(This post was originally shared on LinkedIn, you can find it here.)
Most organisations are running on empty. Burnout, disengagement and a constant push to optimise processes have left many people feeling more disconnected than ever. Yet the resource most often overlooked is one every organisation already has: human creativity.
Arts-based interventions (ABIs) use drawing, painting, theatre, music, poetry and storytelling to help people think, collaborate and learn differently. They are not decoration. They are a practical way to address the roots of workplace dysfunction.
Why it works
Art engages emotion, memory and reasoning at once. This builds cognitive flexibility, the brain’s capacity to make new connections. Einstein described a similar process he called “combinatory play”, blending analytical and creative thinking to solve problems.
Researchers Ariane Berthoin Antal and Anke Strauß identified 14 categories of added value from ABIs, including personal development, perspective-taking, better collaboration and stronger crisis management.
What artists can teach us
Artists bring curiosity, resilience and comfort with uncertainty, what researchers call an “artistic attitude”. Leonardo da Vinci’s habits of sharpening the senses, balancing logic with imagination and making new connections are, in effect, 21st-century workplace skills.
The barrier is mostly internal
The hardest part of ABIs isn’t logistics. It’s the stories we tell ourselves: “I’m not an artist.” “I’ll look silly.” Many of us carry bad memories of art from school. But overcoming that fear builds confidence in other areas of life, too.
Where ABIs help
Innovation: Letting the mind wander generates the volume of ideas from which breakthroughs emerge. Not every idea will stick, so more ideas mean a better chance that one will.
Team building: Because most people feel a little exposed, ABIs level hierarchies and surface communication problems that might otherwise stay hidden.
Learning: ABIs make learning engaging and personally meaningful rather than compliance-driven.
Two ways in
The icebreaker stream uses five to ten minutes at the start or end of a meeting, through scribble drawings, guided visualisations or story cubes. The studio stream creates dedicated space and longer experiences for strategy work, with internal facilitators and ongoing programmes. It’s both-and, not either-or.
Proof points
In the 1990s, Xerox PARC’s Artist-in-Residence programme paired artists working in new media with scientists. Planned as a one-year experiment, it ran for six years because of its impact on innovation.
Departments of the Danish government had struggled for ten years with a lack of collaboration and knowledge sharing. In a five-day workshop built on arts-based methods, a team solved the problem. The studio stayed in place for two years afterwards.
Start small
Frame your first attempt as an experiment. Begin with a group that is already friendly, and let the experience speak for itself. Energy shifts, and responses become more thoughtful and detailed. Measure what you can, such as engagement, retention and collaboration quality, but don’t reduce the creative process to numbers.
The future is human
As AI and automation reshape work, the distinctly human capabilities ABIs develop become more valuable, not less. The secret to productivity may be less discipline than joy.
The question isn’t whether your organisation can afford arts-based interventions. It’s whether it can afford not to.
Sources: Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence (2021), “Radical Knowledge Management”; Meisiek & Barry and Berthoin Antal & Strauß in Artistic Interventions in Organisations (Routledge, 2016); Darsø, Artful Creation (2004).