Why Living Abroad is Good for the Creative Process

You may have thought that is was a coincidence that many of the most famous and successful artists, authors and even scientists have spent a considerable amount of time living abroad during their lifetime, however, a detailed study has now been conducted and concluded by scientists in America to prove that there is actually concrete evidence that proves that living abroad fuels creativity.

The likes of Nobel Prize winning writers from Yeats to Heaney, composers such as Handel and Stravinsky and artists such as Picasso and Gauguin not only spent time living abroad, but created many of their signature masterpieces whilst living overseas.  Such facts have always led people to suggest that living abroad broadens more than just physical and geographic horizons…but now, thanks to American scientists, we have physical and practical proof of why living abroad is actually so good for the creative process.

You may wonder about the relevance of such a study – yes, the findings are of course interesting – but what use are they to us, what can these findings do for us and how can they help us?  Well, in this report we will show you how living abroad fuels creativity and why it is important to understand this fact and begin to explore it even further as the whole world spins more towards completely embracing globalization every day.

Five separate studies and experiments were conducted in large business schools and universities in the United States and in Europe – in each case the participants in the experiments were unaware of the underlying reason for the study, and came to engage in the tests voluntarily.  Following the test the international respondents and participants were questioned about their nationality, the amount of time, if any, that they had spent living abroad, and then this data was combined with their performance in each test or survey.

Without a shadow of doubt, the absolute conclusions that can be drawn from these studies is that, of those who had spent time living abroad, rather than just travelling overseas or simply remaining resident in their own home nation, their creativity was heightened.  The authors of the resultant overall study into the correlation between living abroad and enhanced creativity accepted that some may suggest that creative people, by their very nature, are more likely to spend time abroad.  However, they were able to fairly successfully counter this argument by highlighting that there was actually no proof of enhanced creativity in those who simply travel abroad.  Therefore, surely if creative people are more likely to live abroad, they are also more likely to travel – yet there was no proof that overseas travel enhanced creativity.

Having lived and worked abroad for many years in various different nations, we at Shelter Offshore can confirm that the fact that one is exposed to different ways of looking at things depending on the culture you live in means that you actually have to adapt creatively to embrace these nuances of alternative cultural behaviour.  For example, in certain nations and amongst certain religions, showing the soles of your feet is a massive insult – yet in the UK or in the US, think how pleased you would feel if your welcomed guests felt relaxed enough in your presence to put their feet up and really chill out!  Or, consider this, in the UK if you’re at a dinner party and you leave food on your plate at the end of a meal your host may feel insulted, and that you did not enjoy what was offered to you.  Yet in China for example, leaving food on the plate is a compliment suggesting that your host was so generous you had more than enough to eat!

These changes in looking at standard behaviour and ideas that are almost forced upon you when you move abroad can act as “inputs for the creative process,” according to the authors of the study into how and why living abroad enhances an individual’s creativity.  What’s more, “conceptual expansion” that happens naturally as a result of learning, in time, to fully adapt to one’s new nation of choice, is directly beneficial for creative enhancement.  Therefore, if you truly want to advance creatively, if you want to get more out of life and be in the best position to put more in, if you want to learn how to think outside of the box and realize that a box needn’t necessarily be made up of square pieces of cardboard or indeed be a receptacle for carrying things, we would suggest that you move abroad for a while!

After all, as the world embraces multi-culturalism and globalization – as proven by the fact that we are currently experiencing a global financial crisis that began in America and has rippled throughout the globe and across multiple nations causing chaos – surely it is up to us to be in a position to accept this concept and this process, embrace it and use it to enhance not only our lives, but the future for our children?  Click here to read the report in full.