The 5 Ws of Creative Venturing

The What:

This is a blog about creative venturing. In this introductory post, I try to answer what is it that brings me to do this. It all started with the idea of bringing together my life experiences and skills I learned as I ventured through life in a critical and somewhat academic way. Nevertheless, the more I thought about it, the more I appreciate how lucky I was despite the heaps of unlucky events I have come across. I think to say what this is all about, I have to talk a little bit about myself and answer a set of questions, and what better questions to answer than the 5 Ws?

The Who:

I keep thinking about ways to answer this question, and it boils down to three main attributes I chose to attach to my identity, which branch off into sub-categories that start to intertwine, just like an olive tree from my hometown of Qatma, located on the edge of the Kurdish area of Afrin in contemporary north-western Syria. Thus, I am a Syrian (attribute one), artist (attribute two), and researcher (attribute three).

Qatma relative to the world- Google Earth

In addition to myself, you, the reader, also matter to this. I intend this blog to be aimed at the general public with an interest in technology, interdisciplinary arts, politics, and research. A good exercise for you, dearest reader, might be to try and put yourself into loose boxes, branches, or attributes.

The Why:

This is something that I have always wanted to do, the project has been brewing in my mind and on this website for quite a while now, as I’ve had the ideas and the tools to put it to work, but I never really gotten around to doing it. The catalyst for the materialization of this blog is that it has been assigned to me as a part of my master’s studies, and now that I have to do it, I’m doing it.

To answer “Why are you doing this?”, I can think of a few reasons:

Documenting

I’ve had the misfortune of going through what I’ve been through while being fortunate enough to learn from my experiences and making the best out of what others might consider a “worst case scenario”. Therefore, I find documenting these experiences, in addition to the experiences of those I had the pleasure to meet along the way as an opportunity to not forget, and continuously learn and reflect on life.

Sharing

Autin Kleon tells you to share your work, and he does that because it’s a major component of being a creative professional. I think it also ties to the idea of generosity and not being selfish. One might wonder, isn’t talking about yourself the most selfish thing one can do? My answer to this, is just like my answer to most questions, it depends. I am not entirely doing it to flaunt about how great I am (although I might do that sometimes), but actually it might inspire some others to get to know me, and therefore get in touch with me in case there is something they need that I might be able to help them with.

Learning

I briefly mentioned learning in the “documenting”part of my action, and it’s just simple as that, I am doing this to learn blogging by doing. Moreover, I am doing this to learn about myself, and perhaps give a space for others to learn from me and my experiences.

The When and Where:

This is pretty easy to answer, the focus of this blog is contemporary events. In my lens, it is everything from 2011 to this date and all the events that might have helped shape the events I will be talking about. I will try my best to stick to what is happening in my life right now and reflect on previous events, while learning from others.

I will be focusing on Europe and the Middle East. More specifically, Germany and Syria. Where is also a question to where I stand, so I will be looking at these two spaces, or places, from my perspective as a refugee. These two places are the closest thing to what I would call a homeland. Funny enough, as I write these words I can think of a phrase “home should never be a place that hurts you”.