NEW YORK—There is a table in Union Square, when it’s not raining and the weather is nice—above 60—with two chairs and a sign that reads “Creative Approaches to What You Have Been Thinking About.”
“Sometimes the easiest way to get into a house, so to speak, is to go through the back door, or to go through a window, or to go through the chimney, or to parachute in—there’s lots of different ways of getting in,” says Matthew Stillman. “Sometimes the front door is not the most effective way.”
Presenting Stillman with a problem evokes a unique creative approach—see the aforementioned metaphor—which is not necessarily a solution, he points out.
A perspective shift is likely to ensue. He says he’s helped more than 1,000 people since April 1, 2009, the beginning of the social experiment, which typically runs from late May to early November.
Problems often seem typical, including a writer needing help with a novel, someone seeking relationship or job advice, or trouble with the neighbors. For Stillman, even the most mundane problems can be reimagined.
More complex issues have also been brought to him.
“Some of the ones I’ve been the most moved by is the person who needed to find a new religion, or the guy who ... needed a creative approach to avoid being murdered,” says Stillman. “That was a pretty amazing one as well. He was a gang leader and lived in constant fear of being murdered.”
“Who Is This Guy Who Purports to Transform Big and Small Problems?” is a rhetorical question on the website Stillman made about his social experiment.
