Thriving too

Creative Spaces

There was a lot of talk at the IMBES conference last month about research or 'lab' schools.  If I had a lab school I would be pretty inspired by this new space just opened in Paris at the centre 104 Centrequatre.  It is designed by French designer Matali Crasset and it looks an amazingly stimulating space.

"The venue aims to provide a public space where children can exercise their creativity. The space is divided into distinct areas for children of different ages and abilities and furnished with free-standing, mushroom-like structures. A circular seating and play area in the centre of the room features an inner, cushioned play-area for babies and toddlers and is surrounded by stools so parents can sit at the same level as their children. When covered, this area becomes a large meeting table or platform for activities or performances."

Fascinating

So, for those of you I haven't bored with it yet... I'm going to see the Queen in July, at a garden party in Buck Palace. And I'm taking my Gran along with me. Rules state I need some sort of headgear, so I'm going to try and make a 'fascinator'.

Instructions from CraftStylish where a community of lots of lovely creative people put up ideas and instructions for crafty projects.

Hamper

Hurrah for the great British bankholiday weekend! Sunshine and bbq's all round. If you want to carry a bit of the magic with you for lunches back in the office next week, why not make yourself a portable picnic in a suitcase...

Exactly What it Says on The Tin - Part 2

Sam Potts  has done some great design work for the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. You see more of his product designs on his sign - under the heading 'probably why you are here'.

Free Store!

"The Free Store in Nassau Street, Manhattan, created by artists Athena Robles and Anna Stein has been creating a stir. It was inspired by a liberal hippie initiative from 1967, the Diggers Free Store which operated under the slogan “Don’t Waste Give To The Diggers”. This time Robles and Stein have created their own Free Store just a few from Wall Street in New York’s financial district.

The idea is simple. Everything in the store is free. You’re encouraged to donate something too, of course. In return for your purchase you’re issued with a receipt that declares no money has changed hands."

Via: William Shaw's marvellous RSA Arts and Ecology Blog

Stephen Fry on Why Email Liberates the Voice

Stephen Fry talks of the delights of writing emails:

Suddenly there's wit, charm, self-deprecation, self-knowledge, understanding - all kinds of qualities.

It's a literary form in the most basic sense that you're writing and it's rather wonderful. The phone will be seen, I think, as a terrible aberration.

As I talk to you now, and as one talks, especially to strangers, all the terrible problems of class, differences in education, race and gender all have their part to play in the embarrassment of real life conversation, but the moment one's let loose with a keyboard or a pen you can express yourself properly.

Via: BBC Article

Special People Like to Make Things Up

In a very enjoyable article by Will Gompertz in last week's Guardian, talking about the wonders of conceptual art Gompertz raises questions about knowledge and creativity.

"Facts are tedious. People who put great store by them even more so. Who wants to be stuck with the club bore or local know-it-all? Yet last week the country went weak at the knees before members of Oxford University's Corpus Christi quiz team, winners (and now, losers) of a TV panel show. Why? Just because they were able to chime back some speedy answers to some fairly arcane questions. Now they are being told they are special. They are not. 

Special people don't deal with facts; they deal with the unknown and the unknowable. Special people like to make things up.

Shakespeare made up over 3,000 words. Einstein's theories started out as ideas." 

Via: Applied Imagination

Let the encouragement begin

There is just so much negativity all around us these days, have you noticed? It’s infesting the internet, it’s taking over the big screen, it’s cutting you off, it’s showing up on your bank statement, it’s staining your new shirt, it’s breathing down your neck, it’s not giving you a vacation, it’s talking behind your back, it’s stuffing you in a locker, it’s cheating on you, it’s charging you more, it’s giving you less, and it’s making you miserable.

The deadline has passed to enter but they created a gallery of encouragement!

You can buy the Free Encouragement postcard pack here.
Thanks to lovely hellojenuine.

Brevity

Worn sandals scuffing sand. Sun on skin and a whole world free for the taking. Spicy scent and market bustle; curious looks and an alien language. Then quiet welcome: shared understanding over breakfast.

GnatGnat - say what you got to say in 33 words...

Keep Us Busy

Two 3rd year graphic design students in York have spent the week working in a shop window. Their project is Keep Us Busy.  It looks like they have been!

Moments of Pure Insight

John Lehrer is a really brilliant writer on thinking and neuroscience. I was sent a particularly interesting article yesterday by a friend published in New Yorker last year.  The article The Eureka Hunt describes research which tries to understand how moments of insight happen, what occurs in the brain at that moment of inspiration.

One of the interesting points in the article is that these moments often happen when the brain is 'relaxed', in the morning when half awake, in a warm shower etc.  Concentration on a problem often proves to be counterproductive to finding insightful solutions or ideas, because the sharp focus potentially inhibits connection-making.

One of the people who took their tests was a Zen meditator, who was unable to solve any of the puzzles at the beginning but by the end has solving them all perfectly.  The researchers speculated that this unusual performance reflected the possibility that the meditator was better able to purposefully relax his brain. 'He had the cognitive control to let go," Kounios said. "He became an insight machine."

My own interest is in the role of knowledge, and how and when conscious knowledge becomes tacit.  Malcolm Gladwell's brilliant Blink describes many instances when experience and deeply buried knowledge transforms into moments of insight and knowing, whether a fireman sensing to get out of a burning building or an art specialist being able to spot a fake, or a food specialist being able to identify subtle variations in taste.

In John Lehrer's latest blog post, he also suggests that for a brainstorming session that blue rooms are best!

Thanks Josh for the link!

Sir Ken Robinson Launches The Element in London

Lots of very disappointed people last week, the snow preventing many, including myself, travelling up to London for Sir Ken Robinson's book launch of The Element.  Sir Ken also spoke at the RSA and you can catch up with that talk below - Thanks to the RSA for publishing the film so quickly!

  Also see Kate Robinson's blog post on The Element here! 

Team Creative Cognition

 

I am going to workshop at NESTA next Monday on Innovation and Networks of Influence so was interested to be sent a paper on 'group creative cognition' today.  The research article by Christina Shalley and Jill Perry-Smith looks at how 'Team Creative Cognition' develops. One of the interesting focus points for the research was to examine diversity in teams, in some instances in group of entrepreneurial founding teams:

".. entrepreneurial founding teams tend to be homogeneous with respect to functional area as well as demographics (e.g., Ruef, Aldrich, and Carter, 2003), as the teams tend to form around friendships, familial relationships, or prior work associations."

The paper goes on to propose that:

"the benefits of contact with diverse others is best achieved from individual team member interactions with those outside the team." 

What they appear to be saying is that there is evidence to support the idea that individual team members perform more creatively within their work teams, if they have 'broad, divergent personal contacts - not necessarily within a particular problem domain'.

"...those with more diverse outside ties should be more focused on thinking across broad categories of knowledge, making remote associations, and experimenting in problem solving, all of which causes them to exhibit higher levels of creative cognition."

"The positive relationship between individual creative cognition and team creative cognition is moderated by the individual’s centrality in the team’s sociocognitive network, such that the relationship between individual creative cognition and team creative cognition is stronger at higher levels of sociocognitive network centrality."

While we often regard networks as 'knowledge networks' or ways of finding individuals with needs that we can fill, or passions to share and develop, this article proposes that our 'Creative muscle' is strengthened by being part of diverse networks, and this in turn can develop the team's creativity.

Only a hop, skip and a jump to considering how Twittter might be contributing to our team's creative cognition?

 

Creativity in business vs creativity in school

The chart above, drawn from research done by the AASA and Americans for the Arts, shows the difference between how employers and school superintendents define “creativity.” 

Via: Daniel Pink

Making Time and Place for Creativity

Really interesting talk by John Cleese about being creative.

Via: Benjamin Ellis

Make Your Own Books

Blurb lets you design a book, with free design software, and they will print and ship it to you. 

Really really inspired! I think I will start one tomorrow!  

Blue Man Group Go Back to School!

WOW! This has put a real warm feeling in my tummy today.

The Blue Man Group, famed for their creative and surrealist theatrical shows, music and film work are now taking their creativity into the educational arena and starting The Blue School, a school for young children. The idea; to get parents and teachers to together teach children through self-expression, and in their words (much alike those of the Disney of the education system, Richard Gerver), "...thinking about the school being an engaging and exciting experience." Read the full story published today from the BBC News.

"Its about the approach. We live in a time now where there is too much knowledge to fill children up with. So what happens now it becomes more important to teach children to learn how to learn." 

Thanks to my brother for sending this news to me! I will never forget taking my family to see The Blue Man Group show in London last year and leaving (accidently) covered in mushed banana!

House of Commons

Click To Play

Creative Commons is re-working copyright laws to allow for a balance between innovation and protection - creating what it calls a "some rights-reserved copyright".

Science Commons is attempting to use the web more effectively to nurture information sharing and create opportunies for development.

It's a very good idea. And this video will explain it much better than I have.
(video is 2 minutes long)

Thriving in Oslo

Kate Andrews presented Thriving at KHIO  at Oslo National Academy of the Art earlier this week! By the way - those are our badges :)

Peace of Mind Vending Machines

Peace of Mind vending machines dispense .... things.  I am a bit confused about how far this exhibition hopes to take its message?  The site shows that there is a main message about Homeland Security etc, but are they really going to go national in the US with this idea?

I notice that Vitamin Water  vending machines are popping up in London.  A step forward in the healthy vending machine produce.... or just trending marketing?

But my VERY favourite 'product design to make a point' is the super brilliant FLOWmarket

Incomplete Manifesto

Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements exemplifying Bruce Mau’s beliefs, strategies and motivations. To read all 43 points click here.

Creativity, fulfilment and flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote an incredible book called Flow and TED have just posted his talk. Flow includes a body of inspiring research into what brings us fulfilment and joy and will make you reconsider the creative wonders of fulfiling work, and the satisfaction to be found in repetitive labour.

Bed Concert Japan

Dolce Heavenly Concert Japan - video powered by Metacafe

Salman Rushdie on Creativity

Steve Dahlberg has been blogging from the Creative Leadership Summit this week. The most incredible list of speakers are listed here.
Steve wrote this interesting post:

"Toward the end of a lunch conversation that just wrapped up between author Sir Salman Rushdie and Harvard's Homi Bhabha, a Russian audience member asked Sir Rushdie what his "theory of creativity" is. His response:

"I wish I had a theory of it. It's very hard to do. I don't know where it comes from. My experience of it is very chaotic; not ordered and disciplined."

Sir Rushdie went on to say that he just sits down and writes. The next day, he looks at what he wrote and much of it is garbage. Through the process of exploration of garbage, he said, you find yourself paying attention to things that are sticking around -- and eventually you have a book.

As a writer, Sir Rushdie said you "look at the world in which you live and respond to it." Of his approach to writing: "I go to the edges of the possible and push outwards."

He said the problem of being in the business of writing books for so long is that you "have to keep coming up with stuff to write about." When asked whether he feels like he's done enough short stories, he said, "no," adding that he may do more of them.

Finally, commenting about the topic of "human security" and his own experience of living a threatened life, he said: "There is no such thing as security -- only levels of insecurity." If one accepts that, he said, you can learn to function again."

Midnight's Children is still my favourite book .... I have never finished.

My favourite passage ..... quite contrary to the feeling in the UK this week:

"It seems that in the last summer of that year my grandfather, Doctor Adam Aziz, contracted a highly dangerous form of optimism. Bicycling around Agra, he whistled piercingly, badly, but very happily. He was by no means alone, because, despite strenuous efforts by the authorities to stamp it out, this virulent disease had been breaking out all over India that year, and drastic steps were to be taken before it was brought under control."

Midnight's Children won the Booker in 1981, the Booker of Bookers in 1993 and the Best of the Booker in 2008.

Sir Ken's Vision

Monday night was an extraordinary evening where, among many others, I was fortunate to hear Sir Ken Robinson talk about creativity in education, immediately after receiving the Benjamin Franklin Medal at the RSA. Sir Ken is a perfect and wonderful recipient of this honour, one that the RSA gives with great thought and consideration.

Sir Ken spoke, as always, with enormous humour and charm, describing amusing details from his personal life, including his second wedding to his wife at the Elvis Chapel in Las Vegas. The talk will be available to view on the new RSA Vision format on their website shortly, but in the meantime you can listen online by clicking here.

Having had a few days to digest the talk and the audience discussion following it, I think the most important message for me, was that there are many different ways of engaging and stimulating children and young people to develop. The first example that Sir Ken highlighted was the work of Dance United and their programmes with young offenders. The second example was The University Park Campus School in Massachusetts, US.

There are so many projects which depend on individual's vision, energies and leadership. All diverse and inspiring and making a difference to young people all over the world. While we often try to design formats and models so that they can be duplicated easily and widely, Sir Ken's talk re-enforced very strongly my belief that it is often the act of creating a new type of project, developing new ideas collaboratively with others, which leads to their success. And lets teachers some space and trust to be innovative....

The RSA medal is a fantastic achievement... well done Sir Ken!

And thank you also to all the lovely people I met with through Monday and into the evening - it was enriching and fantastic FUN! (Laura, Laura, Katherine, Dan, Andy, Libby, Graeme, Ian, Ruth, Elly, Michael, Jerry, Andy, Matthew, Philip, Ian, Jonathan, Tony.....)