The Thing Itself:
The Psychology of Creativity
From film-makers to poets, musicians to photographers, theatre-makers to illustrators, doctors to CEOs, I love exploring what creativity means to people from all walks of life, from those making art to those using innovative decision making in domains not traditionally considered ‘creative’. I want to know how people access their creativity, where they get ideas, how people make art and why they keep making it. We’ll talk about what drives creative people to keep going, how they overcome internal and external obstacles, how they balance creativity with making an income, and what their creative work means to them.
The Thing Itself explores the
Psychology of Creativity
What’s the story of the podcast? Coming from a very musical family, creativity has been around me from a young age, but it wasn’t until trying to make a career as a professional musician that I began to understand how much thought, wisdom and hustle goes into building the necessary scaffolding to surround a creative life. It’s not enough just to have ideas - there is so much important psychology surrounding the maintenance of a productive creative process. How does one identify which ideas to put effort into, and which to discard? How do you know when to listen to critical feedback, and when to brush it off? How do you balance your own creative drives with the imperatives to make money and market your work? Every creative person has faced these questions and more, but I found that many people don’t really talk about them, instead assuming that the creative process is something that comes ‘naturally’ to others, whilst we struggle in silence.
Enter The Thing Itself - a chance to lift the lid on the psychology of some seriously creative brains.