What It Takes to be Creative

Imagine sitting in a room full of creatives.  Now, imagine if that room were the entire city of Cebu. There is no doubt that a creative city like the queen city of the south could evolve into such a powerful and positive global force. The question is: “Are we all in the same room?”

Two weeks ago, around 700 creative minds gathered all in one place, from stakeholders, partners, students, agencies, educators, and other industry players at the 2nd Cebu Creative Industries Summit at SM Cinema 1, SM City Cebu.  As a business organization, CCCI celebrated this year’s Cebu Business Month (CBM) by acknowledging the creative sector as a pillar to boost dynamic economic growth in the country, amplifying tourism, information and communications technology and business process outsourcing (ICT-BPO) and entrepreneurship.

Two days back, a forum discussed about Mega Cebu: Making Waves at Ayala Center Cebu, another one of CCCI’s initiatives to excite Cebuanos about competitive and of course, creative solutions to better Cebu.

Today, we are in an age where creative products and services are in the most demand than they ever have been, as people and organizations realize the impact of art and design in our everyday life. The key, however, not only lies in the ability to attract the creative group, but to translate that underlying advantage into creative economic outcomes of high-tech business and regional growth.

Moreover, creativity does not result from the gifts of a few individuals only; it nourishes itself from the repeated exchanges among a variety of entities towards the development of new ideas. And in order for us to achieve this economic growth we all dream of, is to think differently.

This is where we come in. A city like ours can be a cluster that passionately embraces creative process to be fully expressed.

We live in a country where we’re given the incredible freedom to create anything we like, with access to all the tools we need to make it work. But then it becomes quite easy to lose focus and enthusiasm for what we work on and why we do it, which is why we all need to understand that this overall effort is to realize the vision of having a vibrant, equitable, sustainable city.

Together, our creative work can contribute to the legacy of human expression, ingenuity and innovation, to build a home for ourselves, that prides itself at the forefront of  a creative revolution.