Puppetry Class @ NTU (27-28 Nov10)

Discover The Power of Your 
Creative Potential

Strike a pose

It sure was quite a journey of traveling 'outside the box', past the boundaries of the ordinary... and into a world of untapped opportunities.

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. - Plato


 Course outline warned
"this course helps to awaken the eyes, ears and brain
 for optimal creativity".. ooo!

Beautifully facilitated by the master-puppeteers-

Gary Friedman (who had miraculously make paper talk) and

Sharon Gelber (who could move her body as fluid as water)

oops... who died??!!



A reflective moment





yearning for the creative spark...



"you fools...."

"Abandon me not..."

"I can tell your fortune"

An intimate moment

Somebody.... Help!

Copulating Chairs?

Gee... I am bored

Banging in the Dark

We are mostly nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play. - Heraclitus

The story teller watches her narrative enacted

As an ensemble, we enjoyed the creative process of learning to explore and expand new visions for our teaching and research!

Infusing Creativity or Defying Culture

This morning, I received an email from a student from my Creative Problem Solving elective module in the MLS (Management and Leadership Studies) class. She is a head of department and was away 4 months for her MLS course in NIE.  This was what she shared...

" Lots of changes in school since I went for MLS. Missed MLS very much. No need to manage other people expectation and  frustration. Tried divergent thinking in COE meeting. Did not work out as expected. I think they had already decided on their own idea before the meeting. Felt stupid afterwards. IC said that ideas were too divergent and not convergent enough, waste time. So in reality, purpose of brainstorming in meeting is??? Ok, must have fun and stay positive, right? Trying to continue the habit of reading and reflecting. Take care and keep smiling."

This email served as a strong and genuine reminder that creativity needs to be well situated especially if people are not used to 'taking the plunge' or do not understand the ground rules for brainstorming.  Very often, they may be unwilling to confront ambiguities or even simply looking at information from a different point of view. Thus, the inhibition to take the next step beyond what is known and risk censure.  I am reminded of one of the 4Ps in Rhode's (1961) definition for creativity- Press. "Creative press refers to the environment the person is in, or the product is produced, or the process occurs." (http://www.buffalostate.edu/orgs/cbir/readingroom/html/Scritchfield-99.html)  Understanding the Press is critical as the facilitator needs to draw out the optimism of the discussion to drive towards generating more creative ideas. Very often facilitators may risk banging their heads on closed doors when we do not gather sufficient data that addresses the team's challenge, which of course includes the team's readiness and motivation for some creative thinking.

In addition, Guilford also proposed that the facilitator should have a high degree of problem sensitivity in order to best facilitate with a focused problem statement that may sit better with the team.  When a team is not ready to play with their imaginations, the contentment with preconceived solutions becomes the facilitator's worst nightmare. Yet, in my experience, when a team is ready, they embrace the process of brainstorming as they understand that complex ideas have simple parts put together with parts of other ideas to make a ‘wow’. Another point worth consideration- it is also critical for the facilitator to establish sufficient trust in order to arouse the team's curiosity and imagination, and to 'grant' full license to play with ideas and to venture beyond the "acceptable" to the possibilities- or beyond.  Of course, the facilitator on the other hand should know how much time and resources is available in order to reach the 'desired outcomes' so that while he/she should feel comfortable delaying closure in the divergent process, sufficient time is given for good convergence to increase ownerships of the team's ideas. 

 

'Feeding' the Multitude with 12 markers and 1 flipchart

Heard of Jesus' miraculous act where he fed 5000 (Matthew 14:13–21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17 and John 6:5-15) with just five loaves and two fish?

Well, I am not exactly sure how Jesus felt then. But given just 1.5 hours, how was I supposed to facilitate a collective reflection for a group of 600 pax with kids as young as 2 years old to folks as old as 80? This was my task for a church camp of such magnitude with members of 5 different Chinese speaking congregations coming together for the first time for a combined church camp.

Thanks to a very creative friend's bright spark- Ee Tuo the man behind the provocative and often entertaining banners in front of Orchard Presbyerian Church! He suggested "Why not create a book compilation of ideas- with a 'pinch' of visual challenge?" Due to budget constraints, printing a flipbook seemed near impossible then. However, working on the $$ issue, I swung to the other extreme- not a flipbook but a single sheet of flipchart and a pack of coloured markers. What can the good folks do? The simple, heuristic problem was posed - "What does a happy family mean to you?". Challenge- Thou shall not draw anything inside the figure (is it a bone? A butterfly? An angel??) I intentionally left the big ? in everyone's mind for their own interpretation of what the pre-drawn figure was.

 Below are some of my personal favorites:

 

I was very thankful that this big challenge indeed turned out to be a favorable juncture of circumstances that turned out well.  At the end of it all, the process of discussion and brainstorming was useful to gel everyone together and providing the opportunity to display everyone's creative ideas. Even the kids had some good fun and they were the really creative ones- who says it must be only 2D?  As for the rest of the groups' chart, it was evident that most expressed a vision of what an ideal family may look like with articulation of the 'recipes' of some ground rules, principles, and goals.

So what do you think the ambiguous figure in the middle of the chart represents?

Never Say Never

Never has enough space?
Never has enough time?
Never has enough manpower?
Or even...
Never has enough willpower?

Watch this video on WOHR Parking system ...
- stressful parking
- efficient and safe parking
- 'disappearing' cars into extended 'viewless' parking lots

Storyboarding with a Curve

This is my sketch of how a story could be told 'along' the same (curved & abstract) line. An adaption building on the Figural Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT). Initially quite tough to frame each episode around that curved line and the next level of challenge was the selection of which episodes given that I only prepared 4 rectangles.

The storyboard above captured the key events that portrayed Jonah's disobedience to God's calling for him to journey to Nineveh. Of course, my children got all fascinated with what on earth is a man praying inside a fish...

I.M.A.G.I.N.E.- C.I. conference 2010: The nexus of creativity and innovation!

IMAGINE a Conference that was out of the ordinary... that pushed the boundaries...

IMAGINE a gathering of amazing people, bringing the latest thinking on creativity and innovation, speaking in new ways that you have not heard from them before...

IMAGINE exhilarating exploration, innovation challenges and powerful connections….

IMAGINE creative souls gathered in an interactive community to learn techniques and strategies, unlock and share ideas .... A place to imagine the future.

 

Creative Innovation 2010 is the place to learn from world changing innovators, futurists, inspired thinkers and curious souls gathered together in an interactive community. It’s a place to learn techniques and strategies, unlock and share ideas and to imagine the future.

Hear from and think with Edward De Bono, Edward Luttwak (USA), Michael Rennie, David Rock, Jonathan West, Stephen Heppell (UK), Peter Shergold, Austin Williams (UK), Patrick McGorry, Gemma Sisia, Steve Vamos, Hugh Durrant-Whyte, Peter Farrell, Rufus Black, Hugh Morgan and more...

Date: 8-10 September
Venue: Melbourne Recital Centre, Australia

Check it out!  To know more, do drop my friend an email  
Tania de Jong (tania@mtaust.com)