“The Key - Quick Conversations on Creativity” Mark Denton (Artist & Creative Boss at Coy)

💬 “You’ve got to be out talking to people. Talking about your ideas, talking about their ideas and making connections.” 💬

That was the brilliant Mark Denton’s answer when I asked him: “What’s The Key 🔑 to Great Creativity?”

And there is a huge amount of truth in this, because it is how we met…when a great creative team from M+C Saatchi UK (Martin Latham & Ned Corbett-Winder) were in the pub discussing an idea with Mark Denton and he said…let’s do it! So with Graham Fink’s blessing and the Surfers Against Sewage client Hugo Tagholm loving it…off we went to Camber Sands to shoot a man covered in 💩 .

Mark Denton elaborated by saying:

1️⃣ “If you’re not having a conversation, and you’re being creative behind closed doors, no use whatsoever.”

2️⃣ “If you’re not in conversation, you might as well stay at home.”

3️⃣ “You get out and you start talking to people, the snowball gathers pace.”

🧠 What I love about Mark Denton’s perspective is that he is not talking about networking in the transactional sense.

He is talking about genuine curiosity. Conversation for the sake of conversation:

Learning.

Exploring.

Connecting.

And throughout the FULL 8min "Quick Conversation 🎤 ", there are brilliant examples of where those conversations have unexpectedly led Mark and the work he does:

🎨 Art shows

🎨 The Royal Academy Summer Show(!!)

🎨 Work featured on the front of The Big Issue

🎨 New collaborations and opportunities

💯 You genuinely do not know where conversations may lead…so as Mark Denton says “If you are not in conversation, you might as well stay at home”

…always lean in.

🙏 Huge thanks Mark Denton for the conversation, stories and reminiscing.

And no...we didn't get arrested in the Soho alleyway.