Positive Creativity
Positive Creativity is a living philosophy, research platform and community exploring how creativity can create positive change in an AI era.
Creativity shapes more than outcomes
As artificial intelligence accelerates the production of outcomes, we risk reducing creativity to what it produces.
Yet creativity has always created far more than products, campaigns and innovations. It builds confidence. Strengthens relationships. Helps us navigate uncertainty. Creates understanding. Shapes organisations. Connects communities. Influences our relationship with nature.
Founded by Emmi Salonen (Studio Emmi), Positive Creativity explores how we can protect and expand this wider understanding of creativity, so that people, organisations and communities continue to flourish.
Everything I do is underpinned by a simple but powerful idea: Positive Creativity. From the creative process to the final output, I believe design can bring people together, create sustainable choices and foster wellbeing.
Emmi Salonen
Founder of Positive Creativity, Studio Emmi and Creative Ecosystem Positive Creativity Manifesto
Read the ideas and principles behind Positive Creativity, and consider how they might shape your own work, relationships and decisions. Become part of its evolution by sharing the manifesto, emailing your comments and joining the wider conversation.
The benefits of Positive Creativity
What we create also creates us
❋ For individualsDevelop creativity that is sustainable, meaningful and connected to wellbeing.
❋ For organisationsCreate stronger cultures, better decisions, deeper participation and more resilient teams.
❋ For educationDevelop creativity as a lifelong human capability rather than simply a professional skill.
❋ For societyCreate the conditions for people, organisations, communities and nature to flourish together.
Explore Studio Emmi examples of Positive Creativity across individuals, organisations, education and society. Each story shows how the principles have been applied, what they made possible and what others can learn from them.
Positive Creativity is a living philosophy. Submit your own story to help grow this shared body of practice.
Positive Creativity in practise
Research questions
These are some of the ongoing questions Positive Creativity explores. Join the conversation by sharing your responses, challenging the ideas and adding questions of your own.
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Creativity shapes people and relationships long before anything is finished. How might our measures of success change if we paid attention to confidence, learning, participation and connection as well as what gets produced?
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AI can generate ideas and outputs at extraordinary speed, but creativity also involves meaning, judgement, lived experience and care. Which human capacities become more important as machines take on more of the making?
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Possibility is shaped by whose ideas are invited, heard and taken seriously. How can we widen participation so that futures are not imagined only by those who already hold power?
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Every creative process affects trust, belonging and how people see one another. What helps creativity strengthen relationships rather than extract from, exclude or divide people?
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Creative cultures often reward constant output and uninterrupted growth. What might change if work made room for rest, renewal, uncertainty, endings and new beginnings?
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Creative choices influence people, organisations, communities and nature, often in ways that extend beyond their intended outcome. How can we consider those wider consequences before, during and after the work?