Creativity is often confused with art or talent.
Talent is a gift that we have from birth and it is not very useful when used without creativity.
The purpose of the majority of my workshops is to let the participants get in touch with their self creativity. To recognise the strong, revolutionary energy that brings both joy and torment.
To learn feeling it as it is, and then express it freely.
Working with groups means working with all the people who participate at the workshop in the same way, but extracting a different energy from each of them. Learning to listen is the first step in knowing who we are. During the workshops, a huge amount of energy is wasted in the struggle with ourselves, this happens when we judge and condemn ourselves, when we are not free. Conflict stifles creativity, makes us destructive. When we learn to accept and love each other, creative energy increases.
Creativity is rebellion, to create we must free ourselves from any conditioning, otherwise our creativity will be only a copy, an imitation. If we depend on mass thought, we cannot create. To be creative we must have the courage to be ourselves.
If we are not in contact with our authentic creativity we are forced to follow the one of another, to imitate it, and we loose our authenticity, we live in confusion, we are divided. We live trying to be someone else.
To solve this problem, every creative laboratory starts from chaos, from the deconstruction of every thought related to beauty, ugliness, right and wrong. We come into contact with the body, with movement. We literally hit the ground to contact reality. The first part of the workshop is always dedicated to removing the superstructures that limit creativity.
Only after the chaos we approach the creative material and in silent we express what we have felt. We listen and express ourselves, aware that there will be no evaluation of merit.
In recognising the emotion, expressing it and then finding ourselves in that expression we see our creative potential. Without judgment, we realise where we are.
Now we are in contact with our creative energy, we have awakened it, we feel it, we are alive and awake! We welcome every nuance, it is part of us, of our being.
To ensure that creative energy would be useful to us in our path of training, both personal and professional, we must learn to manage it and direct it.
In fashion schools my work is very similar to the one I do with groups. Leading both workshops for business and communication and design classes, I clearly see the difference between the two. In communication classes, we connect with creativity to become aware of the fact that it is a form of expression. Once students translate creativity into a project, I help them to communicate it effectively.
In design classes, instead, we work more on the expression of the process through creativity. Students clearly see the link between creativity, ability to design a project and then communicate it. Knowing how to harness creativity in their work will help them to present projects that really work.
Creativity needs freedom to express itself, that’s why we always start from chaos, from the destructuring of every thought related to beauty, ugliness, right and wrong, from eliminating the superstructures that prevent authentic expression.
Everything starts from emotion, from the body, with movement.
Then the expression comes.
Then the thought, the logic, the aesthetics and the reason.
When we talk about companies instead, creativity is a way more difficult topic to talk about.
Often inside the companies, indeed, we do not give enough importance to creativity. Not only fashion companies have to deal with this, all employees of all industries need to rediscover their creativity and find their authenticity in order to work at their best. Creativity is a commitment to ourselves, the determination to continually create one’s being along the path of growth, transformation, awareness.
I have been working with fashion designers for twenty years and a few of them are really creative. By creative I mean having the ability to create, renew, to adapt to the environment while maintaining their uniqueness.
To help companies, what I propose in my workshops is to get in touch with the inner creativity.
Learn to feel the energy that brings both joy and torment as it is, and then express it freely.
Creativity needs freedom to express itself. Everything starts from emotion, from the body.
Everything begins from an emotion, from a sensation intense enough to move us, to activate our senses. Let’s think about the artists, the love songs, the works of art that move us. They touch us because they are true, because they express something true. Sometimes we tune into what we see or hear, it resonates. So let’s feel an emotion and most likely feel part of what the artist has felt.
We don’t like some works, we don’t understand the meaning, the words, the colours.
However sensitive it is it’s unthinkable to resonate with everything, isn’t it?
In my work I am very careful not to fall into personal judgment, beauty and ugliness. I clearly have my own taste, which I express through the style of my house and my clothing, but I try not to confuse what is beautiful for me from what is creative and authentic.
Over the years, thanks to experience and training, I have learned to “resonate” with authenticity rather than with what is beautiful to me.
During project reviews, in companies, I happen to see complete, harmonious, understandable projects. It doesn’t matter if I like them or not, but it’s evident that they work. On this last phrase I spend two words: creativity in the fashion industry cannot be just an end in itself, it doesn’t work like that even in the art world!
