In an early school report—yes, I was clearly an archivist even then—I told a teacher I wanted to be an artist. Why an artist? Because I loved making things. Making wasn’t digital; it was tactile, hands-on, and experiential. At school, ‘art time’ was one of the few spaces where you could create with risk and freedom.
I found the same sense of possibility in English. Creative writing opened another door: stories, poems, fragments of imagination made tangible through language. Between Art and English, there was room to test ideas, experiment, fail, and try again.
Elsewhere, creativity existed but was constrained. In New Zealand intermediate schools, we had “Manual”: woodwork, metalwork, sewing, cooking. I enjoyed these classes, but they were highly prescribed. You followed instructions and produced the same outcomes. That’s why so many relatives ended up with identical paper towel dispensers, notepad holders, duffel bags, and pillowcases. These objects were made by us, but they weren’t really ours.
I wanted to be an artist because that is where the system positioned the making of things that were yours—tested, explored, iterated. But it was also where creativity was categorised under the banner of the arts, presented as the only legitimate place for creativity.
By secondary school, even that illusion of freedom began to erode. External assessors, we were told, ‘liked’ certain kinds of work. To achieve better marks, you learned to anticipate their preferences and shape your output. Creativity became a strategy. Innovation became compliance.
Worse, in sixth form, assessment was rationed across disciplines. You could produce work at the level of an A in Art or English, but if top grades were already ‘allocated’ to science or maths, they were unavailable. Effort and achievement became decoupled; a C pass translated what might otherwise have been excellence.
Over time, this teaches that creativity is conditional. It belongs in certain rooms, under certain labels, and only counts when validated by particular frameworks. It teaches you to second-guess instincts, design for approval rather than discovery, and narrows who gets to identify as creative.
By art school, I understood how the arts—and ‘artists’—were positioned: constrained and often devalued, separated from problem-solving, learning, and innovation.
This is where we find ourselves: silo creativity, and its value erodes. Over time, we internalise these boundaries: we protect our work, narrowly categorise our knowledge and skills, and in the process, allow ourselves and our organisations to be devalued, despite the real and measurable economic and social value creativity generates.
We have been trained to reduce understanding to historic silos. It is up to us whether we continue to perpetuate these silos—or reclaim creativity as a shared, generative force shaping our world everyday in profound, life-changing ways.
