Must everything we create have a commercial purpose?

Creative work increasingly exists within an environment that asks for measurable outcomes. An audience, a business model, market relevance, engagement, profitability or some indication of future return.

And while commercial sustainability is essential to the survival of creative practitioners and industries, it raises an important question: what happens to the work that cannot immediately demonstrate its value?

Experimentation is not always profitable, predictable or even successful. It can involve uncertainty, failure, unconventional thinking and ideas that challenge existing expectations.

But creative progress depends on having the freedom to explore possibilities that haven’t yet found an audience or a market.

There’s also an economic dimension to this conversation. The freedom to experiment is not equally distributed. Access to resources, time, funding, equipment and financial security determines who can afford to take creative risks.

We shouldn’t have to choose between making a living and making something unexpected.

Creativity needs room to experiment, not just pressure to perform.

What do you think? Should creative work always have a commercial purpose?

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