VANCOUVER - At last Friday’s CreativeMornings/Vancouver, musician and writer Shaun Huberts tackled the global CreativeMornings theme of play for the month of October.

As well as touring for the past 10 years with a number of rock and indie bands, including Tegan and Sara, Huberts wrote a book titled How to Pack Like a Rockstar which offers a new way to organize a suitcase—using a file folder concept rather than traditional stacking.

Considering the theme of play, having a bass-player as the speaker seemed natural, obvious. But instead of talking about playing music, Huberts talked about other forms of play—outlets for creativity that are unrelated to what you do as your profession.

Displaying a dictionary definition of play: “Engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose., esp. by children” it is the “by children” part that caught his attention. “Why are children better at that than us?” asked Huberts.

When in our lives do we decide we can’t play anymore? For Huberts, it was when he was 13 years old. He recalled phoning a friend who was one year older than him (which meant he was in high school now) and asked him if we wanted to come over and play. And then he thought, “I can’t ask someone to play!” thinking it was too juvenile.

Huberts believes there is “a common thread in all of us in our need and desire to play.” He went on to say that play is not dead for adults; it merely takes different forms.

He suggests that creative collaboration is a form of play, and it’s one way that adults can achieve joy as well as use it to achieve success in their work.

Huberts went on to explain that a lot of famous intellectuals were huge proponents of collaboration. Einstein is often pictured alone and gets all the credit for being a genius, but he actually had a team of 100 collaborators including Niels Bohr working with him all the time. Picasso collaborated with Georges Braque to develop Cubism; they saw each other every day for a period of time and would sign the back of each other’s paintings. Einstein himself said, “Play is the highest form of research.”

Ending his presentation, Huberts encouraged the audience to play, and as part of that, to fail, saying that everyone sees things differently. Release what you’ve created through play to the world and they may respond well to it and be inspired by it, even if you don’t like it.