Creativity Articles

The Creativity Workshop - Babel

Q.

- How would you describe your workshop on creativity to those who have never heard about it?

A.

- The creativity workshop is, first of all, not about producing an artistic product, it’s about the creative process... Read More...

Tapping Creativity

In an innermost room of the Lascaux cave, a hunter picked up a paint-loaded reed or hollow bone, drew in a breath, and gazed at an empty wall. Read More...

Business Creativity

Since 1993, theCreativity Seminar has been taught has been taught to people in businesses of all kinds from all over the world, from CEOsto scientific think tanks to small business owners, working in specializations as diverse as finance, IT, marketing, PR, industrial design,accounting, and public relations. The Creativity Workshop offers a series of tools that help participants develop their creative, collaborative,storytelling and writing skills, as well as their self-confidence. To this end, the workshop concentrates its experiential exercises in thefollowing areas:

1. Getting over fear of creativity

   Getting over fear of creativity and gaining belief in one’s ideas. We do exercises which help students get over ’blocks’ which make themafraid to express themselves, say the wrong things, paint a bad picture, take a stupid photograph, write a foggy paragraph. The workshopworks against self-censorship in the early stages of development so that critical analytical skills can come into play later and more forcefully.To this end, we use techniques of free form drawing and writing, the importance of playfulness, as well as visualization and meditationexercises.

2. Collaborationmargin:-85px 0 -24px 330px;

   In our Creativity Classes, by sharing work in intimate groups, participants learn self-confidence and respectful listening towards others whichis vital to any collaborative process. The Creativity Workshop involves several modules in which collaborations, ranging from 2 person teamsto a whole class are explored.

3. Map making

   Every project has a process or ’way’. The Creativity Workshop teaches individuals how to track their processes by making journey maps of itssteps and the on-going progress of their work. The maps help participants see where they are in their projects and where they can go withthem.

4. Free form writing and automatic drawing

   These exercises help participants find innate ideas and develop them without fear. The workshop also teaches imaginative editing techniquesand idea framing.

5. Storytelling

   Storytelling is vital to getting your ideas across. Be it visual or literary, it is one of the most direct and human ways to share our ideasconvincingly.

6. Expanding and changing perceptions

   How we see is important to what we see. We teach a variety of exercises aimed at altering perceptions physically (through cameras, cut outshapes, kaleidoscopes, telescopes, microscopes) and emotionally (through fairy tales, memoir writing or inter-generational interviews), whichassist participants in looking at projects from many different angles.

7. Using your environment

   We teach participants how to use their natural surroundings to generate ideas for the workplace. Exercises to be done in local cafes, libraries,cafeterias, woods and mountains show that inspiration can come from the most usual and surprising of places.

8. Time

   In our busy, multi-tasking world we seldom feel we have enough time to try something new or have creative fun. We teach participants howto estretch timei and use 15-minute blocks to do satisfying creative work on an on-going basis.

9. Self-Nurturing

   We spend so much of our time encouraging and supporting others that at times, we forget to nurture ourselves! We spend so much of ourtime encouraging and supporting others that at times, we forget to nurture ourselves! The Creativity Conference teaches the importance ofself-nurturing, play, and curiosity and not always knowing the erighti answer. Failures after all can be the catalyst for the most astoundingsuccesses.

10. Tax-Deductible

    Your workshop expenses may be tax-deductible if they are for your professional development. Check with your accountant; the CreativityWorkshop has been taught to people in business all over the world from small business owners to corporate leaders.