Do you know a creative who doesn’t have something on the side? Something that gets their blood pumping and makes their heart soar? Simon Lister, David Nobay, Justin Drape, Scott Nowell…they all have them. Maybe you just have to.

The Stable – with sponsors, Flint Productions & Alt.vfx, and Arc Edit – have explored the sideline passions some of AUNZ’s top creatives. Some are wild. Some are awesome. All of them have a common thread. If you keep coming back over the next six weeks you’ll work out what that need is. It’s probably the same as yours.

Colenso chief creative, Nick Worthington’s, passions on the side (below) and creative director, Ruben Cirugeda’s (next week) are presented in written form with images. Then come our Sydney creatives, who were filmed in twos and threes in our stunningly low-tech Passion Pod, whose unrelenting stench of just unrolled plastic and milk crate seating definitely added to the quirkiness to the insights given. Last comes Michael Canning, whose passion is so secret that he can’t even tell us about it yet. He promises that it’s amazing.

Picture the head creative of advertising powerhouse, Colenso, on a motorbike with you riding pillion. Done that? Good, you’re ready to get into Nick’s passion:

EASY RIDER

Riding motorcycles has saved my life. I’m pretty sure of that. When you ride a motorcycle you have to live in the present.
You have to be there in that moment, the faster you ride the more focused you become.
There is no room for anything else, your mind becomes clear.
It’s a kind of meditative state and you literally leave all your worries behind.
I could leave work with the worries of the world on my mind and by the time I got home I would be fresh again.

Ready for Jane and the kids.

Likewise, I could leave the house in the morning and by the time I arrived at work my mind would be clear.
If I took public transport or the car, by the time I got to work I figured somebody already owed me something.
So dangerous though it may be, it is probably what’s allowed me to work in this business for so long and keep on enjoying every moment.

I’ve thought a lot about it over the years, and having your mind completely absorbed in a simple action – in this case guiding 200kgs of metal at speed along a chosen course for hours on end – allows your mind to be free.

A bit like meditation.

And when you come out of that state, it’s incredible the clarity you can achieve. Your subconscious mind will have spent the time solving the problems quietly without you.

Chopping wood for an hour or two is great too. Maybe it’s therapy. I guess the vintage bit is as simple as I am now pretty old myself. I seem to never sell my bikes and consequently the collection has grown.

I still have bikes I had when I was a teenager.

I have recently bought a space and started The Tuesday Club, a place for likeminded art and motorcycle obsessed friends to make stuff.

We’ve all learnt to Tig weld and now we’re learning to bend.

It’s just a way to ensure I actually get to do the things I want to do, things that are hard to find time for during the working week.

ECO WARRIOR

I am also quietly obsessed with solar power. We have a house on an island which is completely off grid.
And Colenso and our home in Auckland are both generating their own power from the sun and on occasion feeding clean green power back into the grid.

It’s a beautiful thing. And the dream would be for NZ’s electricity generation to become 100% renewable.

We’re at 82% now, and with a bit of a nudge the last 18% could happen very quickly. So I got involved with a little company called Sunergise a few years ago and we have grown rapidly, with most of our work happening in the Pacific Islands where solar power can make the biggest difference. Their power generation comes mainly from diesel, so switching to solar creates huge cost savings and of course in those precious archipelagos the environmental savings are even greater. In NZ, the economics are a little tougher as there’s a lot of cheap power already from hydro, so the savings aren’t as great, but slowly switching off the last of the coal, gas and oil burning power stations has to be the goal.

And every KWH generated from the sun displaces a KWH that would have been generated by fossil fuels. And unlike dams, windfarms or geo thermal, the environmental impact of roof mounted solar is tiny.
I guess I have this romantic idea that one day I will work for the sun. When it gets up I get up, when it goes to bed, so do I.

Being in the ideas business has allowed me to stumble upon lots of other people’s ideas. People who want help telling their stories. And sometimes instead of being paid to help you become a founder or a shareholder, or both. I’ve had great fun working with the team from Stolen Rum. And those guys have taken a giant leap into the US market. Which is very exciting to be a part of and to help the brand grow.

Likewise I have been lucky enough to become involved with a US/Kiwi company called HECS. They make invisibility cloaks. Well kind of. Clothing that masks your electromagnetic signature. It’s basically a faraday cage, with a lattice of highly conductive carbon fibre strands woven into the fabric. Any fabric. And it makes you almost invisible to certain animals letting you get closer to nature. Really close.

That’s where catching crayfish by hand comes in. Which has to be my ultimate luxury. But perhaps the most exciting thing emerging from that tech is the lack of stress created in animals and insects when people are working with them. Hecs is working with Auckland University and beekeepers among others. They have now scientifically proven that when the beekeepers wear Hecs clothing, the bees become less stressed, which makes for happier healthier bees.

And that’s just the beginning. So much to do.

ON BEING 90% SHIT. 10% BRILLIANT

What are the main stresses of being a top level creative? People management. That’s the really tough bit. It’s hard to have a high performing team all the time, and everyone needs to grow, develop and be happy. But there is always someone who needs looking out for. People get stuck. And when you feel you’re letting people down, or worse, when you have to let people know they are not working out, that’s hard.

But that’s management. The creative bit is easier.

The trick is not to get into a downward spiral of self-doubt. That can be really destructive and debilitating.
So I expect myself to be 90% shit and 10% brilliant. So when I do stuff that sucks, I don’t worry, I just do more ideas and eventually a gem of some sort will pop out.

It stops you getting stuck and avoids the self-doubt. Yeah, that’s me. Shit most of the time. But if I keep at it and do enough I know I’ll get to somewhere good.

I developed that attitude in college. I asked a friend how come he always pulled a girl everywhere we went. What his secret was. He simply replied, “Nick mate, I ask 10 girls out a night, and eventually someone says “yeah”, I haven’t ever had to ask more than 10. You ask one girl out a year and when they say no you’re too afraid to ask another girl out for a year. It would take you 10 years to have the same hit rate I have in one night”.

I had assumed Mark was 100% brilliant with girls, but he was 90% shit, 10% brilliant. Just like the rest of us. I then went and applied the same thinking, not to girls, but to my work, and it transformed the way I felt about my work and myself.

IF I COULD DO JUST ONE THING

I have always admired Stefan Sagmeister. I hear he shuts his studio every 7 years for a whole year. Then re-opens it 12 months later full of fresh influences and restlessness. That’s brave.

I have too many things I want to do right now to stop everything else and do just the one thing.

But the main thing on my bucket list if I am honest is to take off on my motorbike with Jane, a credit card, two toothbrushes and no agenda or destination, just a heap of people and things spread out across the world that I would love to see.