Kiwi comedian and creative entrepreneur Philip Patston will explore ‘what happens when creativity and diversity collide’ in a new blog on The Big Idea called The Creative Collide.

"I am fascinated to foster a dialogue that generates exploration and greater awareness of the similarity, difference, variety and range of creative experiences and expression."

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What happened to the power?

Waking up one morning this week to no electricity throws me. I roll over to verify the time to see if it is a reasonable hour to begin my day's ingestion of caffeine and freeze: no digital readout. I struggle to widen my consciousness and listen: no trickle of water from the fish tank. My worst fears realised: no power. No coffee. 

I get up and wander around the house in a daze of withdrawal and confusion. What to do? Everything in my morning routine feels on hold. No power. No coffee. Cold coffee? That's desperate. Other sources of heat? The gas barbecue...

The lights come on. So does the coffee machine. The barbecue stays unlit.

Later in the shower I reflect. How ridiculous that we have created the situation that every individual house relies on power from a wire connected to an external source of power. That we are so totally dependent on this external source that, when it fails, so does our ability to continue our lives unaffected. Why don't we use, by default, a combination of localised and collective power generation?

I'm totally unqualified to answer my own probing question. Thankfully, this is not a proposal for an alternative, dual-source electricity strategy, so I don't care. 

What I do want to propose is that this is an interesting analogy for creativity. Where does it come from? Within or "without"? How many sources of creativity do we tap into? What happens to us when one source dwindles? I think that for a larger than healthy percentage of the population, creativity does come from an external source: media, be it television, internet, films, music. That's fine, but as we increase the ease with which we can access external media, do we diminish our ability to tap into internal sources of creativity? And how does that affect our personal power?

Last week, the creative enterprise for which I am responsible, Diversityworks, launched Creative Momentum. It's a virtual movement to explore creative diversity. As a diverse creative myself, not only in who I am but how I experience and express creativity, I am fascinated to foster a dialogue that generates exploration and greater awareness of the similarity, difference, variety and range of creative experiences and expression. To kick off we have an exclusive keynote by creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson, who makes a compelling case for educational, commercial and cultural organisations to consider diversity, creativity and the nature of ability into the future.

The Big Idea will be featuring content from Creative Momentum and in this blog I will be taking a closer look at what I want to call the "collide of creativity and diversity" – what happens at the point of impact?

I'm Philip Patston – questionably gay, disabled, vegetarian, Kiwi comedian, consultant, creative/social entrepreneur. This is "The Creative Collide". Welcome to a journey of epic proportions.