Cristina, Hubert and I were driving down to a weekend birthday celebration in the Penedès in January of 2016. From Barcelona, where we had to go wasn’t a far drive and it can’t have taken more than an hour but as I drove the three of us chatted away quite happily about all and sundry. I no longer remember how or why we got there but at some point we touched on the topic of creativity and Hubert said something that I will never forget and that echoes what I believe as well. I think he and I were referring to common and received assumptions that those not directly related to the worlds of art and design, in its broadest sense, are incapable of creative thought. “Do not tell me” he went on to say empirically, “that I am not creative. Because I am! And I will beat the shit out of anyone “creatively” if I need to prove it.” I know he can…. and I could not agree more.

Pablo Picasso once said that all children are born artists. Ken Robinson, in his famous speech at TED called “How schools kill creativity”, goes on to say that the innate creativity we are born with is systematically cultivated out of us as we progress through the system; a perverted and manipulative system that seeks to produce docile and obedient servants who are content to staff drab jobs and feel no compulsion to question their validity or create anything. He speaks of the multiplicity of potential and intelligence that is not only alphanumerical in its structure; despite what our established social and cultural system would have us believe.

The topic of the pros and cons of social media is a huge one. I see its dangers but I have also noticed its advantages. I have been quietly observing on Instagram the progression of those peers of mine – those without any formal education in “The Arts”, I’m referring to –  as their photos improve in leaps and bounds with greater sensitivity to such issues as content, composition, lighting, colour. We all seem to be learning from each other. I think this is fantastic and a force for good. It is helping to put people back in touch with their innate creativity and forcing back that received obscurantist notion that creativity is for privileged initiates, members of an elite.

Taheer and I touched on this a few weeks back whilst having dinner at his; why aren’t children taught philosophy from day one at school? What could be more relevant than teaching people how to think?

I was most impressed to learn the other day that children in Mongolia are taught chess from a very early age as a mandatory part of their school curriculum.