Last week, I had the privilege of delivering the keynote address to graduates of a remarkable local program, Moncton Creates. I was supposed to speak about the value of the creative economy to New Brunswick. What I actually talked about was how human creativity shakes up the economy by catalyzing innovation and hope.
The speech felt like an early kick-off to Clarity Connect’s annual KT Creativity Camp, which starts next week. Each August, we celebrate the human artistry that fuels knowledge translation and science communication, and this year it seems especially important to do that.
Now that AI is seeping into so many aspects of the way we relate to one another, how do we connect with our audiences in ways that feel authentic and build trust?
And as those audiences cope with multiplying pressures, on both a local and global scale, how do we offer them something more valuable than mere information?
These are the questions that only human creativity can address, and those of us engaged in knowledge translation or science communication are leading that exploration.
Together, we also form a significant segment of the creative economy, impacting the culture and prosperity of our local communities. Whether you’re an independent contractor or an employee, you’re using your creativity to generate multiple kinds of value, and I say it’s time to honour that. Read on for the full text of my Moncton Creates speech to learn more…
Thank you for the opportunity to be here with you and celebrate the latest Moncton Creates cohort this evening. Congratulations everyone!
I have to start with a confession, though. When Tayo invited me to speak about the value of the creative economy for New Brunswick, I grimaced a bit. I make my living as a “creative,” but I have a hard time putting those two words together: “creative” and “economy.”
So with Tayo’s invitation staring at me from my inbox, I started to explore this tension. And I couldn’t resolve it.
Yet I think that’s a good thing. Because the more time I spend pondering this phrase, “creative economy,” the more I’m convinced that it does imply a kind of tension. And this is an instructive tension that points to a new way of thinking about what it means to generate value.
Let me start by explaining why I have found this notion of a “creative economy” so hard to fathom.
When we describe the state of an economy, we’re talking about the way a society is structured, specifically how it’s organized to manage resources. The word “economy” comes to us from the title of an ancient Greek treatise by Xenophon, who was a contemporary of Plato. The Oikonomikos presents a dialogue between Socrates and an idealized character, a “gentleman” who runs a perfectly-ordered estate. One of this man’s best practices, as we might say today, is that he has trained his wife to arrange all their household goods in a way that would make Marie Kondo envious. In fact, he gushes about how thoughtfully she has stored their shoes, clothes, bedding, dishes, and pots and pans.
Well, I’d hate for this fellow to come to my kitchen because my pots and pans are not lined up like they’re waiting to dance in Beauty and the Beast. I love to cook, so there’s often one pot bubbling on the stove and another in the sink. And when I’m cleaning up, I tend to randomly toss pots and lids into the cupboard while I’m outlining a new blog or a new project in my head.
The way I look at, economics is about arranging and managing resources whereas creativity is about disturbing neat and tidy arrangements. Economists count, evaluate, and predict. Creatives generate, provoke, and question. Economists are happy when they can use words like “stability” and “steady growth” and when they can boil complexity down to a graph. Creatives, on the other hand? Well, we like to embrace variety and linger in complexity—because that’s where we can play with ambiguity and wait to be surprised by a pattern or a meaning we haven’t noticed before.
And this is exactly why the economy needs creatives, and why, this strange notion of the “creative economy” is exactly what New Brunswick needs now.
As economists have been warning us for decades, Canada, for many years, has been on a long, slow slide into complacency. Our productivity rate falls below that of the US and several European countries—and New Brunswick lags behind most of the rest of Canada. (I believe the latest stats put us just ahead of PEI.)
At the same time, we’re grappling with what some people are calling a “polycrisis”—multiple crises rolled into a really menacing ball. Climate change. Tariffs. Geopolitical instability. Labor shortages. Critical mineral shortages. Threats to our national sovereignty. AI. And so on and so on.
We cannot manage our way out of the polycrisis.
To create a prosperous future for New Brunswick, we need different ways of thinking about the economy and nurturing it. Different ways of tackling problems and inventing solutions. Different ways of collaborating and, as I like to say, conspiring to drive change.
And that’s where creatives come in.
Moncton Creates alum, you bring the human power of creativity to complex problems. Your creativity has the potential to catalyze not only economic growth but, more importantly, economic change.
Remember my layperson’s definition of the economy as the way a society is ordered to manage resources? What if the way we thought about resources shifted away from the material to the creative? What difference could that make to the way we generate wealth for ourselves and our communities? And I don’t mean merely money.
As a creative entrepreneur, you have the capacity to generate social wealth, as well as financial wealth, in many different ways. Let me point to three of those.
First, when you share your talent and your insights as a creative entrepreneur, you enrich the local culture. You help weave the shared stories and experiences that make a collection of streets a neighbourhood, that transform a town or city into a real community. Storytellers, dancers, musicians, fashion designers: you don’t just entertain us; you teach us how to be human together.
Second, when you collaborate with others, offering your creativity in service to organizations, you make innovation happen. The polycrisis we’re facing needs your gifts and expertise—because scientists and engineers can’t solve it on their own.
Here’s the thing: an invention is just a “what if” until creatives communicate its value in ways that connect with the people who will adopt the invention and start using it. (That’s not just a creative talking—that’s established innovation theory.)
Writers, filmmakers, graphic designers, photographers, podcasters: you can bridge the gap between what the visionaries see and what customers and stakeholders understand and want. You can use your imagination and your skills to translate novel ideas, products, or services into real-world impact.
The third way you can generate social wealth as a creative entrepreneur is even more consequential. When you offer your artistic gifts to the world, whatever you’re producing delivers a byproduct whose value is beyond price: hope.
The polycrisis has plunged us into the Age of Anxiety. We all feel the mental and emotional pressures of living with wildfires, nine-dollar tubs of yogurt, threats to public safety, and so on. Just a few days ago, the Quebec Association of Psychiatrists called on their provincial government to appoint a Minister of Mental Health. I’m sure we could use the same in New Brunswick.
And what’s the cure for such pervasive anxiety? According to Harvard-educated life coach, Martha Beck, the opposite to anxiety -- is creativity. In her latest book, Beyond Anxiety, Beck spells out the neuroscience of how our analytical brain feeds itself anxiety-inducing thoughts. The antidote to this self-defeating pattern is creativity. Creativity is the circuit-breaker; it provides a path out of the doom spiral.
On a personal level, this is super helpful. For those of us who are prone to anxiety, embracing creativity can awaken our curiosity, ignite our courage, help us live more fulfilling and fruitful lives. So far so good. But Beck also looks beyond the personal. She asks what widespread creative awakening could bring on a social level.
Creative people, she says, inspire others. And they tend to collect around them other people who are committed to living with purpose and integrity. By pursuing your creativity, you become a light to others, someone who generates not only financial wealth but also that social wealth that connects and energizes workplaces, neighbourhoods, communities.
To those of you who have just completed the Moncton Creates program, I encourage you to think about your next steps in Martha Beck terms. How can you use creative entrepreneurship to help combat the Age of Anxiety? And what will it take for you to become an inspiration for others?
And for the rest of us, I think the question is “How can we support these emerging entrepreneurs as they bring their creative gifts to the market?” How can we empower them to become luminaries in a vibrant economy that makes New Brunswick financially and socially wealthy?
I can’t wait to see how these newest alumni of Moncton Creates will light up our province.
Are you looking for a keynote speaker for your next event?
I’m developing some new content on communicating with Compassionate Clarity that will challenge the conventional way we tackle knowledge translation and science communication. Let me know if you’d like to explore this or other topics as a potential centrepiece for your next gathering.
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