Big Picture Questions to Guide Your Creative Day with Jutta Brendemühl

TRANSCRIPT:

Am I using all my senses to inform my decisions, including my spider sense? All right. If something doesn't feel right, investigate.

Today we're going to talk about five questions that you can ask yourself as arts leaders and creative entrepreneurs to guide your creative day, and to share these questions with us today is Jutta Brendemühl, who is a cultural catalyst and a curator working in international cultural relations. So welcome, my wonderful friend to you - thank you for being here to share these questions and prompts with us.

Thank you for having me, Heather. We're probably sitting in piles of task list and work flow charts that arts leaders, employ. And I'm looking at you and me. Oh, yeah. All right, so I try to direct my energy towards the internal seedbed that keeps generating any creative thinking and making. So let's look at how we approach your work.

And my five big picture self-check in questions begin with being here.

And this is a two for the price of one tip. Because you can look at it as am I here? Am I present? Am I rooting my engagement? With the world in reality, the good and the bad? Am I working with that imperfect reality? Am I using all my senses to inform my decisions, including my spider sense? All right, if something doesn't feel right, investigate. But secondly, you can also say. Am I here, right? Am I doing me? Does it feel authentic? Or am I simply going through the motions? So it's a gentle reality and authenticity check in.

And then my question number two is related, or a step further: am I looking at things from many sides now?

A Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now is playing in the back of my head when I do that second, in a film festival leaders meeting about our industry struggling and contracting, a colleague recently said, don't waste a good crisis. And I'm still recalling that perspective shift for me. So and creativity. Right. Which for me is lateral thinking, trying things out and really questioning everything is a superpower, especially in the face of adversity.

So, you know, take a 360 look, ask yourself and the people around you, what's happening, how we got here, what needs to be abandoned, adjusted or safeguarded? I'm a big believer in sort of cyclical reviews and workarounds. I get inspiration myself from being on the board of, culture or for what's coming or, okay project, for example, applying more of their prototyping approach, trial and error and feedback modeling for wiser outcomes.

I love all of that, and especially how you just said, questioning is a superpower. It's not like we have to forget that, but it's really that's also why I did this in a question format, right? Questions are where it starts. Yeah.

And just the next one is very personal and it's, tricky in a way: Have I broken any rules yet today?

Yes. Just the call to resist, you know, and whatever norm or pattern hinders you the most, choose that. We live in times of, like, stifling, streamlining, where even basic self-care, becomes just one more chore. So might not be popular, but say, for me personally, it's okay not to sleep eight hours a couple of nights to get up at 3 a.m. to put that exhibition idea on a piece of paper.

Or frankly, also the opposite. I probably shouldn't reveal this, but I just spend an entire Sunday in bed reading. Yeah, because I couldn't put down Sally Rooney's Intermezzo. I did find a life changing book, glorious day. And that it said my soul. So, you know, what I took from that again is if it feels meaningful, worthwhile, satisfying it, just do it.

And my question number four check in is simply: why?

I don't mean it in a what's the meaning of life kind of sense. But when I mentor, for example, I suggest to give yourself in your head, you know, three spontaneous and honest answers to the why are we deciding on this project? Why do I want to work with that artist?

So you know, just one, two, three. No big Swot analysis. But again, if you can reveal the intrinsic relevance and meaning of the work to yourself, then everyone can share in it. Yeah, I really love that clarity of, you know, it's this is going to sound grander than it. You know, it needs to. But that clarity of purpose.

Yeah, exactly. And again, it doesn't have to be. That's exactly the point. It doesn't have to be like the proposal. Pitch paper, write up reasons. But like the sense making to yourself so that you can stand behind what you do. Right. And only then can can good work. Emerge. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And then, not good speaker practice.

I know my last question sounds like a bummer at first. And it's: Are you ready to give up?

Now, hear me out: It is a good news story in the end. My favorite indie band from Hamburg, Tokyo 20, celebrates, joyfully giving up when all else fails in a song that goes, just before the fall.

When you think f it all, when you don't know how to go on surrender. Oh, and I like it because it's not in my gritty nature. And while I said, do you, above, you know, you don't want to not surprise or challenge yourself, either. And then for others, including audiences, by staying in your lane at all costs and at all times.

So for me, that song and pick your own song, you know, just reminds me in a, in a fun way to get unstuck, let it go when needed it. So to go to go all Buddhist, you know, beware of too much attachment or at least attachment for the wrong reasons or to the wrong things. Also in creative work, and arts creation.

Yes, that is amazing and so inspiring. Thank you so much, Jutta. Now where would you like people to find you online? Yeah, I live on Instagram. And it's it's at Jutta Brendemühl. As as anybody knows, I'm still happier to meet people in real life, so please say hi when we run into each other. Yeah, you know what we do, Heather, it is a people business, right?

It's about relationships. And you take them in the digital world and in the real world, and, try to develop them. Absolutely. Yes.

And I'd love for everybody watching and listening to let us know the questions that maybe you ask yourself. To inform and guide your creative day.

Please join us next week, where we'll have a new conversation and new points of inspiration and information, with our next High Five. See you then.