc? I would hazard a guess at a fair few.

However, the high influx of social networking and blogging has turned on a light bulb with creative companies trying to survive in these times. Investing in young creative individuals who want to expand their talents and look at relevant career paths, is a sure fire way to tap into another generation of consumer.

Business is embracing young people, and understanding what their creative values could mean for their companies survival.

When social networking started it was seen as something for teenagers to use between each other. To have a chat of an evening about what they did at school that day, much the same as MSN messenger but with pictures thrown in for good measure.

What has now happened has become such a phenomena that reality TV pales in comparison. Children, teenagers, mothers, fathers, uncles, granddads are all using one or more forms of social networking. Now, the working world has fully cottoned on to the idea, but what they have realised is the tables are turning. Young people use social networking daily and communicating with their friends takes a back seat to finding jobs, building profiles and showcasing their individual abilities. The business world in turn now wants to utilise this fact to search out immerging talent that could help their business thrive, in a time when they need their profile to be bigger than ever.

A broad range of creative industries have evaluated the ever changing times and adjusted their process plans accordingly. One prime example is the music industry, historically this was built on A&R scouts scoring the country, however far they had to drive, to find the ‘next big thing’. This has not changed, the most successful A&R scouts, managers and executives still score the country for great finds. However now there are many avenues a person can go down (YouTube, Reverbnation etc), and the artist themselves can build up such a following that it may not be necessary for the scout to find them as undeveloped as they would have ten years ago.

In the fashion sector, world renowned fashion brand Kate Spade New York was in a spot of bother when its owners sold up and left in 2007. At this point it was a niche brand with an amazing heritage that had fallen asleep a little. So they took a new management team and set out a plan to build a global multi-channel lifestyle brand, which included a major investment in ecommerce and digital media.

To quote ‘We’re closing in on 400,000 Facebook fans and 150,000 Twitter followers – those are meaningful numbers for us as a brand, and they determine how we invest our time and our human resources across different media. It’s also about enabling a real-time conversation, talking about where [the Kate Spade girl] is now and where she goes next.’

The youth in our society is built around real-time now, and they want to keep as up to date with anything and everything on a daily basis. Knowing what a business is about, how it works behind the scenes and what is happening right now is important to getting peoples interest and investment into companies.  They don’t want to just hear about the product at the end of the process, they want to see the process as it unfolds.

A little closer to home is iGen3live (more info) which happened on 1^st and 2^nd March. It was a conference and business networking event for young people between ages 16-25 and business professionals. It brought together different generations to showcase talents and knowledge in order to learn from each other. There were performances such as a world class pianist, spoken word and Leicester born singer/songwriter Hannah B. Business professionals also gave presentations to showcase their take on where business is heading, which was eye-opening to some of the younger individuals.

It also involved some honest and moving accounts from Tim Keck, a former Police Chief from Arkansas; followed by a very inspirational talk from Milena Andjic, who lost her businessman father at the young age of 24. She turned her back on a promising career as a diplomat to take up her father’s business and rejuvenate it into a thriving machine, mirroring what it was when it first began.

These all stand to highlight how useful it is for all businesses and aspiring business professionals to join forces and marry together ideas and aspirations.

It goes to show that the young people in our society are not there to be ignored. They are in fact there to be seen and heard, and utilised for their new ideas and fresh approach. This is not to say that business is in peril if run by a generation outside of the age bracket previously stated. This is simply to say… two heads are better than one.

The way you listen to music…

Listening to ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’ makes you believe there is no other way to interpret a song than the way an artist would want it to be interpreted. Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin are two brilliant songwriters who saw heartache and had to get it out in that song and it was a very specific type of heartache, only to be felt one way. It’s no doubt one of the most beautiful songs to grace this earth. But does the singular specification make it one-dimensional?

I listen to this song like I am listening to a diary entry, like someone has opened their heart for a few minutes and all the pain has spilled into song. You can’t help but feel every strain of voice, dip in tone and loss in strength. That’s what happens when you love someone but every flex of muscle you have cannot make them love you back. You can lose yourself in a song so powerful yet so simple. Along with this one-dimensional type of song comes a universal understanding, we’re all feeling the same thing. All who can empathize will and all who cannot…won’t.

About three weeks ago I went to dinner with a couple of friends and we got onto the subject of songs. I asked them which songs really mean something to them and for what reasons. One of my friends holds Kelly Clarkson as quite a favourite in her collection, and ‘Sober’ as a song quite dear to her heart. I asked her why, because in my mind it’s a song that stands for more of a generalised feeling than a specific one. You want to stop something you’re addicted to, to have the strength to let the feelings fade. But she said ‘No, I feel it every time my husband goes away. It’s the feeling we have between us when he is the other side of the world’. Her husband is in the RAF and for years now he has been placed between Afghanistan and Iraq for 9 months or so at a time. They have dealt with this separation and fear most of their relationship and they’ve been together for nearly 10 years.

She feels ‘Sober’ is when she sits in the chair and decides to get up, go out, have a drink with friends instead of over-thinking about where he is and what he’s doing. It’s when he drives faster and harder because he’s wife is at home waiting for him. There’s an underlying fear there that is very easy to fall prey to and let it consume you, but they choose to fight it every single day.

That’s what ‘Sober’ means to her, so whether Kelly Clarkson was thinking about a guy at the time or a friendship that wasn’t good for her it doesn’t matter. My friend carved her own meaning from this one song and I don’t think she would have it any other way.

On the flip side knowing the truth can really deepen a songs effect on you. Take ‘Flightless Bird, American Mouth’ for instance, a beautiful song reading like the closest thing to poetry I have seen in a long time. Not everyone can listen to it and particularly understand where its origins might come from. But a song built on the premise of giving in to the pressure, and swallowing the pill of conformity is a grand message for only a passing listen. So understanding where it has come from and what it means in this instance makes for a deeper appreciation.

At the end of this I really have no conclusion – perhaps there are songs out there meant for individual interpretation and maybe somehow there are songs written with a specific intent in mind but find their own course. We talk all the time about how much we feel when we are listening to a certain song. But can we only deepen the feeling when we can empathize or can we essentially take any song and twist, shape and mould it into our own personal interpretation?

Real Music Is Still Here

The one reason I loved Alanis Morissette as a teenager and now for that matter was her rawness. Every time I listened to her, whether it would be on the radio, on my CD player or live on TV I felt like I was snooping at her diary. Every time she graced the stage and honoured us with one of her songs, it felt like she was leafing through the pages of her deepest thoughts and laying them before us. The strongest of music for me is music that comes from a real place, something true. This could be a dance song, rap, country, pop or any genre you can think of, it really doesn’t matter.

I can sit here and tell you I feel my bones move when I listen to Joan Baez singing ‘Diamonds and Rust. Regina Spektor sings ‘Samson’ like she has no other purpose than to tell that story. Everything else drops away when I hear in the background Robyn on the radio singing ‘Dancing On My Own’. The list does indeed go on.

You see it doesn’t matter what genre, age or even country the music comes from. It’s all where the music comes from inside, how raw and honest it is. The best music in the world is the music that cannot help but be written. That’s where Adele comes into this now, into the mix of music written and sung the way it always should be…with honesty. I always said I wouldn’t get on the bandwagon and blog about Adele, but then I thought is it really jumping on the bandwagon when I truly feel the same as everyone else? She’s good, undoubtedly good at what she does. That doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there as good as her, there are. But the aligning of the stars happened with Adele’s second album. People were in the right frame of mind to hear something refreshingly new, or more so to feel what music used to be. We got lost a little in the enjoyment of light-hearted ‘music for the moment’ and kind of forgot that there is music to be made that can last forever.  Adele made some astounding songs from the deepest part of herself, not forgetting with the help of some astounding writers and producers too. She makes opening your heart look both a necessity and undeniably painful. It makes me sigh with longing to be in a room full of creative people who can come up with such beautiful art. So thank you to Adele for making me keep my eyes open and ears perked for someone else that brings that same raw difference to a ‘sell-out’ world. The irony is Adele has sold-out more venues than my brain can count. Goes to show people have a stronger need to feel than to see.