Join us for Episode 27 of the Creative Work Hour podcast as the crew explores the vital role of failure in creativity. Each member shares personal stories and insights on how embracing failure can lead to growth and new opportunities. Tune in for an engaging discussion on transforming setbacks into creative breakthroughs!

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Creative Work Hour podcast. Today is November the 27th, 2024, and this is our entry for the national podcast post month. In the room at the moment we have myself, Greg, we have Alessandra, Dr Timika, we have Jennifer, we have Ken, Bailey, Gray, Bobby B and Shadows Pub.

I will ask a question to get the conversation started and we'll see where we go from there. So the question for today.

What role does failure play in creativity? 
What role does failure play in creativity? 

Alessandra?

I used to avoid even trying something that I didn't have at least an 85% confidence rating that I could pull the thing off. I could not tolerate the possibility of falling on my face in front of anybody for any period of time. And now, I think I've, you know how they say, Once you give up hope, you feel a lot better. So I just gave up on that so that I could give myself the freedom to go and find weird things to try to see what happens. 

I wonder what happens if I am on a stage in Berkeley in front of the music department and I play for the first time in public in 30 years. I wonder what will happen. Huh, can I be curious about that? Which for me, I have to follow that with, okay, if it all goes to shit, Am I okay with that? Can I be okay with that? Or how might I be okay with that? And that just opened up all kinds of possibilities. I'll leave it there. Thank you.

Thank you, Alessandra. 

Dr. Timika, how about you? 
What role does failure play in creativity?

Well, Greg, I don't think you can create without failure. I think it's a major part and it plays a major role. My biggest failures have created additional spaces for my creativity. And I've just learned to roll with that. And I understand what Alexandra is saying. Being a perfectionist, It's hard to just put yourself out there and you know that there's a possibility of failure. But you know, as we grow up, we mature and move into different spaces, we realise that it's just inevitable. We will fail and just use it for the best and creativity will spark itself.

Thank you Dr. Tameka. Jennifer, how about you? 
What do you think?

I think whenever I think about failure within creativity or art, I always think about Jack Halberstam's book, The Queer Art of Failure. So like failure becomes like an analytic that reveals the conventions that, you know, like these kind of like oftentimes like capitalist conventions or like you know interlocking supremacy systems in terms of what is considered like successful. So I think failure is really good at revealing the systems that are at play that determine what is success and failure. And I'm very interested in systems change and systems analysis. So failure is great for that. 

Thank you, Jennifer. Ken, how about you? What do you think?

Well, I think failure is just trying something new, pretty much. And actually, I think that there was a nun who gave a college graduation speech. I think her daughter was 1 of the graduating students. And the title of the talk was fail, fail again, fail better. So, actually, that was also an interesting idea. What does it mean to fail versus fail better? So, you know, you can actually fail more than once, have a whole series of failures. So yeah. 

Thank you, Ken. Gray, how about yourself? 

What role does failure play in creativity, do you think?

Well, I'm going to be a little distant here in that I don't think that failure does play a role in creativity because I subscribe to the idea that there is no such thing as failure. There is only either information or there is success. And I think 1 of the examples of this that I found was a friend of mine, I was hosting a show and a friend of mine had worked very hard on his performance. And he went out there to perform and the performance was great. 

The audience loved it. They are standing ovations. It was really, really good. But he came off and he had this scowl on his face. He was like, Oh man, I messed up this and this didn't happen. I rehearsed it so much and I, this didn't go right. And this didn't go right. And I looked at him and I said, did you ever think that maybe you performed it right and rehearsed it wrong? And I think that, you know, if you're failing at something, what you're failing at is realizing that you're given an opportunity to learn from it and the possibility that there is something there that didn't match your expectations but perhaps exceeded them.

Shadows, how about yourself?

Well if you don't figure out what doesn't work, you don't really know how to appreciate what does work. 

Bobby, how about you?

Boy, this is such an important topic for me, especially with the mentoring and tutoring that I do. Nothing is failure, unless you haven't taken the time to look back at it. The results are the results, but take a look back, you can't create without what I think classic society might want to call failure because it's not failure. You know, nothing that we create is unique on its own. It's a compilation of what we witnessed, what we've learned, what we've touched, everything. So, you know, let's go back to childlike when, you know, our guardians or parents said, try again, you know, try again. And yeah, so there, I'll just come back to there is no failure, unless you haven't, you know, step back and take a look at it.

Right, that old thing that I remember from childhood, if at first you don't succeed, try, try and try again. Alessandra, you have your hand raised?

Well, I do. And here comes a confession. All right. And this is perfectionism for you, you know. All right, here it is. Here's the confession. So I make it into the architectural design program at the Inchbold School of Design in London. I sell my house, I sell my clothes, I sell half of everything I've owned to make this crazy move for that program. 

I get in. Now, I had graduated summa cum laude in the American system. Killed myself doing it, right? So I'm finally at what they would call the show. I'm at the fricking Inchbald, right?

And the first project is due. And how it works is you go in and you put up all of your drawings and you put up all of your samples you have. You know it's a dog and pony show right but You don't get to actually be there to put your spin on it. It has to stand, the work has to just stand on its own. So once we get that set up, the tutor who's in charge of our studio of like 6 people locks the door behind us for days until they have time to go in there and mark every person's project. 

Then they type it all up on the Inchbald School of Design letterhead and it is posted to your home. So everybody is calling each other like, did you get your marks? Did you get your marks? And I went through the entire program without ever opening my marks and reading what the tutors had said about my work. I couldn't deal with the failure. I would have read it if it had said, hey, add a girl, but this is England and they don't do that here. They don't care how hard you worked. Does the work stand on his own or does it not? That's it. 

When I saw that I was getting a C or a C minus, I couldn't deal. I literally couldn't deal. I could not read that. I still have those, like I barely opened it enough to see what the mark was. I still have those unread letters in with my design files where I was too chicken shit to read the marks. I freaking sold my house to go there to learn how to do this thing that was so important to me. What the hell is that? Right? So I'm just, it's not that there's a moral to the story. I just thought it was a really pertinent confession and a timely 1 based on the question. I'm just going to leave it there.

There you go. You heard it here first.

Gray?

Alessandra, I am so sorry you went through that. But it also alerts me to 1 of the things that I think is very important is that being able to have a safe space to fail and to learn how to fail and understand that failure is a set of circumstances, not a reflection of your character, is like one of the most important things that you can provide. 

I was gonna say kids, but I think really, anybody. And if you don't have that, you don't know what you're feeling. I mean, I know with aerialists talking about, you know, some people back, I've never had anything drop ever, not once. Nothing's ever gone wrong with any of my shows. Well, that just means you don't know how to handle it when something does. That actually scares me more than someone who says, yeah, I've been through some shit. So that's just what I was thinking, that having an environment where it's safe is a good idea.

And I think that very experience has everything to do with the values on which Creative Work Hour is based. Because if I had felt safe, I could have looked at that, or I could have asked, how can I feel safe and look at this? Do I need somebody to read it with me? I just wasn't there yet. I just hadn't made friends with failure yet. And I think failure can be a really incredible friend. What do you think of Dr. Timeka?

You know, I really liked the fact that, you know, what Gray stated about the safe space because you do need that. But Alessandra, I don't think that, especially being from, you know, the same day, September 3rd, I don't look at it that way that you were afraid to look unless you really insist that that was the case. I think that sometimes we need to not distract ourselves with things like that. You made a huge move. Those things could have placed you further and further behind because you start to internalize someone else's thoughts of your work. But when you keep trucking ahead and a lot of people will tell you to me because oblivious to a lot of things I got it from my mother and I think it's intentional It keeps me moving forward when you stop to listen to what everyone else has to say, think and do or you know their thoughts about your work, you slow down. And I think that's where your progress comes from. Just putting that out the way, knowing that I did everything that I did my best, and that's it.

That's all you can do, isn't it? 

You know, I once heard it said, I don't know who the person was or what the game was, but a famous sportsman. And he said, it wasn't that I got the once in a lifetime goal or I scored the once in a lifetime thing. Once it was that I didn't do it a hundred times and got it the 1 time. It was a success.

So you heard it here first, but I will say it's happened again. You've wasted a perfectly few good minutes listening to the creative work on our podcast when you could have been doing something different. 

What about you? What do you think? 

What role does failure play in creativity?

Let us know. We'd be interested to hear that. 
But in the meantime, come back again tomorrow and we will be here.