ICE’s Ikigai festival shines light on the need for creativity in civil engineering

NCE was invited to the Ikigai festival in central London on 14 October to see how creativity should be used to inspire positive change in the civil engineering profession. Ikigai is a Japanese word which translates to ‘purpose of life’.

ICE president Anusha Shah led the event, and was joined on stage by Dragon’s Den star Deborah Meaden amd Arcadis London city executive Peter Hogg.

Meaden presented awards to young people who had made civil engineering-related art, poetry and music in front of an audience in ICE’s iconic One Great George Street venue.

The festival also saw live music performances and a sustainability-themed fashion show.

Shah said she thought of organising the festival when she was chair of ICE London almost 12 years ago, because she “really believe[s] in the power of art and music to spark innovation and creativity and to think outside of the box”.

“I think in our industry, we really need that, because we are so involved in our day-to-day technical work,” she continued. “Sometimes you need to take a pause and just go into a different realm and really unleash that creativity.”

Shah said her motivation for running the event was both to promote the benefits the arts can bring to civil engineering projects and because projects are getting bogged down and lacking creativity.

Sustainability was a major theme for the festival, with links being drawn between creativity in civil engineering and rising to the challenges of climate breakdown and the biodiversity crisis.

“With the climate and nature emergency, we know that we can no longer work in silos,” Shah said. “We keep talking about ‘systems thinking’. What does that mean? That means connecting across different sectors, geographies and across generations.

“But to do that, we all need tools and art and music are beautiful tools for people. It takes you away, and bonds you so beautifully like no other platform can.”

ICE director general and secretary Janet Young also discussed the connection between creativity and engineering, saying that it is “essential”.

The word engineer came from ingenuity, and ingenuity, I think, is all about innovation,” Young said. “It was really heartwarming to see all the young people coming up with their ideas about how to solve today’s problems.”

Young said the main outcome she would like from the Ikigai festival is for those considering a career in civil and infrastructure engineering to be shown that “it is about the bigger picture, and there are opportunities for them to display their creative streak”.

Hogg, representing event sponsor Arcadis, explained why he thought creativity was important for the sector, saying: “I love the idea that art and science are too halves of a whole. I’ve never bought into the idea that you’re either an artist or a scientist.

“I think the best, most creative and the most innovative, and dare I say it, the most interesting minds are the minds that bring both of those things together.”

On what he hoped would be the outcome of the event, Hogg said: “I hope that it will influence, first of all, the people who are not yet in civil engineering who might be tempted to believe that civil engineering is a worthy, but slightly unimaginative, slightly hidebound profession.

“And I hope that it will inspire people to believe that actually, you can be creative as a civil engineer. In fact, you should be creative as a civil engineer.

“I hope that it also takes a few corporate old farts like me and jolts us out of our comfort zone a bit, and makes us think that there can be a different way of doing things.”

Quizzed on why he thinks there needs to be more creativity in civil engineering solutions for complex challenges like climate breakdown and biodiversity loss, Hogg said: “We need creative solutions because we don’t have time on our side to work though things in a systematic, rather plodding, linear way. We need to fail fast and learn in a lot of what we’re doing here.

“I think we also need that level of creativity because if we don’t make potential new entrants to the industry believe that we are an imaginative, creative, aspirational place to be, they won’t join and we won’t have the best minds under this approach.”

Parallels with Project Level Design Principles

There were many similarities between what was discussed at the festival, and the National Infrastructure Commission’s Project Level Design Principles, a guidance document aimed at public and private sector clients.

The core four principles are climate, people, places and value.

The document explains how to develop and embed project level design principles. It urges them to lead and inspire teams to embed design principles from the earliest stages of projects, through to completion and beyond.

One of the key aspects of the guidance is for projects to appoint a ‘design champion’ who “will be accountable for the implementation of a sound design process, delivery of quality design outcomes and for the project maximising wider benefits”.

Shah said the design champion is someone who can “get the blind spots out”, referring to how a lack of creative oversight can lead to bad decisions being made.

She said that along with design standards, projects should have a design champion as part of their toolbox.

Ikigai winners

The ICE’s Ikigai Creative Arts Festival also featured an awards section for pieces of art on the theme of “Making connections for a nature-and people-positive world”.

Teams of two – with one person aged under 18 years and one over 18, were asked to submit either a piece of artwork, a photograph, a one-minute short film, a poem or a song.

Taking home first place in the artwork award were Freya (13) and Michael O’Neill for the piece ‘Focusing on building a sustainable future for all’, which highlights the vision a site engineer has to construct a bridge that respects the environment it’s built in.

'Focusing on building a sustainable future for all' by Freya and Michael O'Neill

The winning photograph was by George (8) and Jamie Richardson. Seen above, the shot of wind turbines features two budding engineers creatively illustrating the harmony between human energy production and nature.

The film category winner was Sia Nair (Year 9) and Krishna Zivra-Nair for their video entry, ‘Let’s reconnect’ which the judges describe as ‘lovely, personal, and strong’.

Zymal Mahmood (17) and Nabihah Begum’s ‘Echoes of Eternity’ poem which tells the story of nature intertwining with the modern world took first place. The judges described it as, “well-crafted and impressive”.

Kwok Tsun Hei (17) and Yu Chung Sing’s ‘Build the world’ was the winning song, and the judges applauded its beautiful lyrics and composition, as well as its seamless connection between civil engineering, nature and people.

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