Two Days Inside the Rising Creatives Masterclass
Today, AI can create images, tunes, and writing in a matter of moments. So this week, at AJ Studio, eight young creatives are doing something rather radical for their age: they are learning to trust their own ideas instead.
Why do we do this?
Because the world is taking this seriously today. The OECD now measures creative thinking alongside reading and maths in its global PISA assessment, because the ability to generate original ideas is no longer a nice-to-have. It is a core skill for the future of work. And yet, with technology and globalisation racing ahead, the mall you last visited looks like a mall in any other country, and what you see on Instagram is what everyone else sees. Original thinking has never been so difficult to hold on to, yet never so essential.
That is the problem our four-day Rising Creatives Residency was designed around. Not how to draw better or paint better (although that happens along the way), but how to have ideas of your own, and how to develop them with courage.
Because the world is taking this seriously today. The OECD now measures creative thinking alongside reading and maths in its global PISA assessment, because the ability to generate original ideas is no longer a nice-to-have. It is a core skill for the future of work. And yet, with technology and globalisation racing ahead, the mall you last visited looks like a mall in any other country, and what you see on Instagram is what everyone else sees. Original thinking has never been so difficult to hold on to, yet never so essential.
That is the problem our four-day Rising Creatives Residency was designed around. Not how to draw better or paint better (although that happens along the way), but how to have ideas of your own, and how to develop them with courage.
We won't give away our whole method here (a good recipe stays in the family!).
But we can share with you that very student-generated ideas entirely from their own minds. No Pinterest, no searching, no borrowing from a screen.
Some found this uncomfortable for about ten minutes. Then something shifted, and it has not shifted back since. By Day 2, every student had a finished sculpture standing in the room. Not perfect. Done. There is a difference, and done is better, because a deadline is one of the best teachers a young artist will ever have.
But we can share with you that very student-generated ideas entirely from their own minds. No Pinterest, no searching, no borrowing from a screen.
Some found this uncomfortable for about ten minutes. Then something shifted, and it has not shifted back since. By Day 2, every student had a finished sculpture standing in the room. Not perfect. Done. There is a difference, and done is better, because a deadline is one of the best teachers a young artist will ever have.
When something collapsed in the studio (and things collapsed!), we said what we always say at AJ Studio: that is not a disaster; that is what learning should look like. By day two, the students were saying it to each other: "fail fast, fail forward". That might be our favourite outcome of the week, because it is the one expectation we set in the first hour: take risks, lots of them, and fail forward.
Tomorrow, their ideas will learn a new language. On our final day, the work goes public.
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