Alexander Newley

Whether you are a business, a parent, a plumber or a politician, creativity is for you. Artists do not have a monopoly on this magical elixir.

The aim of this talk is to define the complex and mysterious nature of creativity and to prove that it’s a supra-rational force, in the same way that 2 plus 2 can equal 5. It could and should be used in everyday life to solve problems and give us the insights we need to achieve the ‘masterpiece’ of our overall vision.

But how do we achieve this mysterious x-factor that pushes the every day towards the miraculous; this alchemy that somehow makes the sum more than its parts?

The answer lies in childhood and the realization that creativity and genius are far more common than we suppose.

Alexander Newley propounds his belief that everyone should be creative, that it is our birthright, evident in all children—but that this original magic routinely gets drummed out of us by the stultifying powers that be. Every child is born a genius, as immortalized in the lines by William Blake: ‘Trailing clouds of glory do we come from god…’ But this is often short-lived. Children are alive with immortal feelings and enthusiasms—this is why we adore them—but we might, because we have lost it, resent this radiance in them and try to squash it.

The trick of the creative life is therefore to keep alive the child in us even as we grow and negotiate the important rights of passage that define adulthood—it’s no more complicated, and difficult, than that. On the way we must contend with the negative voices that would call us self-indulgent, simple-minded or air-headed if we hold to our ‘childish’ enthusiasms.

It’s only by nurturing these enthusiasms that we can hope to guide the inner child to its full maturity. The happy, fulfilled life we all desire is therefore the one in which the inner child can fully share—feeling neither trapped nor abandoned—so that its dreams, and its genius, can shine undimmed.