Korea’s rapid economic rise from the ashes of Korean War spawned a culture that regards failure as a social ill and source of humiliation. But Nigel Carrington, vice chancellor of the University of the Arts London, urges Koreans to look to the bright side of failure.

Far from being something that has to be avoided at all cost, he said failure is a crucial factor for creative ideas that propel President Park Geun-hye’s “creative economy” initiative seeking to create new business opportunities using ideas and information technology.

“To explore and fail. This is a very interesting message in Korea because I understand your culture is about getting everything right,” Carrington told The Korea Herald. “But in some areas of creativity, you almost need to fail in order to be able to look for new and different solutions.

“Creative education is about learning differently. ... It is not about learning a specific process, it is about learning to work in an illustrative way. Trying out ideas, failing and looking for new ideas,” he said.

Not being afraid to fail is critical to fostering creativity to try out new things for students. “As long as you also have the confidence to know that failure is a part of success,” he said. 

The attitude of not worrying if you fail and the resilience to keep on trying new things is why the United Kingdom enjoys such success in creative industries.

Recent figures by the U.K. government shows that creative industries are now worth 71.6 pound ($111.7 million) to its economy. From 2011 to 2012, it grew almost 10 percent, outperforming all other sectors in the U.K.

The trial-and-error approach is partly what caused Carrington, a lifetime-lawyer, to take a dramatic turn toward the field of education. Despite enjoying success as an international lawyer, he felt he was failing to use different attributes of his personality in different areas, he said.

In addition to being open to fail, diversity can prompt students to think creatively.

“The creative education system (in the U.K.) did start in middle of Victorian era 19th century. We had lot of small creative education hubs in communities interacting with others,” he said. The interaction among disciplines helped people come up with new ideas and connections that would have been nearly impossible to make based on just their own expertise.

Carrington said the cultural diversity of the UAL students contributes to this process.

“For me, that’s what’s so exciting about my university: It is a huge melting pot of different cultures, all bringing their own social expectations, concerns and sharing them. That’s the most important thing,” he said.

Being open to different and new ideas can also help students achieve integration of different fields, which is being touted as a crucial element in creative economy. “Creative economy is increasingly about molding the two, bringing creative people with others that have brilliant technologies,” he said.

The cross-disciplinary collaboration can solve social issues as well. Carrington took an example of the design team at the UAL working with a material science research team to work on how to use natural substances to minimize the environment pollution.

He explained that such a process helps them change social behaviors and discover novel way to do things, which can help address social issues like pollution.

But U.K. also has its shortfalls, said Carrington. despite the country’s strength in creativity sector, it is starting to “lose touch with the urgency of also developing the technology that goes with it,” a field where Korea excels. Koreans are also exceptional in their capacity to focus on particular goal with “extraordinary precision” and working to achieve it.

Both countries have different strength, implying that they can potentially work to benefit each other.

“That’s why Korea and the U.K. fit well together. You have this technological advancement and we have this wonderfully rich creative environment that’s able to engage technology and use technology creatively,” he said.

Carrington graduated with a law degree from St. John’s College, Oxford and was a former managing partner of international law firm Baker & McKenzie. He became the vice chancellor of the UAL in 2008.

By Yoon Min-sik (minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)