The talent myth: how to maximise your creative potential

"Most of us grow up being taught that talent is an inheritance, like brown hair or blue eyes. Therefore, we presume that the surest sign of talent is early, instant, effortless success, ie, being a prodigy. In fact, a well-established body of research shows that that assumption is false. Early success turns out to be a weak predictor of long-term success.

Many top performers are overlooked early on, then grow quietly into stars. This list includes Charles Darwin (considered slow and ordinary by teachers), Walt Disney (fired from an early job because he 'lacked imagination'), Albert Einstein, Louis Pasteur, Paul Gauguin, Thomas Edison, Leo Tolstoy, Fred Astaire, Winston Churchill, Lucille Ball, and so on. One theory, put forth by Dr Carol Dweck of Stanford University, is that the praise and attention prodigies receive leads them to instinctively protect their 'magical' status by taking fewer risks, which eventually slows their learning.

The talent hotbeds are not built on identifying talent, but on constructing it. They are not overly impressed by precociousness and do not pretend to know who will succeed. While I was visiting the US Olympic Training Centre at Colorado Springs, I asked a roomful of 50 experienced coaches if they could accurately assess a top 15-year-old's chances of winning a medal in the Games two years from then? Only one coach raised his hand.

If you have early success, do your best to ignore the praise and keep pushing yourself to the edges of your ability, where improvement happens. If you don't have early success, don't quit. Instead, treat your early efforts as experiments, not as verdicts."

(Daniel Coyle, 25 August 2012, The Independent)

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Olympic Games 2012: ceremony highlights

Stadium UK: BBC Olympics title sequence revealed

"RKCR/Y&R, Red Bee Media and Passion Pictures' director Pete Candeland turn the UK into a giant sporting venue for the BBC's Olympics marketing trail and title sequences

Super-stylised athletes are seen competing in Scottish lochs, terraced streets and around London in the film which will be used across all the BBC's TV and digital Olympics content. The film also features Five Steps, the Olympics 'theme tune' written by Elbow.

RKCR/Y&R developed the concept, the animation was by Passion and the sequence was produced by Red Bee Media. It will be used for the BBC's 2012 title sequences and on desktop, mobile tablets and 'connected' TV content. A full two-minute, 40 second version will be premiered on BBC ONe on July 3. 60, 40, 30 and five second versions will be used throughout the Games."

(Creative Review, 2 July 2012, 10:12)

Fig.1 BBC "Stadium UK" created by Agency: RKCR/Y&R; ECD: Damon Collins; Creatives: Jules Chalkley, Nick Simons, Ted Heath, Paul Angus; Production company: Passion Pictures/Red Bee Media; Animation production company: Passion Pictures; Director: Pete Candeland.
Fig.2 Published on 24 Jul 2012 by "london2012", the London 2012 Olympic mascots Wenlock and Mandeville.

Bruised Arts Council chief Sir Christopher Frayling steps down bemoaning 'beer and skittles' level of debate

"Sir Christopher Frayling bows out this week after five years as chairman of Arts Council England - and one thing he certainly won't miss is the 'relentless venom'.

Speaking before a valedictory lecture tonight, he advised his successor to sort out cultural events that will surround the 2012 Olympic games and called for a deeper debate about the value of the arts, describing the current level of discourse as 'a bit beer and skittles'.

But it was the matter of dealing with the council's detractors that he highlighted when reflecting on his own time in charge. 'I had no idea the extent of the venom that could be directed against ACE,' he said. 'I had to develop a much thicker skin. It was relentless.'

The most fearsome dose of it came, he said, when ACE, the body that administers state subsidy for culture, announced funding agreements with arts organisations last January - and pulled the grants from 185 of them. The arts world rose up against ACE.

'It was horrible. I was getting calls at home at 2am from people furious about the letters they had just received. There was a moment in an elevator of the Algonquin Hotel in New York in January. I was there to give some lectures and I hadn't quite realised the extent of fury. Mike Leigh happened to get into the lift and said: 'What are you doing to National Student Drama festival, you shit?'

The fury culminated in a meeting at the Young Vic in London. 'When Nick Hytner [director of the National Theatre] said ACE talks bollocks and is bollocks, and launched a tirade, that upset me. It's one thing to be bad-mouthed by someone who has given you bad news but we had just uplifted the National's grant.

'I won't miss the venom, people chucking things at you. I hoped someone would give me a tin hat for Christmas sometimes. But I enjoyed the meetings - though sometimes it was like wading through treacle.'

It is time, he said, to 'stop kicking ACE ... no one ever mentions its achievements, they just simply mention its problems'.

'When the National Theatre opened its doors on Sundays, everyone thought it was a good idea but no one mentioned the £150,000 from the Arts Council. Sometimes people just don't know what we do ... it's partly because of our rather unfortunate logo, which could be mistaken for a stain from a coffee cup,' he said.

He believes the priorities for his successor, Dame Liz Forgan (who is also the chair of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian and Observer), should be threefold.

'Sort out the Cultural Olympiad,' he urged. 'It's not that it's a shambles, but there are too many committees jostling for position and no ringmaster. When the opening ceremony at Beijing took place you could tell it was the product of a single intelligence; the same is true when Sir Hugh Casson masterminded the Festival of Britain in 1951 ... the clock is ticking away and I am not getting a feeling of what it is going to feel like. Someone has got to lead it. And it should be handed over the Arts Council to administer.'

Forgan should also focus on 'making the case for arts funding in forceful ways during a recession'.

'Remind the Treasury that the arts cost tuppence ha'penny, and it's 'good' spending, because you get so much value from it ... a recession is the last moment you want to tamper with the arts, not the first.

'Franklin D Roosevelt realised this, and put millions into the Works Progress Administration [which involved many cultural projects]. It's an interesting example and Obama may be thinking the same way.'

He believes Forgan should focus on the relationship between the BBC and ACE. 'We are two public bodies producing an amazing amount of talent and yet we don't mesh. It needs a generosity of spirit to make it work.'

In tonight's lecture at the Royal Institute for British Architects he will express concern at the 'low level' of debate about the value of the arts.

'People tend to talk in terms of art for art's sake on the one hand, or art as a form of social engineering on the other. In fact the debate about the arts should be much more sophisticated than this; it has been going on since Plato's Republic, through Kant, the Enlightenment, Orwell, Leavis, Eliot and Williams,' he will say. 'But it's all a bit beer and skittles at the moment.'

Frayling will also talk in depth about the original principles of the Arts Council as conceived by John Maynard Keynes, its founder. Keynes believed the funding of the arts should be at 'arm's length' from the government in order to protect culture from politicisation. Although in Wales and Scotland the arts are now funded directly by government, Frayling believes it is 'essential that arts funding is kept away from civil servants and politicians'.

He said: 'When I took over that had been nibbled away at. The agreement between the government and ACE had once been a single-page document; it had become an eight-page document. I was outspoken about that and everyone sulked for six months.'

As he leaves ACE - and his rectorship of the Royal College of Art, from which he retires in July - he plans to write and broadcast; and spend more time with his wife, who lives in Bath.

Does a peerage beckon? 'I don't think I am the type,' he said - although he added: 'It would be nice to have more arts firepower in the Lords.'"
(Charlotte Higgins, chief arts writer, Guardian)

[He demonstrates an amazing lack of self awareness...]