September’s theme for CreativeMornings was Chaos and there was no better person to tell us about Chaos than Pedro Saavedra. Listing Saavedra’s activities, it’s already a little bit chaotic. He is one man in many different jobs. An actor, an art director, a magazine director, a festival organizer, and so on.

Pedro claims Chaos is a part of any creative process. A needed part of that process, really.

Pedro Saavedra never thought he would be an artist. Growing up, being creative was not an option, as that was not what his family believed could be a job. Today, he believes that all the situations that lead him to what he does now were situations of chaos and a result of the way he dealt with it.

He believes chaos can be ordered. Or he believes he can do anything if we believe we can. He chooses to believe he can order chaos.

To better explain how he organises chaos, Pedro went into the details of his most chaotic project, being the editor of a magazine, Gerador. Pedro had never worked for a magazine before. When he was invited to create one, he had no clue where to start, what goes into a magazine, which people work in magazine, etc.

So, how did he manage to publish the first magazine? By making mistakes. The first magazine took 6 months to be issued. Did you know that you must work in a magazine even before issuing the previous one? Pedro didn’t.

In his case, Pedro found a way to order his chaos by going backwards and making a calendar of all his needs. Today, it takes him 2 months to get a number ready. He has now published 23 trimestral magazines.

But then chaos is still a constant in his life. He keeps getting involved in other projects, even if he has never done anything similar. Exquisite Festival is another example.

This shows how things can be transversal. To order his chaos, Pedro started using the same skills he uses when directing theatre. He just went from the three-dimensional to bidimensional, using the magazine to tell a story.

“We are never ready when opportunities knock at our door. Think about the list of missing opportunities you would have, or have, for waiting to be ready.” Opportunities might be chaotic when we first grab them, until we get no choice but to order the chaos.