Recently I was home in the small Scottish town of Oban on the Argyllshire coast.I spent some time with my grandfather who is now the ripe young age of 89. To my astonishment he handed me a package to take back to Paisley and requested I research the enclosed documentation. With a cup of the finest Columbian coffee and a freshly rolled cigarrette I opened and skimmed the contents of the documentation without really thinking. Flashes of situations and contexts entered my head almost insatntly with every sentence (Cattle trains, disease, cabbage and barley soup, escape, the long march, stalag)
So there I sat with 60 pages of real life war memories. A diary of tough times to say the least. I am halfway through them and I dont quite know whether to search for footage and make a film diary or just print them along with his journey in pictures. The one thing I do know in the subjective world of the creative industries and things like writing atmospheres and textures or self indulgent Rock and Roll get kicked right into perspective. I have had no suffering or fear of death on a daily basis. Never really struggled or had any primal or basic hygiene need. I sit here with a nice large mug of coffee and a cigarrette and the luxury of escapism and the freedom to create whatever the hell I want. Without my Grandfathers suffering this would not be possible. It is also an opportunity to create as when the chips are down you only pour everything into things you care about so I will make something for him. Im not quite sure what it will be but it will be for him as a mark of respect. I am no great believer in Wars especially the quagmire of Iraq which is a disgrace and makes me feel disgusted and ashamed of my Government. My grandfathers documents have been a real eye opener.
He was a POW in Eastern Prussia for 5 years and survived. Before that he was hit by a german mortar and survived. Last week I twisted an ankle playing football and I survived. Puts it into perspective.

Serious creativity, Lateral thinking, thinking outside the box, and thinking differently. “I thought I was on a music degree, okay I will give it chance”. (September 2006)

Expre ss
By June 2007 I had invented and constructed a guitar amplifier built into an armchair, had artists painting live onstage while performing in my band and made a song up from radio static sampled in the Clyde Tunnel. Something had happened in between but what?
The usual suspects of writing and producing music were still evident but the portfolio along with the course framework had taken the leap of faith into, and perhaps more crucially the world of interoperability and multitasking.
This may be an increasing aspect of media degrees and perhaps a vital component where the jump from the last bastion of creative freedom and expression into the very real context of commercial viability and employability needs a flexible understanding along with a broad range of skills and compromise.
The harsh reality of the graduate to jobs ratio in the creative sector also makes the need for some individuality paramount. Not an easy task when considering the similarities in the digital toolkits available between art forms and their ability to combine any audio visual materiel on multiple formats.

Ob server
Did I subconsciously take in all the oblique strategies and creative thinking materiel to produce my portfolio? I don’t remember wearing a thinking hat or carrying random words in my pocket or even feeling more creative or arty. Indeed in many ways I integrated skills gained from my pre university days into the very process that was trying to discover new ones. Was this the point?

Star
One chair project, a dissertation, 24 weeks of marketing and promotion later I found myself sitting in a taxi feeling somewhat deflated that that the pressure was off when the driver asked me what I done for a living? When I told him I had just finished my music honours degree he remarked that, “I couldn’t be any good at it if he hadn’t heard of me or my band”
After a brief moment of thinking I countered this by commenting that I might also think he was a bad driver because I hadn’t see him in a formula one car, and then came that look in the mirror, that only they can do before he laughed in realisation.
Mirr or
Being reflective is a precious commodity and maybe that’s what I learned subconsciously rather than the theory on the paths of perception or A to B via interesting concepts!
What is certainly clear is that I pause for a few seconds before responding these days and let the brain rule the tongue. The creativity may just simply be the art of the thinking pause.

Time s
Hon esty is also required and the flip side of this is that if we are all being pushed for social and professional equality then we have to be individual but team players as well as compliant, but entrepreneurial at the same time. Does this mean we are all leaning towards media banality in both its consumption and ethics or entering a brave new phase of creative clones creating creatively?
The reality and a similar paradox may be that the major aspect of attending university for me was one of learning to think about, well thinking. One definite conclusion is that despite hundreds of hours of working on a computer, the moments I recall are very much communicated in real time, with real people by the way of active rather than passive interaction.

Grant Downie.

“Ca mpaign ing for Karaoke’s instead of televisions in taxis.”

Con cepts in this article were taken from
De Bono. E. (2006) Six Thinking Hats Video [Online], Available: http://www.edwdebono .com/debono/shvda1.h tm