Curiosity, courage and random connections are the key to creativity, which makes
Sir Martin Sorrell’s recent comments that gap years are “wasted” time because they’re “ill-organised” and depend on “serendipity” seem completely out of touch.
There are certainly issues around the gap year. You only need look at Matt Lacey’s YouTube smash “Gap Yah” to recognise that the gap year is facing a marketing problem. In fact, it’s in decline: the percentage of Ucas applicants deferring by a year slipped from 7.9% in 2002 to 5.4% in 2015.
But embracing serendipity has never been more important for the next generation of creative leaders. Here are five reasons why gap years can be valuable assets to a creative career:
A life lived in linear is over
Just as brands are abandoning traditional media platforms for more fluid forms of communication, what constitutes a career is fundamentally changing. Today’s graduates want something more meaningful than simply climbing the corporate ladder.
The notion that great creative careers are built on maintaining the status quo and fear of failure is fundamentally flawed.
The fundamentals of ambition have shifted
Today’s graduates are rejecting the “ambition economy” and placing a greater value on independence and authentic experiences.
These shifting aspirations are clearly also a response to the significant economic pressures faced by grads. Home ownership may no longer be an achievable goal for Generation Rent, but travel, shaping their identity and living authentically and flexibly is.
Life in the now
In the light of significant economic pressures, living in the now is a key trend – delayed gratification is not on the agenda (if you don’t have a gap year now, when will you have one?).
A 2015 survey commissioned by the Sutton Trust revealed that 78% of young people were concerned as potential students by the cost of living, 68% by high tuition fees and 58% by having to repay student loans.
Three-quarters of students will be paying off loans in their 50s, so it isn’t surprising that many young people want to take time out to ensure they’re ready to commit
to university.
The serendipity factor still counts
Sorrell is infamous for his predictions on our industry’s economic performance, but in the digital age, creative success is often a happy accident. Not even the WPP chief exec could have predicted the frenzy that grew over watching a puddle or the debate that rose over the colour of a dress.
In this climate, being a part of the world and not just watching it from behind a computer screen or reading about it in the lounge of a business class airline is vital.
The education of the curious mind still matters
As JK Rowling writes in Very Good Lives: “Many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are.”
Staying curious about the world, exposing yourself to random situations and connecting with people are still the focus of the great creative minds.
Sorrell suggested instead that young people learn “computer code and Mandarin” – both noble pursuits, but not mutually exclusive to travelling.
We may not all have the luxury of a gap year, but failing to engage with the world around us (by travelling, going to university or seizing an exciting career opportunity) is to shut out the serendipitous and the random – key to a creative career.
Jonathan Fraser is chief strategy officer at Exposure Digital
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