Inside the Passion Pod. Exploring creatives’ passions on the side. #4: Matt Smith & Chris D’Arbon

When The Stable put out a call for creatives willing to talk about their passions on the side, Chris D’Arbon, creative director at DDI, sent this response:

I’ve actually spent all of last night racking my brain about this, what’s my passion?

I’ve gotta have one, I can’t be that boring…

Until I had an epiphany – I have heaps!

I am a walking talking example of the millennial audience we were so careful NOT to define for Kingpin.

I LOVE shoes
I’m really into rap music
I’m really into tattooing

While you could call these things passions, none of them really defines me. (The combination of them does).

All of my friends are the same.

They’re into everything from scotch, food & UFC to sneakers & wine (but never just one).

[Chris D’Arbon (l) & Matt Smith (r)]

Having a singular thing you’re into is in a lot of ways one-dimensional and boring to us.

My generation are pluralists – we are the first to have information about anything and everything at our fingertips and our passions reflect that.

I’m probably going to be one of the younger CDs she’s looking at profiling and I don’t know whether my ‘passion pluralism’ precludes me from her film,

But I do know I’m representative of a wider generation of ‘slashies’ if that’s we want to call it.

Hope that helps and isn’t a super annoying answer.

Of course, he was chosen immediately. We put him together with industry stalwart, The Hairy Banana’s Matt Smith, an old(er) gun with a very new passion. Matt began painting in earnest this year.

When it comes to creativity on the side, they have so many more ideas in common than they, or any of us, thought.

Matt Smith & Chris D’Arbon’s Inside the Passion Pod is the fourth in our series, exploring what it is that drives creatives and what they do with their curious minds.

Sponsored by Arc Edit, Alt.vfx and Flint Productions