“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make and could just as easily make differently”.

(Graeber 2015) 

Of all the notes I make throughout Professor Nic Clears lecture, this quote stands out to me.  Amidst a world of global, economic, social, ethical, and environmental challenges, it is sometimes hard to be positive.   Yet Clears lecture fills me with optimism.  It serves as a reminder of how we, the next generation of creative thinkers, can develop solutions to these challenges.  We are the change makers, visionaries and futurologists that can re-imagine a better world.  

Professor Nic Clear is in fact a qualified architect and he admits that most successes over the course of his professional career have in fact come from volunteering his time and skills, saying ‘yes’ to opportunities as and when they arise. He goes on to talk us through his back catalogue of work and I am struck by the multi-disciplinary nature of his practice to date.  He has been involved in a wide variety of creative projects including Educating Architects (Clear & Spiller, 2014), an anthology of essays on how aspiring architects should be taught and trained.  He has been involved with a variety of branding projects for clients including Sony PlayStation, Adidas, Dazed and Confused and Nike. 

The projects he was involved with in the music industry particularly stand out to me as he mentions names that I am familiar with.  Clear and a group of friends made low budget animations such as the 1997 video for Lo Fidelity All Stars ‘Disco Machine Gun’ on a mere £5k budget (Skint Records, 2010).  Glitches within the footage were seen as creative (when in fact they were mistakes!) 

The video for Groove Armadas ‘I see you baby’ was produced by Clears firm General Lighting and Power (GLP) in 1999.  The video features girls in pastel coloured leotards carrying out a dance routine that could be mistaken for an aerobics exercise class in the 80’s!  This is possibly the most well-known of the company’s work.  However, Clear states that the project that preceded this, the video ‘Herr Blokesh Im Memorium’ by MC Ninja and DJ Rabbi (that was put together by two ex-students, Ezra Holland and Tim Wilkinson – Ezra would go on to be a founder member of General Lighting and Power) was in fact the paradigm shift.

I begin to feel like I have terribly underachieved!  Wishing I had been more ambitious in my goals and perhaps had I not been distracted by the allure of a regular income through teaching I might have gone on to achieve greater things like Clear!  But I begin to resonate with him when he exposes his vulnerable side and admits to his failings.  He confesses to being a ‘terrible businessman’ and that his passion lay in the making of work.  Having a failed business under my belt by the age of 37 I can relate to this.  I take some comfort in reading Group Genius (Sawyer, 2017) when he states that “..failure is a fact of life in the collaborative organization.  But it’s a law of innovation that success can’t go up unless failures go up, too.  And because we can’t have the success without the failures, we need to create organizational cultures that cherish failure…..In short; fail often, fail early, fail gloriously.”  Perhaps my failures in life have in fact prepared me well for this module?

I draw further comparisons with my own experience when he explains that he had always taught 1 day a week and the moment he enjoyed teaching more than his own work was the time he moved into full time academia.  He passes comment that teaching and research are his love and that he would do it for free! I highlight within my notes the statement from Clear; ‘good teachers don’t get in the way of good students’.  He has put in structures to support a broad skill set of students, including Kibwe Tavaris who, in 2011 as the final project for his Masters at Bartlet School of Architecture, produced the film ‘Robots of Brixton’.  And Lizzie Osborne whose project ‘Cesspits of Filth’ is a speculative project that studies the history of Huddersfield’s iconic 80’s gay club. Once described as ‘The Studio 54 of The North’.

Clears major research themes, of which there are 4, are;

1 = Conceptions of futurity (science fiction, Utopia) 

2 = Architecture and the moving image

3 = Advanced NBIC (nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science)

4 = Advanced Architectural Representation

Although he does confess to having no time for his own research but rather works on lots of little projects instead.  He supports his colleague’s creative practice such as film editing and organising conferences and exhibitions (the latter of which he states this as being the bedrock of what he does).   Clear suggests that rather than saying no to opportunities for fear of ‘not having the time’, we might consider how one ‘makes things’ already and how it might fit in with what we are interested in.  

 I am reminded of the group project and my early concerns that the subject I study, Creative Pattern Cutting, didn’t contribute anything to the ‘UnBoxt’ project.  However, by adopting Clears ‘say yes’ attitude and utilising my own skills in organising, leading, verbal and written communication, my ‘place’ revealed itself within the group and I believe that my contributions, despite not being directly associated to my discipline, became valid and purposeful.

Clear goes on to discuss his PhD by publication within which he outlined his practice.  Clears time management skills and determination (developed through his early career) came in to play here when he states that he ‘went into job mode’ to write the PhD paper in only 6 weeks.  He goes on to explain that he broke down time and the word count to set himself daily word targets.  He calved out time in his day that fit in with family and work commitments (early in the morning) to ‘produce’ and he wrote for 3 to 4 hours a day.  As a part-time MA student, busy Mum to two young children and a programme leader on a BA (hons) Fashion programme I can resonate with this advice as I find, like Clear, that the only way to ‘produce’ is through being accountable to the strict deadlines I commit to.

I am inspired to listen to Clear deliver some truths about the Creative Arts Economy.  Being from a Northern, working-class background and the first generation of our family to attend University, I have at times faced a lack of understanding of my chosen career from those close to me.  Concerns that the arts will not provide me with a ‘steady income’ has occasionally inflated my own anxieties and sense of imposter syndrome by increasing the volume of the voices in my head that say, “this is not a place for you”.   However, Clear states that the UK Creative Industries are worth £34 billion, 7.1% of the economy, 2.1 million jobs in total and accounts for 2.7 x job growth (he ponders out loud that these figures be rather conservative as it fails to incorporate games design).  Drawing our attention to the ‘levelling up inquiry’ – a government Report and Recommendations or ‘the case for culture’ reminds me of the funding streams introduced to us by Rowan Bailey (see blog post 5) and I feel more than ever that this is the right time for our business concept, UnBoxt.  I make a note to discuss with my team the need to convey the project viability in our final presentation. 

The final words I scribbled within my lecture notes summarise the presentation perfectly and I make a point to ‘be more Nic’ going forward;

“Ask yourself ‘what if’.  Take risks”.

“Create the world you want”.

References;

Clear, N., & Spiller, N. (2014). Educating Architects: How Tomorrow’s Practitioners Will Learn Today. Thames and Hudson Ltd.

General Lighting and Power. Groove Armada – I See You Baby ft. Gramma Funk [Video]. You Tube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzQ1__h35bA

Graeber, D. (2015). The Utopia of Rules. First Melville House Printing.

Osbourne, L. (2020). Cesspits of Filth. Lizzie Osborne. https://www.lizzieosborne.co.uk/recent

Skint Records. (2010, June 17). Lo Fidelity Allstars – Disco Machine Gun [Video]. You Tube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k29HRpInuU

Tavaras, K (2021, September 29). Robots of Brixton [Video]. RIBA Education. https://tinyurl.com/5n8kpnff

University of Huddersfield. (2023). Nic Clear Profile [Photograph]. Pure Hud. https://pure.hud.ac.uk/en/persons/nic-clear