‘Inspiring Creativity’ Urges You to Fight for Your Right to Play

If we all had a nickel for every time we pondered “what is creativity?” and “where does it come from?”, we’d all be wealthy enough to fund every single one of our most outrageous creative pursuits. Italian coffee producer illy has asked it again — but this time, they asked almost two dozen artists and creatives whose names you know.

A product of illy’s sponsorship of the Tribeca Film Festival in April, “Inspiring Creativity” is a short film, produced in partnership with Liberatum, a global multidisciplinary cultural organization.

From the film’s description, “Inspiring Creativity” features “20 artists and cultural figures from art, fashion, film, design, technology and music — ‘Inspiring Creativity’ is an insider’s perspective on inspiration from the minds of well-known creative personalities.”

Those interviewed in the film include actor James Franco, composer and producer Hans Zimmer, musician and producer Moby, and TED founder Richard Saul Wurman, and dives into questions like “where does creativity come from,” and, perhaps more importantly, “where does it go?”

As far back as I remember, I kept having ideas,” explains Zimmer, “You go through your formative years, usually in school, where everybody’s trying to knock the creativity out of you. And it takes some stubbornness for creativity to survive.”

“Children, for example, who have no past, and no baggage, and no pre-associations are all creative. And the first thing the human being wants to do is create. The minute they have an opportunity to put something in their hands that can make lines, or draw, or paint, or break something or make a model or something…it’s all within all of us,” architect and designer Karim Rashid says, “Which really means that you could argue that the meaning of life is to create…and that we’re all creative.”

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Hanna Brooks Olsen is a writer and editor for CreativeLive, longtime reporter, and the co-founder of Seattlish. Follow her on Twitter at @mshannabrooks or go to her website for more stuff.