Scenius is like genius, only embedded in a scene rather than in genes. Brian Eno suggested the word to convey the extreme creativity that groups, places or “scenes” can occasionally generate. His actual definition is: “Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius.”
The Technium: Scenius, or Communal Genius
There’s a healthier way of thinking about creativity that the musician Brian Eno refers to as “scenius.” Under this model, great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative individuals—artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers—who make up an “ecology of talent.” If you look back closely at history, many of the people who we think of as lone geniuses were actually part of “a whole scene of people who were supporting each other, looking at each other’s work, copying from each other, stealing ideas, and contributing ideas.” Scenius doesn’t take away from the achievements of those great individuals; it just acknowledges that good work isn’t created in a vacuum, and that creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds.
What I love about the idea of scenius is that it makes room in the story of creativity for the rest of us: the people who don’t consider ourselves geniuses. Being a valuable part of a scenius is not necessarily about how smart or talented you are, but about what you have to contribute—the ideas you share, the quality of the connections you make, and the conversations you start. If we forget about genius and think more about how we can nurture and contribute to a scenius, we can adjust our own expectations and the expectations of the worlds we want to accept us. We can stop asking what others can do for us, and start asking what we can do for others.
Share what you love, and the people who love the same things will find you.
Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon
What I take from Aaron is that the best way to be truly productive on the margin, is to try to build for other people and connect them together. You don’t pretend to be indifferent to your own sense of what a better world would look like, and you need some degree of ruthlessness to work towards it. You have limited time, energy and attention, and at some point, you are likely to have many more people asking for these scarce resources than you can possibly help or satisfy.
Inevitably, your own ego is going to be implicated. Acts that you yourself perceive as relatively selfless will persistently curve back into your own self-interest, because that is the way that human cognition works. But exactly because this is true for everyone, small shifts on the margin towards collective good provision can have outsized consequences. If scenius is indeed much more productive and creative than individual genius, then you ought spend more of your time cultivating it – finding interesting people who might fit together in unexpected ways and figuring out how to connect them and build spaces where they can do their own stuff. And doing the dishes while you’re at it.
Jakob Nørlem and Nikolaj Stegeager describe the emergent properties of an art talent environment. They present an empirical study of young artists’ experiences within a talent development program. Their research draws upon systems thinking and a holistic ecological approach to talent development. They based their study on interviews with six young artists. The authors emphasize that in Scandinavian countries like Denmark, art, music, dance, literature, painting, and film are recognized as important and valuable. Engagement in the arts is a precursor to creativity and holistic learning. Opportunities and access are encouraged. Too many educational systems (world- wide) do not value creative and artistic expression and yet, as writers like Lynn Newton and Douglas Newton (2020) suggest, teaching for creativity and the arts can enrich science, mathematics, engineering, and technological innovation. This article provides valuable and timely insights into the importance of encouraging artistic literacies with all learners. Nørlem and Stegeager highlight the importance of effective educational program planning and organizational development in creating and nurturing a learning climate where youth can develop their artistic abilities. The authors integrate systems theory in writing about the importance “ecosystems” of learning are to dynamic talent development and creative learning. Norlem and Stegeager write that “living systems are constantly in a state of becoming. A system never stays the same; rather, it is constantly changing due to its interactions with its surroundings” (p. 158). This idea has implications beyond the classroom so that “every member of a community of practice is simultaneously a contributor and a learner” (p. 159). The authors’ research is consistent with the development of a cosmopolitan curriculum that is dynamic, transdisciplinary, and holistic.
Instead of perceiving talent as an innate property of the individual that is nurtured and enhanced through tremendous effort, we advocate for an understanding of talent as a complex quality that unfolds in a web of relations. Talent development is a relational activity requiring cooperation. As Lave and Wenger (1991) argue in their influential work, learning should be understood as an integrated part of practice. Lave and Wenger advocated a shift in the analytical focus of learning research from the individual as the focal point of all learning processes to learning as a process of participation in communities of practice. Their contribution facilitates a decentered learning perspective: Talent resides not only in the talented youngster but also in the entire community and learning stems from continuous interaction and participation. Every member of a community of practice is simultaneously a contributor and a learner.
If you want to grow as a creative, find a scene. Or make one!
Scenius: why creatives are stronger together – The Creative Life
