Wow creative inspiration!

Here's someone in touch with personal creativity who has extended that to making a difference, albeit in a small and limited way:

The Phoenix Commotion is a local building initiative created to prove that constructing homes with recycled and salvaged materials has a viable place in the building industry. This process uses only apprentice labor and teaches marketable skills to anyone with a work ethic who is willing to swing a hammer. By keeping labor costs low and using donated or found materials, the homes created are truly affordable. No two are alike due to the myriad of materials used, so there is an artistic element that makes Phoenix Commotion homes unique. We target single parents, artists, and families with low incomes. We require the homeowner to be involved with the planning and construction of his or her own home. The result is a person who is empowered, not only by the useful knowledge of building skills, but by the opportunity to become part of a community as a vested participant.

Here are the links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Phillips

http://www.phoenixcommotion.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&layout=item&id=1&Itemid=2&lang=es

First, have a look at this inspiring presentation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVLu99Ja2mA

Creative Commitment Challenge

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom (Anais Nin)

http://www.marssociety.org/home/press/news/howwewillterraformmars

Change can be disruptive, disturbing, unsettling and even scary, but it can also be exciting, rejuvenating and liberating. Remember that creativity means new, novel, original or innovative, so commit yourself to doing something new, novel, original or innovative in one area of your life. You can make that change a huge leap or a small step.

Commitment means doing the following, and having fun in doing so:

1   Take stock: Curl up in a comfy place with a notebook and a pen. Make a list of various aspects of your life, such as your home, your garden, your workplace, your habits and practices, how you dress, how you prepare and eat your food, your social life and interests, and so on. You should have at least five categories (aspects of your life) on your list. For each category, honestly write down all the ways you express yourself personally; for example, write down all the ways that you express yourself personally in your garden, in your office at work, in how you prepare and eat food ... (what do you do that expresses your personality and individuality?). So, by the end of your session in the comfy chair, you will have identified at least five areas in your life and you will have listed any and every way in which you personally express your creativity in that aspect of your life. Honesty rather than CYA justification is important for this excercise, so it is OK if you cannot find any way in any aspect of your life that you personally express yourself with integrity (i.e. that you do anything differently from your family, friends, colleagues or your community).

2   Brainstorm ideas: Now for each category ... your home, garden, habits, practices, how you dress, how your prepare and eat food, your social life, interests, and so on) think of all the ways that you could, if anything and everything was possible, express your personal creativity in that aspect of your life. Write down whatever thoughts come to you, without censoring or judging your ideas. For each, aim to write down at least ten different ideas in ten minutes. Don’t think about what is possible or not, but just write whatever and all the thoughts you have (not to be different for the sake of being different, but to explore your own interests and passions). The only critic and censor of your ideas is in your head, so don't hold back. What if anything was possible in your life? (If I was 30 years younger, I would devote my whole life to getting to Mars as part of an expedition to terraform the planet! How could I include this passion in my everyday life in a personally creative way?)

3   Act on one idea: Choose one aspect of your life and one idea you wrote down about expressing your personal creativity. Aim to choose one that brings significant change to your life, but if you are apprehensive about changing your life radically, then choose to take a small step (such as, such as setting and eating at the table instead of in front of the TV every night, or wearing a different colour each day, or finding a new fruit or vegetable to create a meal with each week, or  committing yourself to mindfully reading a book each month in exploration of your personal interests, or devoting 15 minutes each day to develop a talent, such as photography or drawing or writing poetry or dance). Now go ahead and for the next month (yes, for one full month, every day), honour your personal creativity in that aspect of your life in that way every single day. (For, me, how can I include my passion for relocating to Mars to terraform the planet in some aspect of my everyday life?)

You are unique and special and all that I ask is that for every day, for one full month, you honour your special unique, personal creativity in one aspect of your life, in one way, honestly and wholeheartedly. When we choose to commit ourselves to honouring our true selves in small everyday ways, we find the courage to honour ourselves in all ways and truly live as the unique beings that we are.

© SD Vahl, 2012
SD Vahl hereby asserts her right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

The Practice of Observing

Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. (William S. Burroughs)

http://www.scenicreflections.com/media/271737/moon_phases_Wallpaper/

This is a challenging creative practice that requires persistence as you ‘wait for the muse’. The rewards are that it will train you to pay attention to the information you get from all your senses, and along the way you will encounter that ‘aha’ moment of creativity.

The essential part of this practice is to be completely honest and authentic in describing what you observe, and how you describe it. If you observe and describe the same thing every day, then that is OK … just keep doing this practice once a day for at least a week.

1   Choose a scene, such as a view from a window, or an object, such as a pot plant.

2  For at least seven consecutive days, at the same time of day, be still and observe the same scene or object from the same place for at least five minutes. Be open to observing with all your senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch and feelings). You don’t have to observe and record ‘something’ for every sense, but rather be aware of all your senses as you observe. In doing this exercise some people will explore colour or shades, others will focus on form, some will be aware of feelings, and so on. Just go with whatever resonates most strongly with you (by the end of the week you should know what this is).

3  Be open to observing rather than analysing. When you observe, you are open to receiving information through all your senses; when you analyse, you look for meaning and strive to understand structure and processes. Practise observing rather than analysing.

4  Now spend ten to fifteen minutes describing what you see. You can do this by drawing or painting what you see, by writing what you see in a poem or piece of prose or by simply free writing, or even by singing or dancing. Don’t aim to finish a creative piece but rather spend the time just capturing what you observed.

© SD Vahl, 2012
SD Vahl hereby asserts her right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Why creative thinking fails in the workplace

Why do creative thinking exercises in the workplace fail to produce a ground-breaking shift for the organisation? How can we encourage creative thinking in the workplace?

http://www.sxc.hu/gallery/ma_makki

Let’s start with that well-worn saying ‘thinking outside the box’. My personal experience is that the ruling culture of the corporate world is exponential profits for shareholders, and this limits creative thinking. This idea acts as a filter and so many creative ideas are sifted out before they are expressed. Employees feel repressed and brilliance is censored. Basically, people end up trying to get create new ideas within a confined space. To really find the gems of creative thinking in a corporate creative thinking exercise, you need to free people to truly think outside the box and forget about the constraints. Throw out all the rules and simply ask ‘what if anything was possible’. The creative space is that in which anything is possible. Remember this!

The censor is always present in the workplace. Of course everyone is concerned about how they are perceived by others and thus how well they are doing. Who wants to say something that may be perceived as stupid or irrelevant when their boss is in the room? On the other hand, there is the competitive spirit in the workplace. Some people may think that coming up with innovative an idea is only worthwhile when there is personal reward and acknowledgement offered in exchange. If you are leading a creative thinking exercise in the workplace, you need to be aware of and balance these two contradictory human drives. Give everyone strokes and get rid of the censor!

Extroverts drown out introverts. In any group situation you will have those who want to take centre stage (overtly or covertly), and those who just want to just fade into the background and ‘think about it’. You will get the best out of introverts if each person is required to work alone, and you will force extroverts to really think 'outside the box'. When people work in groups, then the extroverts will drown out the introverts -- always! Put simply, you will get more ideas if people are required to brainstorm individually rather than as a group, and yes the paradox is that brainstorming works best as an individual exercise (to really get 'out the box' in exploring ideas) and a group exercise (to evaluate and collate and make plans from all ideas).

Individual rewards are a bad idea as the censor and the competitive spirit derail the whole process. The innovation that will create an award-winning paradigm shift for your company will eventually be a group rather than an individual effort, so spoil and reward everyone, genuinely!

Warm-up is essential. Spend as much as half an hour doing warm-up exercises such as associative thinking, divergent thinking, working with mandalas, juggling (there’s a creative thinking exercise that I have not shared with you yet -‑ and I have a maverick twist for my juggling exercises), and so on.

A creative thinking exercise such as brainstorming is the first step in the process of, for example, creating a new product.  For each idea, you need to then brainstorm every implication, consequence, requirement, and so on. Even a frivolous idea will produce gems (this won't work because of this but this gives me an idea that I can apply to something else), so give people the time and space to go through this second step.

Educate people about the basics of creative thinking before you require them to do a creative thinking exercise. Here are some basic principles:

1 In creative thinking exercises such as brainstorming, quantity is more important than quality. Participants must rather provide nonsensical ideas than not produce the required number in the time allowed (e.g. more than ten ideas in fifteen minutes).

2 Not only give a time limit but announce a time count down of each minute to put participants under pressure to produce quantity in the time allowed (Five minutes left! You have to give me ten ideas and you have only Five minutes left!)

3 The goal of brainstorming is not to produce a final perfect plan, but to find lots of innovative ideas. Each can then be teased out and analysed, then ideas can be combined, and those ideas that work can be used. Stress that all and any ideas are acceptable in a brainstorming exercises, no matter how unworkable or off topic they may seem.

Creativity can be chaotic, but order can be created out of chaos! Let participants enjoy the chaotic space of creativity and find their own order from that chaos.

http://www.sxc.hu/gallery/rknds

© SD Vahl, 2012
SD Vahl hereby asserts her right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.