Leslie Budd on... creatives

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In the past, creative individuals were treated as though they were exotic, neurotic and too individualistic.  As though they were cast members of the film The Devil Wears Prada.  Whether they were designers or just imaginative employees, they were treated as ‘nice to have’ but not core to the activities in business organisations.  But creatives have been core to many industries and businesses for many years.  If you visited an architect’s office or that of a consulting engineer, thirty years ago, you would have seen rows and rows of draughtsmen and draughtswomen creating designs.

Indeed, in many factories, the drawing office was seen as the preserve of oddballs for those working on the shopfloor making things.  This has changed somewhat with the invention of computer-aided design, but in the conservative culture, this suspicion lives on.  If design is going to be central to recreating, rebalancing and regenerating the economy, then creatives will need to be treated as core to this process and not just some add on to be dispensed with when things get difficult.

The bottom line is when things get tough, as we are currently experiencing, the creatives get going in developing a design economy which may be more robust than our current one. 

That’s my view.  You can join the debate with The Open University.