Humour boosts creativity, and both share similarities.

Good humour is when you find a weird and wonderful link to something. Good creativity comes when you think of something unique and out of the box that hasn't been done before. Both provoke surprise by breaking the mould.

Why is humour good for creativity?

Humour can help to solve creative problems. It sparks conversation and laughs, and makes people feel more comfortable hence able to come up with great ideas and take that creative leap. Plus, humour is a stress buster! The higher the serotonin levels the more creative the thinking.

“In order to stimulate creativity, one must develop a childish inclination for play”

— Albert Einstein

Sometimes there can be a certain seriousness that comes with art, and the assumption that you have to have a load of academic and historical knowledge to appreciate it. Plus the general atmosphere in a gallery can often be intimidating and serious. Grayson Perry discusses this in his book Playing to the Galley (2014) where he encourages everyone to overlook this solemnity and that anyone and everyone can enjoy art.

Have a laugh:

Listen to…The Taskmaster Podcast
Watch…‘This Time with Alan Partridge’
Read…David Sedaris ‘Me Talk Pretty One Day’
Call a funny mate
Go to a comedy club

Take a brief and approach it as fun and silly (maybe not in all cases…) and you will probably come up with better creative ideas compared to approaching it more seriously. Engaging in humour, before or while performing a task that requires creativity, has a positive effect on creative output (Friedman, Forster, & Denzler, 2007).

'Humour is really important, it’s difficult to get by without it. You have to find it when you can. Throughout the day if I'm working long hours, I tend to listen to podcasts and things like that. The more you get to know the people who are hosting them you can kind of follow a thread of jokes with them.' - Rob Draper

'I was working with some guys before Covid and we used to meet up and do a 3 hour session once every 2 weeks, and our brief every time was that before we started we had to have 5 minutes of humour. And so everyone bought in an idea for each time, and we'd start off with something from Youtube, stuff we knew and stuff we didn't know. And it started off our sessions just having a laugh, and I just think it's so lovely.' -Paul ‘Nobby’ Davies

'I try in a lot of my artwork to inject humour. I don't know if it comes across that way, but you know, adding in a silly face of a squished strawberry somewhere or something. I guess physical humour… imagining a piece of food making a funny face could maybe be funny. I find it funny.' -Lauren Martin

‘There's this penguin called Sir Nils Olav. He'd been awarded some top honour in Norway, but I think he's in Scotland. There's some weird thing where this penguin gets taken to march up and down some arm of the Norwegian military. Every year there's a ceremonial penguin walk, and he walks up and down in front of the soldiers and then gets taken away again. Look it up, it’s a real thing.' -Katherine Hardy

Now go forth and think LOL to boost your creativity

Oi! News: Humour & Creativity