Valuing creativity doesn't have to mean you're an elitist monster– but it could.
There was a time I got trolled by one of my own idols when I nonchalantly posted a photo of a french fry stand at a county fair.
If I remember correctly, I was saying how fun it would be to build our own version of this at the market I own. I thought it was fun and lighthearted.
Well, this other woman did not. And it devastated and humiliated me. (this is before I had a coach or had understood my own trauma, so I was basically an open nerve). She ended up delivering a public apology to me, and we spoke on the phone, but it took me a while to unpack this incident without feeling like a total elitist monster.
Things that became clear, during our phone conversation–
she had run a market in a way that she now regrets
she figured I was doing the same but she never stopped to consider that I was not her and I existed in an entirely different context with a totally different past and present
she was sort of re-experiencing her own pain and had learned a really important lesson and was acting on behalf of that original french fry vendor she imagined I was either taking business away from (I wasn’t) or belittling via saying I wanted to design my own version
So, a few things here–
Context is important
History is important
Humans are important
There are conversations to be had around elitism and access and what’s actually creative that I don’t know we’re having all that much
I learned a lot from this exchange, but I didn’t learn it until nearly 5 years later. Because I continued to live in shame and fear until early 2020, when I began to understand my own self concept and attend to trauma that I’d shoved down for years. All of this trauma effected my ability to love and trust myself. It made me feel less-than. It made it extremely painful to exist in the world we have where not everyone agrees with you or even gets you. Also, in our world there’s a lot of missing nuance, reading in to things, blaming others rather than understanding the situation, emotional bypassing, and more.
The World is The World, but I had also conflated it with me and was truly unable to engage with some bigger questions that are important in our creative industries– because I just felt too much shame to go there.
It’s good that I know more. It’s good that I have a coach to help me sort through what’s me, what’s business and what’s just the world. And to process emotion cleanly, and then get back to business.
So, in getting back to business, we can discuss what’s important. I think it’s important to understand the role of classism in design. I think it’s important to understand colonialism and appropriation in the creative economy.
I think it’s important to understand your own thoughts about design and creativity and see if you’re unintentionally adding to oppressive systems with your choices and money.
Creativity is so freeing. It’s how our hearts connect with the world. It’s how our hearts make visible our love for the world. But we can’t always expect that everyone has access to this way of thinking and being. They might not have access to the time, money and emotional energy it takes to bring beautiful work to life. It’s important to acknowledge that.
Aesthetics also have nothing to do with a human’s worth. They might make something you don’t like, but that means nothing about this human’s worth.
All of this is good to discuss, and also loving creativity is ok, too. You’re not an elitist / classist monster if you like design, but you might want to take a look at the thoughts and judgements about the things you don’t prefer and see where those thoughts have come from or mean in your greater value system.
As always, I don’t have all of the answers, but I am always here for the discussion.
xo