Got 30 minutes to spare for a sustainable creative industry? Creative Confessions needs you

Beating yourself up every time you fall short of own expectations? Doubting your own abilities every time you have too little work? Feeling like your leaders are taking you for granted? You are not the only one, which is why a handful of award-winning creatives are putting together an initiative with a mission to change it.

“To be honest, I find it very strange that mental health and work psychology isn’t a part of every creative education,” says Veronica Mike, founder of Creative Confessions. “I mean, first of all; creatives are up to four times more likely to develop mental health problems, and their job is based on their own thoughts, ideas and emotions — and to have them judged by others. Secondly, many will at one point end up as leaders or be self-employed, and everyone will for certain be working closely with a bunch of complicated people! No wonder this industry is full of incompetent leaderships, rough work environments and struggling freelancers and entrepreneurs. Right now it’s a dog eat dog / save yourself industry. It’s time to build a space that takes care of its creatives, instead of working against them.”

It was through her previous job as Chief Editor of design magazine A New Type of Imprint at Oslo based ANTI, that Mike started noticing the patterns that eventually made her quit the job to start developing Creative Confessions — a project on mental health + the creative mind, with the ambition of building a more people-friendly and sustainable creative industry.

The mission of the project which Typeroom totally endorses is to promote openness to fight feelings of loneliness and abnormality, and to develop tools for schools, hubs and offices that can help prevent mental health issues.

“We want all creative schools to include at least one lecture on mental health and work psychology, so that students can both prepare themselves of what might come (not feel alone or abnormal), but also so they can become good/competent creative leaders in the future,” says Mike. “We also want to teach lead creatives of today (CEOs, Exces, CDs, Educators etc.) basic knowledge about human psychology, how the creative mind works and how they personally can prevent mental health problems at the school, hub or office.”

To kickstart the project the team have develop an anonymous survey on creativity + mental health, with the purpose of giving creatives half an hour of valuable self-reflection, and at the same time figure out what seems to be the biggest challenges in the industry, and most importantly: how to change it. All the research will be released later this year.

“We got more than 100 answers during the first two days, and so far there is no doubt that it’s an initiative that is much needed and can create a positive change for many,” says Mike. Got 30 minutes to spare / ready for some soul searching / wanna help build a more people-friendly and sustainable creative industry?

Do answer the survey here and be part of the solution, not the problem.