[Music]
I'm gonna hazard a guess that nearly
everybody in this room has at some point
had a marvelous creative idea that you
haven't shared with anybody else and I'm
prepared to guess that the reason you
didn't share your idea was because you
were embarrassed the fear of being
laughed at judged or looking silly
caused you to keep your idea very firmly
to yourself now our creative ideas
really are the worst for causing sweaty
palms and an increased heart rate when
the prospects of sharing them arises our
creative ideas are often very personal
they require a bit of soul bearing and
that makes us feel vulnerable and I
don't know about you but I don't
particularly enjoy feeling vulnerable
after that Society tells us lots of
things about what it means to be a
creative person creative people are a
bit eccentric maybe creative people are
all starving artists maybe we go there a
few here maybe creative people are just
a bit weird and we don't really like to
be associated with weird and the funny
thing is that when we're very small our
creativity is encouraged with great
enthusiasm small children are given
glitter to throw like confetti parents
will stand by and watch as play-doh is
smushed into expensive carpets and go to
any home that houses small humans and
you're very likely to be greeted by
fridges festooned with gorgeous colorful
pictures of stick men doing fun things
like skydiving and shopping
however the older we get the less our
creativity is encouraged creative
careers are perceived to be more risky
and so we very lovingly steer our
children in the direction of more
financially stable and reliable careers
like engineering and accounting the
artwork
comes off the fridge and we grow up and
we lose our innate ability to create
purely for the joy of creating now
thankfully this didn't happen to me
although my mum still doesn't have
stickman pictures on her fridge
however it's taken me over a decade and
a half of being a full-time creative
weirdo to really understand the power
that creativity wields I'm a
professional photographer and I spend
the majority of my time photographing
dogs I love dogs I think they're
brilliant and I'm particularly
passionate about underdogs and the
majority of the personal work that I
make features the greatest underdog of
all the rescue dog and I'm very
passionate about encouraging people to
adopt rescue dogs and that is a message
that I'm always looking to share with
the work I make now in case you were
wondering I do like to walk the talk and
as well as filling my portfolio with
rescue dogs I've also filled my house
with them these are just two of the many
dogs that share my home this is Edward
and Victoria also known as the twins and
they've been with me since they were two
days old and they're now three they're
still treated like babies yes I'm one of
those people that treats my dogs like
children now you may or may not be
familiar with the term black dog
syndrome this is a worldwide phenomenon
that essentially refers to the problem
of rehoming black dogs once they end up
at a shelter one black dog looks very
much like another they can be perceived
to be more aggressive and they don't
photograph well
which in the Instagram obsessed world we
live in is a problem of catastrophic
proportions and consequently black dogs
that find themselves at a shelter are
the least likely to be adopted and the
most likely to be put to sleep now of
course this seemed like an excellent
topic for my inner animal activists to
tackle so I decided to come up with a
photography series that could educate
people
about Black Dog syndrome and also of
course encourage people to adopt and I
very imaginatively named it the Black
Series to start putting this project
together I started photographing adopted
black black rescue dogs one by one to
highlight the despite popular opinion
they all look very different there's
nothing scary about them and they do in
fact photograph beautifully and to
really accentuate each dogs
individuality I decided to caption each
of the dogs portraits as if they were
being described before their profile was
uploaded to tinder the captions went
something like this
Casper likes the finer things in life
insists on silk sheets and has a secret
potion for wearing feather boas truffle
a part of an oopsie litter but insists
he's full pedigree he still thinks this
shoot was for Country Life magazine
please nobody tell him otherwise and
Guinness judgmental as all hell found
living under a trailer but is in no way
trashy now black dog syndrome is a very
serious issue but I knew that in order
to get people to sit up and take notice
of it I'd have to present it in an
original way
hence the captions and the black dogs
against a black backdrop which in theory
sounds completely ridiculous but it
works quite well in practice and I also
very specifically photographed just the
dogs faces I wanted people looking at
the images to engage with the dogs as
individuals and I wanted people looking
at the pictures to be able to relate to
the dogs in a similar sort of way that
you might relate to a portrait of a
person so with that in mind allow me to
introduce you to a few more of my dog
people
this is fear he is a high brow writer he
only spends time with other
intellectuals
and he's a master bridge player this is
ollie he's an ex stockbroker he earned
his millions in the dot-com boom and now
spend six months of the year on his
yacht in Monaco and here's Henry he's an
enormous introvert he loves football but
he has no idea about the rules
he simply chairs for the winning team
now making a series of work like this
and sharing it are two very different
things
and I felt enormous in a conflict before
I put this workout anywhere I'd been
planning to post it onto board panda
which for those of you that don't know
is an international creative community
that gets a lot of internet traffic so
on the one hand I was really excited
about sharing the work and getting the
message about black dog syndrome out to
a enormous audience and on the other
hand I was really worried that like the
previous five projects I'd posted on to
board panda it would be ignored and I'd
be left feeling disappointed rejected
and like a complete failure
add to that I'm not a writer but yet the
black series really does rely on the
captions to push it into the context I'd
created for it
and I was terrified that people would
read through it and just to think
goodness gracious this woman is clearly
not a writer and I would just look
completely stupid
but what really pushed me into sending
this work out into the world was the
fact that I had an important message to
share and that that message had the
potential to be life-saving for black
shelter dogs so I unleashed the black
dogs and I let them out into cyberspace
and as it happens I needn't have worried
because the Black Series very quickly
went viral and far from being laughed at
the board panda readers were laughing
and more importantly they were sharing
by allowing my imagination to run
with dogs wearing feather boas and other
absurd adventures I even sent one of
them on an mi5 mission I invited other
people to join in the fun and the
comments under each of the images were
filled with witty additions to the
stories that I had started people were
sharing pictures of their own black
rescue dogs and best of all there were
pledges from people to adopt dogs who
knew nothing about black dog syndrome
prior to seeing my work now the sad
reality is that every single dog here
represents at least another hundred
black dogs that didn't make it out of a
shelter but I knew that leading from the
heaviness of that angle would have made
the project fall flat and I think it
would have been largely ignored and I
believe the success of the project is
down to the combination of the images
and captions together I don't think the
images on their own would have had the
impact either and I poured my heart and
soul into writing these captions you may
have gathered I've got a slightly
childish sense of humor but it is
generally only reserved for close family
and friends I'm British I like to keep
my crazy quite safely tucked away but in
allowing the captions to be authentic it
was actually what caused the success of
the project and it taught me a very
valuable lesson about authenticity and
it got me thinking how many other
creative messages and ideas are we
missing out on because the people who
have them are too afraid to share them
and these creative ideas end up being
like our black dogs unwanted ignored
dismissed and gone in the blink of an
eye the black series has been
life-changing for me it's had over a
hundred thousand views on board panda
it's been shared on social media and
websites across the world it even begged
me a feature on The Daily Mail's male
online site in the UK possibly the
pinnacle of my career so far apart from
today
it's opened up opportunities for me and
it's the reason I'm standing here on
stage talking to you
despite the messages we may have
received about creativity growing up it
isn't a frivolous pursuit creativity has
the power to connect us as humans and to
cause positive change in the world the
Black Series is testimony to that so I
challenge you to find a way to connect
with your creativity dust off your
paintbrushes revisit the idea for that
novel start writing again about what
lights you up dig out the ballet shoes
yet the piano out of storage magic
happens when we allow our creativity
sometime off the leash and I think we
could all do with a little bit more
magic in our lives thank you
[Applause]
[Music]