“Creativity is the strongest economic currency and the purest form of human expression and potential.”

MYKEL DIXON

“When we’re children, creativity is so natural and so accessible to all of us. Unfortunately, as we grow into adulthood and move into our professional lives, our creativity is often lost, diluted or suppressed. It’s heartbreaking but unsurprising.

We’re all products of an institutionalised education system that was developed well over a century ago. What we’re taught might have changed but how we’re taught is largely the same. Aside from numeracy and literacy, we are taught to conform, to be compliant, to memorise information and compete with one another.

We’re predominantly a generation of well-educated people who are terrified to take risks, share our ideas, look foolish or raise our hand before we have a question – all prerequisites for the emerging economy and fundamental to creative living.

We‘ve forgotten that behind the job title or portfolio or bank balance, we’re all born to create – it’s not just something we do, it’s something we are. We are genetically designed to reimagine and reinvent the world around us. Creativity is the strongest economic currency and the purest form of human expression and potential.

This is exactly what Australia needs – to reimagine, rewrite and rebuild our story. We need to transcend our national identity, jetison our colonial past, make amends with the traditional owners and invite all voices to the table. We need to reimagine who we want to be and the legacy we want to leave behind. And we might as well have a radical time while we do it!

This is why s p a c e is so important. To dream and design together. To go all the way in and all the way out so that we might snap ourselves out of and into ourselves. To write the next chapter for this country, together. One live-improvised musical at a time!”

Check out the rest of the s p a c e guest list or connect with Mykel on LinkedIn

*Interview and write-up- s p a c e storyteller, Sian Gooden