Crisis and Creativity: Odd Bedfellows

“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” -Samuel Johnson.

If you ever lived in Chicago, you’d have noticed that the quality of the arts there is generally very, very high. Music, painting, literature, theater, you name it, it easily rivals any city in the US.

And why is that? When I lived there, I blamed the weather i.e. the amazingly harsh winters. The deadly, unrelenting cold drove you inwards, both physically and emotionally, ergo one had no choice but to make art in order to keep from growing crazy.

And suddenly, we’re noticing a similar phenomenon with this damn Coronavirus of ours. Having had our daily lives so utterly disrupted, many of us are finding that it’s bringing out our creative bugs in droves. To keep themselves entertained, people are trying out all sorts of things with video chat. People are finally writing that book of theirs or sending out drawings and poems over the ‘net.

This to be expected. Creativity is nothing if it’s not a coping mechanism. The Good Lord gave it to us, to handle strange and stressful situations. It’s the very fulcrum of our species. Even in tough times, it’s something to be treasured and celebrated. So put a smile on your face and get back to work.
This, too, shall pass.

Fostering a great culture in a time of social distancing will be harder than ever. We thought it would be fun for our Culture Wall™ Power Users to gather digitally for a conversation around strategies they have leveraged in building productive culture organizations. You will hear from these industry leaders: