UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK – what it meant to me

Throughout 2022, I had the exhilarating thrill of working for UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK.

It was a helter-skelter-big-wheel-Galactica whirl of a time as the team worked fast, furiously and relentlessly to deliver a programme of ten projects around the UK, none of which had ever been done before. 

It was also great fun. I was climbing aboard See Monster, a decommissioned gas platform that had been brought from the North Sea to Weston-Super-Mare and transformed into a garden, waterfall and showcase of renewable energy; I was lying back in Dreamachine, listening to music specially composed by Jon Hopkins, and seeing a dazzling array of patterns, all with my eyes shut; I was dancing with Dandelion under the stars as it inspired the people of Scotland to grow their own food in schools, on windowsills and in unexpected gardens…

Much has been written about the £120m UNBOXED programme that originated in Theresa May’s 2018 Conservative Party Conference announcement of a year-long festival of British creativity and innovation. There’s been a lot of noise about whether UNBOXED was or wasn’t a festival of Brexit, which has been tedious.  Soon there will be an independent evaluation of the programme by KPMG, which I expect will be interesting.

I want to write about what UNBOXED has meant to me personally.

I was proud to work with Dandelion, commissioned by Event Scotland as part of UNBOXED. Dandelion brought together music, growing science and community, including this floating garden seen beside the Kelpies. © Eoin Care

UNBOXED’s claims about creativity

UNBOXED: creativity in the UK was a celebration of creativity and as such it made some clear claims about what creativity is. It said creativity is about science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) as well as the arts.  It said everyone’s creative. It said creativity changes the world.

I have been working in (what we now call) the creative industries for all my professional life, but I have never come across an organisation that stands for creativity in quite the bold way that UNBOXED does.

Even within the creative industries, I have come across some who see creativity as an extra – the sprinkling of hundreds-and-thousands on the trifle of life, rather than the source of life itself. I have encountered the idea that some people are creative, and others aren’t. There are plenty who still see creativity as the preserve of the arts.

What set UNBOXED apart, for me, was the premise that there’s creativity in STEM as well as in arts and culture.  The whole programme was built on that. UNBOXED commissioned ten teams to make work around the UK that brought together STEM and the arts in creative collaboration. It commissioned astrophysicists, neuroscientists, engineers, software developers…

To me, that is far more exciting than commissioning arts as arts. I saw UNBOXED as articulating something about the creativity in all of life – if there is creativity in STEM, there is surely creativity in business, sport and parenting too.

Astrophysicist Stephen Smartt and my favourite children’s artist Oliver Jeffers worked together to create a scale trail of the solar system - Our Place in Space. (Oh how I loved the people who worked on UNBOXED.) © Claire Haigh

My understanding of creativity

I first become aware of the creative process through writing books. When I wrote my books and sent (what we still quaintly call) manuscripts off to the publishers, I had the sense it wasn’t me that wrote them.  I mean, I did write them. Obviously.  No one else had even read the manuscripts, much less written them.  And yet the books had a feeling of surprise on completion: “Oh so, THAT’S what they were about.”  Even I hadn’t known. I found it humbling, as though in writing l had been part of something bigger, participating in something that was mine and not mine at the same time.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, a storyteller and psychoanalyst of Mexican heritage, offers an image that helps make sense of this: “Always behind the actions of writing, painting, thinking, healing, doing, cooking, talking, smiling, making, is the river, the Río Abajo Río; the river under the river nourishes everything we make.” (Women Who Run with the Wolves)

I have come to imagine creativity as a “river under the river” that flows through the cosmos, flows through the earth and flows through each and every one of us. Being creative involves the discipline of working at your craft, honing, practising, showing up at the page. But it’s also about attending to the river, working with it rather than against it, paying attention to its rhythms and flow, knowing when to keep working and when to let go into dreams, when the ending has come and when you just have to begin.

I never heard anyone at UNBOXED talk about the Río Abajo Río as such. It wasn’t a phrase that was used in the DCMS Select Committees. It wasn’t how we talked about creativity around the office either. But in claiming that everyone’s creative; in funding teams to come together even before they had an idea; in investing in maths and science and tech as much as arts, UNBOXED came closer to my understanding of creativity than any other organisation for which I have worked.

Six Northern Irish bagpipers play amongst low lights on the ground at Gian's Causeway
These geo-lights were invented for Green Space Dark Skies, commissioned by UNBOXED, shown here at Giant's Causeway © Brian Morrison

What I gained from UNBOXED

I had a blast working at UNBOXED (see third paragraph). I got paid (of course).  I developed new skills (natch). I made friends for life (UNBOXED people were the most brilliant, kind and hard-working I have ever come across). I now have two stripes of grey on either side of my head, like a badger, that my hairdresser has confirmed appeared during the latter part of 2022.  I will never know for sure, but I reckon I earned my stripes through the intensity of the way we worked.

I cherish all of those things, even the badger-bit.  But what I am most grateful for is the way UNBOXED helped me to be true to my core. I was used to working in places that saw creativity as product, rather than a process; the visual bit rather than the words; the nice stuff rather than where the real work was done. My commitment to the “river under the river” was therefore a private part of me.  It was something I would speak of in a whisper, jot down in my journal, share on walks with close friends.

UNBOXED helped me to build a bridge between my core beliefs and the wider world. By placing the centrality of creativity firmly and squarely in the public realm, it enabled me to be myself, speak my truth and do the same.

In the foreground are beautiful flowers. Then there's a crowd of people in summer clothes enjoying them. Above are massive sculptures of trees.
My colleague Aqibul Ali took this picture of Victoria Square in Birmingham, transformed into a garden with PoliNations for UNBOXED. I was amazed by the power of plants to bring peace.

EPILOGUE

Several years ago, before UNBOXED was even a thing, I was working on a project that involved helping people to identify if they were creative.  “I have a fundamental objection to this,” I said. “I believe that everyone’s creative.”  I was a lone voice and so I quietly withdrew and accepted that the image of creativity as a river that flows through the cosmos, the earth and every human being was just my personal little quirk. Having worked at UNBOXED, I returned to the project and had a similar conversation with colleagues addressing the same issue. This time I didn’t back down.

I love you UNBOXED.  X

Four women sit on the ground looking up at SEE Monster - a gas rigged transformed into a garden with a waterfall
My dear UNBOXED colleagues at the opening of See Monster, the gas rig in Weston Super Mare that was transformed into an art installation

Place

Written in lockdown from the spring equinox (79 deaths) to the summer solstice (128 deaths)

Lime trees in Highbury Park Birmingham like a cathedral
Lime trees in Highbury Park, Birmingham, like a nave in nature’s cathedral.
 HOME AS PLACE

The summer house in our garden has become my writing place.  At one time, I used to write in the study, our converted loft, but not anymore.  The coronavirus lockdown means school is no longer a place but a series of emails. Consequently, the loft has been taken over. It has become the classroom and music room (and place for the Xbox, natch) while I have moved to the wooden shed at the bottom of the garden.

As I sit in my summer house, the blackbirds and wood pigeons are singing. I can hear children playing from somewhere in the mid-distance – between number 56 and 68, I would guess. Sometimes I hear a violin from number 72. Weeks ago, there would have been ambulance sirens, but those come less often now. I look back at our terraced house, through the fruit trees, over my son’s goal post and the homes of our neighbours snuggled down the street.

This is my place.  And it has changed during lockdown. Our road now has a WhatsApp group which means I know food has been collected from our doorsteps and taken to the foodbank. Shopping has been dropped off at the homes of the sick. Plants have been shared and libraries of books have been left on the little brick walls outside our houses. Now, when I look down our street, I don’t just see a row of terraced houses, I see kindness.

This is my place and I notice that, in many ways, my place has shrunk. I used to think of Kings Heath, with it rows of terraced houses and useful shops, as the outer edge of the neighbouring suburb of Moseley, where my son went to school and whose U15s cricket team I manage.  There was never a day when I didn’t go into Moseley and so I felt as though I lived in Moseley/Kings Heath. But those days seem a long time ago and Moseley seems like somewhere else. My place is smaller now.

Even the High Street seems some distance away.  I’m sure Asda, Smith’s and Wilko are still there, but I haven’t walked eastward and seen them for weeks. Each day in lockdown, I have walked west. I have taken my sadness, my peace, my worry or my joy to the trees; to Kings Heath Park with the oaks and poplars and silver birch. And I have walked down the lane, scented with cow parsley, to the neighboring park of Highbury. I have seen it change from the pink of April to the blue of May and the yellow of June. I have found an avenue lined with lime trees, like a nave in nature’s cathedral. Each day I have walked down that aisle saying Mary Oliver’s words “I am a bride married to amazement” in renewed wonder at the beauty just yards from my door.

So now, as I sit in my summer house, I no longer imagine my home as a place near the number 50 bus stop. My home is in a village on the edge of a meadow. It’s down from the wood, across the way from the pond where ducklings hatch and marsh irises bloom.

Church as place

Church used to be a place. We have all known since Sunday school that the church is the people, not the building. But the fact that the people only ever met in a building meant the whenever we talked about “going to church” we meant going to that place with a steeple or a bell. Not anymore. Our building opens once a week on a Thursday for the food bank. Otherwise, those that can – which I’m painfully aware isn’t everyone – meet through Zoom.

To my surprise, it works. In amongst the glitches and freezes and struggles with mute, we manage to pray. We can’t sing together. Even saying the grace together is tricky. Yet somehow that doesn’t detract from the simple experience of being a people together in prayer.

In many ways being released of “place” has made thing easier. For the past four years or so, we haven’t had a regular vicar, so we have exhausted ourselves either finding a stand-in priest (so we can have communion) or devising a service ourselves as the next best thing. Without a place, we can’t meet for communion anyway – so that sorts out the need for a priest at a stroke.

It sorts out another problem too. We are actually two churches that came together because the church can no longer afford to have a priest in every parish. The two congregations have tried to hold joint services but in practice, because the services have been in either one building or the other, one congregation has always been host and the other guest. By removing “place” we have been able to meet for the first time on equal terms.

All of which makes me wonder if we’d be better off without a building. Can we be a people without a place?

There are no easy answers to that one. The community has been formed through place – through the parishes and the buildings that stand proudly in each one. At the start of lockdown, I drove down to our church building in Balsall Heath with a boot load of food for the foodbank. There was Ivor tending the garden, Ann at the door with her apron on and Theo, my Godson, loading a trolley with food. How I had missed them! I missed them because they are amongst those who can’t join us on Zoom. I missed those ways of being together that are about tea and welcome rather than words. I missed the place because that’s where we feed the hungry, say farewell to the souls of the departed and share the seasons of our lives through song.

If we want to do those things – which we do – then having a place helps. But in the effort to maintain a place, with the history of expectation that goes with it, we lose our simplicity. Instead of serving us, our buildings become heavy weights of policy, finance and quotes for leaking roofs. I have no idea when we will return to our place or how I will feel when that happens, but I guess it won’t be like sinking back into a comfy chair. The affection for the organ, the sanctuary and bread and wine upon the altar, will be underpinned by a disturbing question. In holding onto our place, have we lost something more precious along the way?

Work as place

For the past 18 months, I have felt ambivalent about my place of work – London. I work for ScreenSkills, an organisation with goals dear to my heart, not least because it opens up careers in the screen industries to those who have been excluded in the past.

Even so, on my train rides down to London, I would look back with nostalgia at my home city of Birmingham. I would remember the days when I worked in the West Midlands as a journalist, combing through the region and crafting its stories. I would look wistfully on the days when I was an ambassador for Birmingham’s beautiful library, worked alongside the Grand Union Canal, or listened to the waves of protestors from an office in Victoria Square. I mourned the sense of belonging I had enjoyed through working in the heart of Birmingham for more than two decades.

For the past three months, I have imagined the city centre as still. I have assumed that stillness was either eerie or tranquil, depending on your point of view. I have imagined a thick quiet in the air where once there was the clacking of heels crisscrossing Pigeon Park and dodgem-style bumps of shoppers in the Bull Ring. (Like, I said, I’m guessing). In a way, there’s nothing for me to mourn anymore, because that hubbub of activity to which I once belonged, is no longer there. ScreenSkills, too, is of no fixed abode. We have a conceptual abode – a memory, an address that’s listed on Google and with the Charity Commission. But the daily reality is that we’re a community of people united by cloud, through purpose, not place.

In many ways, I like work better. We have an all-staff meeting each Friday, over Zoom, where we play games and hang out in breakout rooms. I no longer feel like a person commuting in from the regions but an equal member of the team.  We ask the question: “Do we even need a place?” (No answers yet.) And while we’re asking that, I know that Birmingham-based businesses are asking the same.

So what happens when work is about purpose not place? What happens to cities where that work once took place?  Will those who worked in offices ever return? And if we won’t, what will happen to our city centres? Will they become places of leisure more than industry? A place we go to change buses, try on clothes and go to the theatre, rather than hang out with colleagues in the nine to five? And if that happens, what will happen to the buildings? What will happen to the coffee houses that service them? If council meetings no longer need a council chamber, will there still be protests in Victoria Square? 

As I reflect upon this, my picture of a city starts to change.  Once if you named a place like, “Birmingham” or “Manchester” I would picture the centre with suburbs around it.  Now, when I imagine Birmingham, I begin to think of a series or neighborhoods, linked like a web rather than connecting to a place with middle.  And where once I used to think of goods and services as “made in Birmingham”, now I picture their origin in homes – homes that could be anywhere.  With some sadness, I see my city as its residential streets rather than the industry that was once at its core.

Place and belonging

And so, as I sit in my place at the bottom of the garden, watching the spring equinox slowly turning into the summer solstice, I notice that my inner world is turning as the places turn around me.

Places are guardians of our memories. They are our photograph albums, the soundtracks of our lives. When our places change, our connection changes with them. Being displaced has changed my imagination around my home, my church and my Birmingham and so my sense of belonging is changing too.

Some of those changes are sweet, like the fur lining of a winter coat. Others are quite disturbing. Comfortable or not, there is nothing to be done, except resist the temptation to hold onto the old ways of belonging or grasp prematurely for new ones. The old places and my attachments to them must fall away. The new belongings will come. They will come. They will surely come. I learnt this from the trees.

Do IVF mothers love their children differently?

The love of a mother is fierce as a lion, strong as an ox and tender as a dove. It’s the love that makes the world go round, an archetypal force that brings forth the generations and connects women of all classes and cultures.

But do women who have become pregnant through fertility treatment have a slightly different relationship with their children from those who have conceived naturally? Do the years of struggling to have a child make the love more intense if the baby eventually arrives?

Continue reading “Do IVF mothers love their children differently?”

Review: 21 Miles, Swimming in search of the meaning of motherhood

Warning: Don’t read this post if you’re interested in fertility and haven’t yet read 21 Miles, Swimming in Search of the Meaning of Motherhood by Jessica Hepburn. I wouldn’t want to ruin what could be a beautiful experience for you.

This is not so much as a review, as 21 reasons why Jessica Hepburn should step onto the stage and take a bow. Continue reading “Review: 21 Miles, Swimming in search of the meaning of motherhood”

Does motherhood make you happy? (And other questions I’ve not had time to ask)

One of the hardest things about being a mother, for me, is that there’s no time to think about it.

It’s arguably the most important job you’re ever going to do and – apart from the twenty-seventh rendition of Thomas the Tank Engine – is utterly fascinating.  And yet the demands of feeding, entertaining, wiping, holding, soothing and life-saving are so relentless it’s impossible to reflect upon what you’re doing as you are actually doing it. (I wrote about this at the time: Can you be a feminist if you can’t think?)

What I didn’t know during my child’s early years is that as your child grows so does the space to pause and consider. When he’s old enough to walk home from school alone, you gain an extra hour each day.  When she can stay in the house on her own, you gain another hour, maybe two.

Now my child is aged 11, I’ve found it’s possible to mine that rich repository of milky, burpy, tired-as-zombie experience in a way that would have been an impossible luxury only a few years ago.

I will be doing that next month at Fertility Fest 2018, at the Bush Theatre, London between Tuesday 8 and Sunday 13 May.

Fertility Fest is the world’s first arts festival dedicated to fertility, infertility,modern families and the science of making babies. I was part of the first Fertility Fest in Birmingham last year so I know it will be a thoughtful, emotional, caring and beautiful occasion. (I can’t tell you how much it made me cry.)

Lots of questions will be being asked:

  • How does not being able to make a baby make you feel about your body?
  • Are there different pressures and prejudices about infertility depending on the community you come from?
  • What makes you angry in the field of fertility, infertility, modern families and the science of making babies?
  • Why do we not talk about miscarriage?

The question I’m most looking forward to is one posed by the incredibly engaging and generally awesome Jessica Hepburn: Does motherhood make you happy? Jessica, who co-founded Fertility Fest, asks 21 women that question in her new book: 21 Miles.

I can’t wait to read it, not least because not all of the women said: “Yes”.  I know that motherhood has made me happy; very happy indeed, even when it’s meant I haven’t had time to think.  But I will relish the opportunity to reflect upon why – and do that with other mothers and those who longed to be mothers.  We are woven together with the same golden thread, my sisters.

 

The urban green of Birmingham

I’ve recently discovered where I live – in the countryside in the heart of Birmingham.

For around the past thirty years, I’ve been aware that I live in a city, the second largest metropolis in the UK to be precise.

I thought I was surrounded by buildings (mainly ugly ones), a spaghetti of junctions and a blast of cars. I just saw miles and miles of hideous sprawl wherever I happened to be. Continue reading “The urban green of Birmingham”