From Creative Thinking ➪ Creative Feeling
QD #65 🌀 Last chance to join our upcoming Quest + illuminating links!
Dear Questers,
Sam here 👋 It’s just FIVE days till we kick off our first Quest of the year. Our theme is confirmed. The guests are booked. The weekly missions are gathering. All that’s left is YOU! What makes Creative Quests truly unique is how the experience is shaped by it’s participants.
You have until Sunday at midnight to sign up.
🗓️ Live workshops times for January are here!
🍿 Want to know how a Quest works? Watch this 2 min video.
A competition…
🎁🎁 WIN A FREE SPOT ON OUR UPCOMING QUEST 🎁 🎁
All you need to do is comment your answer to this question…
’What is a word that is guiding your 2025 and why?’
Creativity, Curiosity and Future of Jobs
Generally, Creative Quests is a non-worky space. By that I mean, we don't talk about work and day to day jobs all that often. Not because they don't matter (they very much do) but because a lot of people Quest to step out of work-mode and into a place of imagination and play.
I could tell you very specifically about the nuances of our Questers' creative spirits, how they see the world and what they care about - but rarely their job titles. It's rare to build relationships this way. People show up as themselves, not as representatives - as we often have a habit of doing.
Yet the ripple effects into people's professional lives are very real. Just the other day I had an touching email from a Quester from FOUR years ago sharing how our Quests had given her the confidence to take the leap into a big career change. Creative exploration is a powerful companion to our working lives.
The World Economic Forum just released their annual 'Future of Jobs' report, surveying 1000 global businesses on the ever-changing landscape of work. Spoiler alert - it's looking GREAT out there if you want to be a Farmworker (the #1 growing job around the world). Not so great for Cashiers (the #1 job in decline).
The report shows that the first three 'skills on the rise' are AI and big data, Networks and cybersecurity and Technological literacy. Perhaps no surprise there. All 'hard skills.'
But right behind them? Creative Thinking, Adaptability, and Curiosity. A very different type of skills. Soft skills, people skills, interpersonal skills... I think the fact that skills like these have many names is case in point to their broad-reaching nature.
So how do we truly nurture these qualities? Here's my hot-take (LinkedIn speak activated 🤢):
1. Rethinking "Skills"
Creative Thinking, Adaptability, and Curiosity are more like traits or attitudes. We can certainly practice them, like we might practice an instrument. But there are no rigid rules. It's not a physical technique or literal muscle memory we're mastering. When we practice creativity and curiosity - it's our spirit and approach to life that is being sharpened.
2. An Education Evolution
If Creative Thinking, Adaptability, and Curiosity are this crucial to the future of ALL jobs... we need entirely new spaces with different approaches toward helping people embody these traits. Not just for young people in schools - but for adults already deep into their careers.
Traditional curriculum-based training feels painfully inadequate here. Creativity is intuitive, it's individual. You can't teach someone the ABC's of thinking creatively and acting with curiosity - it needs to be experienced, felt, lived.
3. From Creative Thinking to Creative Feeling
What if we focused less on Thinking and more on Feeling? Hear me out...
What if Creativity and Curiosity aren't skills we need to teach people at all, but parts of themselves we need to help people remember and reconnect with?
Creativity is innate to us. When the environment has an exploratory vibe and we feel safe to be vulnerable - we are naturally creative. You see it when people are playing games with friends. Or deep in an unfolding conversation.
Our approach.
This is why I believe we need more places where people feel invited to explore what creativity means to them personally. Not through structured lessons, but through guided exploration and play.
Four years of running our Quest programmes has shown me that designing experiences for people to feel something - to experience creativity rather than just think about it - leads to vastly increased Creative Thinking, Curiosity, and optimism for exploring the unknown.
p.s - if you do work in an organisation interested in really exploring what Creativity and Curiosity mean to you… we design and deliver experiences that help you do just that!
🌀 Talks
🌀 Workshops
🌀 Team Days
🌀 Bespoke Quests
A round up of illuminating discoveries from our world…
🌀 Growth 2.0 - an incredible deck and and strategy from Zoe Scaman
🌳 How creativity changes as we age
💥 Hiut Denim’s Mavericks and Makers list 2024
🧶 Making space for a handmade internet via Figma
✌️ Six tools for your break-up with capitalism
💋 I absolutely adore these make-up wipe mono-prints from contemporary artist Sin Wai Kin
🏡 One street in Liverpool, UK is taking their future into their hands and laying out their vision for a 100 Year Street
📍 New York based creative space Index - are open for application for a new ‘Index Node’. If you have an idea for (or you are already running) a creative community space - $20K is up for grabs. Becoming part of their global space network.
Finally…
a quote for how I’m feeling for the upcoming Quest…
“I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring” David Bowie.
big love,
Sam x
CQ HQ
🥾 Quest Guide / Founder
📲 @saaamfurness
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As of January 16, that word is on its third iteration and here's why. I lost my husband of 40 years in May 2023. and then my longest friend (74 years) June 2024 from ALS. Who I am has been stood on it's ear. My first word was transmutation, a complete change, and then I realized I like the artist/writer in me and didn't want a complete change, so I moved to "shed" as in shed all that I've been carrying in grief, inhabit a new and shiny skin and see what happens. What happened is, having finished my MFA Oct 2024 and casting about for what's next, I am participating in a course on dreams at Atlantic University in VA (online) and the word I got from dreaming is curiosity. So there you go, my word is curious, and like Alice, I am the most curious of all to see what I do next.