anthony galvin

Next month parliament will debate the removal of performing arts from exam options for 16-18 year olds. The debate will only take place because over 100,000 people signed an online petition. MPs on all sides seemed to have little understanding of the impact that creative and performance based subjects have on students. Both on their potential futures and the needs of businesses. 

I am someone who benefited enormously from studying music and drama throughout my schooling. In particular studying performance based subjects at GCSE, A-Level and then at degree level. These studies equipped me for life and work in many ways.

These studies introduced me to a creative literacy that I hadn’t experienced before. The ability to communicate abstract thoughts or big ideas through sound, word or gesture wasn’t always part of my life. I grew up in a declining northern town in the 80s and 90s. Performing arts field trips to local theatres and concerts opened my mind to a broader view of the world. It wasn’t easy for most 16 year olds to stumble across Brahms or Brecht in Rochdale.

Beyond exposure to a broader hinterland, these performance lead studies also started to develop a set of softer skills. They gave me confidence in-front of an audience, the ability to communicate as part of a group and an understanding the importance of rehearsal time. These are skills I continue to use and develop as part of my day-to-day work. Without them I wouldn’t be able to do the job I do now.

As with most of our daily lives, technology plays an increasingly important role in performance and the arts. I spent my late teens playing with a whole range of niche and now obsolete devices. Trying to wrestle their output into some sort of communication or emotional response. I do the same sort of thing now, just with a different set of technologies.

The key skills of the future are creativity and communication linked to technical capability. We should be encouraging more children to take creative performance based subjects seriously, not fewer.

Yesterday at AKQA London, Alec Ross took part in a Q&A. Ross is former innovation advisor to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The session was wide ranging covering genetic testing, cyber warfare and the US election. But the topic that got me thinking was when Alec described the skills that people will need in the future to be employable in a more automated world.

Alec’s answer was that people will need to combine excellence in technology, creativity and the humanities (social sciences, psychology, politics etc…). The need for “creativity in the age of automaton” isn’t a new idea. But humanities in the age of automation was a new addition!

Listening to Alec I realised that many of the best developers I’ve encountered in my agency career would already fit this profile. Developers with a background in music or fashion or cartoons or in some other discipline beyond just computer science. Some with a pure computer science background often have a hinterland - a not so hidden passion for triathlon or pickled onions.

This isn’t a plea for developers who don’t know their (pickled) onions. Deep tech knowledge, and a genuine understanding of the fundamentals is mandatory. It’s a recognition of the fact that a well turned out line of code on its own isn’t going to be enough. Solving complex problems requires deep collaboration. Collaboration with people of different disciplines and levels of technical expertise. The most successful agency side developers are not just receptive of input from designers, strategists et al. They are empathetic to the objectives of different disciplines and able to contribute to the process.

We often talk about T-Shaped individuals (especially when hiring). This sometimes masks the reality of an organisational structures and processes that make it hard for such people to succeed.

Finding ‘renaissance’ developers today is one thing. The T-Shaped developers of tomorrow are probably a bigger concern. If Ross’ hypothesis is correct then current trends in UK education policy are a serious concern. Rather than reducing the emphasis on arts and creative subjects, we should be emphasising the importance of these. Not at the expense of STEM subjects, but in conjunction with them. Perhaps I’m biased - I’m Music Tech graduate, who works in technology.