Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2007-27
See IT, Smell IT, Taste IT, Hear IT, Touch IT
At CPSI last week I had the honor of working with Bea & Sid Parnes
(co-founder of the Creative Education Foundation and CPSI-Creative
Problem Solving Institute) doing a GOING HOME SESSION for the
attendees of the Applied Imagination Forum Program at CPSI on Friday.
First we had the group, individually meet one other person that they
had not met during the week and share something creative they had done
in their childhoods. Then we had the pairs team up in foursomes or
sixsomes and share something creative they would love to do that they
had never done yet.
Second Bea ran them through a quiet and simple version of the
Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process.
Objective Finding was taken for granted: they all wanted to take home
and use some to many of their learnings and experiences from the week.
Fact Finding they were asked to work with their teams to share what
they knew about one of their goals they were taking home.
Problem Finding they were asked to generate some problem statements
related to their chosen goal.
Idea Finding they were asked to spark and produce a collection of
ideas for each other's goals.
Solution Finding they selected one of their ideas
Acceptance & Action Finding they developed a small plan.
Following the simple run through the process Bea gave them items to
help spark their senses....
sight...photos
hearing...music
touch....small squeezable object
smell...baggie of herbs or spices
taste...small piece of chocolate
with each sensory object they were encourage to relate them to their
goal and ideas.
This week challenge yourself in the same way by first assembling small
collections of things related to the individual tastes and then focus
on one sense each day and explore what ideas come to you related to a
chosen challenge or problem you are working on.
MONDAY
touch
TUESDAY
taste
WEDNESDAY
smell
THURSDAY
sound
FRIDAY
sight
Have a creatively filled week.
Willingly Wondering Wandering Alan
http://www.cre8ng.com
alan@cre8ng.com
Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2007-28
Practice Using the CPS Process or Cre8ng Process
This week sharpen your creative thinking by using the famous OsbornParnes
Process or
my adaptation of it the Cre8ng Process.
See a colorful depiction of the model at
http://www.creativityland.net/images/OPCPSppt.pdf
The Creative Problem Solving process is a flexible tool that can be used to
examine real
problems and issues. Developed by 'brainstorming' creator Alex Osborn
and Dr
Sidney
Parnes, the six stages to the model, provide a structured procedure for
identifying
challenges, generating ideas and implementing innovative solutions.
Through
continued
practice and use of the process students can strengthen their creative
techniques and
learn to generalise in new situations.
The process flows logically through the six steps of:
Objective (Mess) Finding - identifying the goal, challenge and future
direction.
Fact Finding - collecting data about the problem, observing the problem as
objectively as
possible.
Problem Solving - examining the various parts of the problem to isolate the
major part,
stating the problem in an open-ended way.
Idea Finding - generating as many ideas as possible regarding the problem,
brainstorming.
Solution Finding - choosing the solution that would be most appropriate,
developing and
selecting criteria to evaluate the alternative solutions.
Acceptance Finding - creating a plan of action.
Or go to see my description of my C-r-e-8-n-g Process at
http://www.cre8ng.com/C.r.e.8.n.g.htm
Here is the recommend plan for your week...
MONDAY
Objective Finding
Choose a Challenge
TUESDAY
Fact Finding
Reap and read and record all information you can
WEDNESDAY
Problem Finding
Examine your challenges for a specific one to choose to work on
THURSDAY
Idea Finding
8 - Ide8 ideas in 8 ways
FRIDAY
Solution Finding
N - Narrow down your ideas into a solution you have interest to passion for
SATURDAY
Acceptance-Action Finding list all those who can help, develop a plan of
action
G - gather your resources: financial, physical, social, etc. generate a plan
and
GO FOR IT!
Practice each step for 15 to 30 minutes each day. Rely on Parkinson's Law:
"No
Matter how
much time you have you will fill it!" Do the best you can in 15 to 30 minutes
each day
Best wishes for a creative week.
Willingly wondering wandering Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com
Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2007-29
Talk About Creativity More
This past week I attended the 18th Alden B. Dow Creativity Conference in
Midland,
Michigan. There were 120 people at the most during the program with the
typical
day of
60 to 70. Most of the people were educators from K thru graduate school.
What
I enjoy
about the ABDCC is the size because it makes it easier to speak with most
to all
of the
attendees.
The experience provoked the idea behind this week's CC.
Each day take time to talk with different kinds of people: engineers,
architects, designers,
educators (K to graduate school), medical people from doctors to nurses to
technicians,
retailers, manufacturers, business undergrads to MBA students.
Each day find a way to spend 15 to 30 to 60 minutes with different people
and
discuss
how creativity plays a role in their lives or how might creativity and
innovation might.
MONDAY
people in your occupation
TUESDAY
people in the arts
WEDNESDAY
people in engineering
THURSDAY
people in the medical professions
FRIDAY
people working on college degrees or teachers (K to graduate school)
You may choose to talk with people in person, by phone, by email, by
SKYPE.
Best wishes for a creatively filled week.
Willingly Wondering Wandering Alan
Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2007-30
New Ideas for Writing Lead to Creative Thinking
This past weekend I attended and presented at the 14th Harriette Austin
Writers
Conference held at the University of Georgia's Continuing Education
Center.
Harriette
Austin is a local person who has been holding creative writing classes for
over
30 years
and usually 2 or 3 a week throughout most of the year. The one I initially
registered for
about 12 years ago is the MURDER AND MAYHEM FOR MONEY class. I
signed up for it
strictly for fun and have met and gotten to know many fun people who are
learning to and
love to write. Several over the years have had books published. Recently a
group of the
authors banded together to form their own publishing company to publish
their
own
books...Southern Scribes.
One of the books I purchased is
THE POCKET MUSE
Endless Inspirationa
New Ideas for Writing
by Monica Wood
The book is filled with idea provokers aimed at writers. I believe the
concepts
behind the
sparkers can be used for generating ideas for any of us. So this week I am
sharing 5 of
Monica Wood's idea sparkers for you to experiment with during your
Creative
Development Time.
The English language has 3 interesting tricky things:
Hononyms, Homphones, Homographs
MONDAY
Play with Hononyms today
Hononyms
A homonym is a word of the same spelling or sound as another but of
different
meaning;
Homonyms can sometimes cause even the best of English writers to make
mistakes.
Newspaper headlines are a favourite place to find examples of bad choice
of
words. Look
at this example:
SHELL FOUND ON BEACH
TEACHER STRIKES IDLE KIDS
SAFETY EXPERTS SAY SCHOOL BUS PASSENGERS SHOULD BE
BELTED
THREATENING LETTERS - MAN ASKS FOR LONG SENTENCE
CRASH COURSES FOR PRIVATE PILOTS
Today create some of your own NEWS HEADLINES using Hononyms
TUESDAY
Play with Homophones
Homophone is a word with different origin and meaning but the same
pronunciation
as
another word, whether or not spelled alike, as hare and hair or scale (of a
fish) and scale (a
ladder).
Use these and others of your choice in sentences to deliberately confuse
your
readers.
addition (-s), edition (-s) (?)
aids, aides, [AIDS]
allowed, aloud
arc (-s), ark (-s)
away, aweigh
bail (-s), bale (-s)
bait (-s), bate (-s)
band, banned
base, bass
beau, bow
canape (-s), canopy (-ies)
capital, capitol
carat (-s), caret, carrot (-s), karat (-s)
cedar (-s), seeder (-s)
ceiling (-s), sealing (-s)
cereal (-s), serial (-s)
days, daze
dependence, dependents
died, dyed
done, dun
dual, duel
ducked, duct
WEDNESDAY
Have fun with Homographs
A homograph is word that has the same spelling as another. Homographs
differ
from each
other in
* meaning
* origin, and
* sometimes pronunciation.
Create a short story using 6 or more of the following homographs to
deliberately
challenge a read.
Address, Axes, Bass, Bow, Close, Conduct, Commune, Compact, Contest,
Contrast,
Crooked, Defect, Dingy, Envelope, Increase, Lead, Mow, Read, Record,
Recreate,
Tear
THURSDAY
Have fun with antonyms
An antonym is a word opposite of another word: light is the antonym of
dark
Write two sentences or paragraphs describing one of your current
challenges.
One
describing it and one using antonyms for as many of the words in the first
description and
discover what insights you can.
FRIDAY
Have fun with synonyms
Synonyms are two words that can be interchanged in a context are said to
be
synonymous
relative to that context.
Create a descriptive sentence for one of your current challenges. Then write
3
to 6
different sentences substituing as many synonyms for your first sentence.
Playing with words can create humor, new perspectives, discoveries.
Best wishes to you this week,
Willingly, Wondering Wandering Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com
Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2007-31
Creativity is a Daily Choice, Choose to Be
I woke up this morning from a dream about being at a small creativity
conference
at a
rustic location where I was facilitating people to think about creating,
creativity and
creative thinking.
In my dream I asked them to define the words in their own words:
create, creating, creativity and creative thinking
the sense I had in my dream while I was realizing I was dreaming and
beginning
to wake
up was that some good things were coming out of the exercise and that I
did not
want to
loose them, much like when your mind presents a solution to a problem in
a
dream. So I
practiced what I often have had preached to me and I have preached to
others...
WRITE IT DOWN!
I captured that we can see the word create in various forms...
noun, verb, adjective, adverb
we can see it as the result of consicuous thinking, unconscious thinking,
pre-conscious
thinking or simply just luck or happenstance.
from this experience came this week's CC
CREATING IS A CHOICE, A DAILY CHOICE
This week simply be creative because you choose to be each day. During
your
Creativity
Development Time practice being creative, thinking creatively, acting
creatively.
MONDAY
Think of the most creative door you have ever seen and sketch ideas or
describe
ideas of
more creative doors.
TUESDAY
Flip through a magazine and randomly choose a product and spend time
creating
better
versions of it.
WEDNESDAY
Walk into a room and pick something up and create new, better versions of
it.
THURSDAY
Listen in on a conversation until you hear a problem, product or service
and
then spend
time generating ideas to improve it or replace it with a better solution,
product or service.
FRIDAY
Spend time thinking about how to make you life more creative each day.
Being creative is a choice, a daily choice.
Being more creative is an endless option.
Willingly Wondering Wandering Alan
Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2007-32
Creativity Can Be Found and Increased Everywhere
For several years I have been exploring where creativity is being developed
around the
world through the internet and through my traveling. This week let's take
some
virtual
trips around the world to explore creativity development in other
countries.
I have provided you 5 countries to start with:
The Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal.
The sample websites I am providing came from simply doing a Google.com
search
for
Creativity in ……
Each day use your CREATIVITY DEVELOPMENT time to explore what is
being done in
other
countries to revive and increase creativity in people from children to senior
citizens.
Bon Voyage
MONDAY - The Netherlands
creativiteit uitvinding innovatie het creatieve denken
http://www.uu.nl/uupublish/content-cln/04-29.pdf
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/ci/31/i11/html/11manage.html
TUESDAY - France
créativité, invention, innovation, pensée créatrice
http://www.thenewfrance.com/img/InterviewSony_en.pdf
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/27/opinion/edming.php
WEDNESDAY - Germany
Kreativität, Erfindung, Innovation, kreatives Denken
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/25/business/ad26.php
http://www.all-in-all.com/english/8036.htm
THURSDAY - Italy
creatività, invenzione, innovazione, pensare creativo
http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/2005/11/creativity-in-italy.html
http://www.learn4good.com/great_universities/
italy_milan_university_of_pavia_master_in_creativity_entrepreneurship
_programs.h\
tm
FRIDAY - Portugal
creatividade, invenção, inovação, pensar creativo
http://www.culturalpolicies.net/web/portugal.php?aid=81
http://creative-systems.dei.uc.pt/
A TRAVELED MIND is a MORE CREATIVE MIND.
Let your virtual travels this week epxand and open your mind and your
creativity.
Willingly Wondering Wandering Alan
Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2007-33
Jump-Start Your Thinking
This week's CC comes from THE POCKET MUSE: Endless Inspiration by
Monica Wood,
published by Writer's Digest Books.
Here is her initial creative writing exercise for JUMP-STARTING your
writing on
page 58.
"Ask everybody to start wiring something, anything, in which the first
sentence
contains
the world 'private'. Then, every forty-five seconds, the exercise leader
shouts
out another
word that must be used as instantly as possible."
"Sample shout out words"
column, tire, ram, rivetted, spring, bail, clogging, break
(one key is to use words that that double or multiple meanings)
This week let's take the principle behind this and explore it in 5 different
ways.
If you have the opportunity to do this with a small group or team it might
even
be better
because you can see how it works for different people. If not you can do it
alone.
First think of a challenge you are working on, i.e.: organizing your boxes of
stuff in the
attic.
MONDAY
Use a dictionary. Randomly open the book and find the first verb. Use the
word
to
generate ideas for your challenge. Do this 6 times in 6 different parts of the
dictionary.
TUESDAY
Use a favorite magazine, a past issue. Randomly open to an advertisement.
Apply the
action or concept of the ad to your challenge. Choose 6 different ads to use.
WEDNESDAY
Use a newspaper. Randomly choose headlines from 6 different sections of
the
paper.
Apply the action or concept to your challenge to generate 6 new ideas.
THURSDAY
Use a pile of old photos. Randomly choose 6 different photos: people,
family,
animals,
vacation spots, buildings. Force fit the action, image in the photo to your
challenge to
spark ideas or different perspectives of how to look at your challenge.
FRIDAY
Think of 6 different characters from television shows you have watched.
Spend
time
imagining yourself as each one of them, one at a time, trying to generate
ideas
to solve
your challenge.
Unexpected connections generally provide us with insights, changes of
perspectives, clues
that we have not been thinking about.
Have a creative week!
Alan
Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2007-34
Explore, Explore, Explore
Sorry about the lateness of this week's CC. I have been off doing the theme
of
it in
Chicago. Most year's for several years now my son, Scott, and I have been
going
to
professional baseball games in different cities. Our goal is to go to All of
the MLB
stadiums. Between us we now have been to stadiums in 12 cities, also going
to
old and
new stadiums. In between games because I am an early riser and he isn't I
have
been
wandering and meeting up with creativity friends in Chicago.
I am exploring, wandering, seeing new things, or seeing things I have seen
before many
years later.
Each day, perhaps some day in one week, a vacation week or a purely
wandering
week to
the following.
MONDAY
Wander the commerical area of a new city or town, looking at the
architecture,
the window
displays, the interiors. Study the type of stores, shops, malls that there are.
TUESDAY
Wander through a city park or two. Chicago in the downtown area has
many and
most
very, very large and very formal.
WEDNESDAY
Attend a local festival.
THURSDAY
Go to a sports event: baseball, basketball, football, soccer, etc., especially a
sport you have
never been to before. Experience it naively for the first time. This can be a
professional
one, a children's or even a seemingly pick up game of local friends. I did
this
once in
Washington, DC on a Friday afternoon one summer and watched soccer
and baseball
games on the GREAT MALL between the monuments.
FRIDAY
Go to a museum, gallery, historic site.
Best wishes experience new places and things. Look for the creativity. Be
open
to the
feelings that arise.
Have a creative week.
Willingly wondering wandering Alan
Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2007-35
Being More Observent Can Increase Your Creativity
Often I have read articles about highly creative people that stressed that
they
were highly
observant. They saw things others did not. Because they saw differently
they
generally
thought differently. Thinking differently can lead to creative ideas.
This week practice SEEING.
The basic challenge is to find an alphabet of examples in various places or
media.
Each day take a sheet of paper with the English alphabet written vertically
down
the left
side of the sheet and fill it with words starting with the letters. In the case
of q, v, x, z
these letters need only be inside the word.
MONDAY
Find an alphabet of things in store windows you pass during the day
TUESDAY
Find an alphabet of products in a newspaper.
WEDNESDAY
Find an alphabet of things on billboards or other outdoor advertising
THURSDAY
Find an alphabet of things in advertisements in magazines
FRIDAY
Find an alphabet of things as you drive or walk through your town or city
Open your eyes more and see more.
Have a creative week.
Alan
Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2007-36
Working in playful environments yields creativity
Source of inspriation for this week's CC....
Next week at Mind Camp outside of Toronto I will be doing a 90 min
workshop
titled:
WILD & WHACKY to CREATIVE SUCCESS. Amazing techniques to make
your ideas whacky
and workable.
It is a session I have been doing at creativity conferences over several years,
often alone, sometimes with partners who worked inside corporations, who
practiced WILD & WHACKY ideas from mild to wild in their corporations.
This week, while continually working on my session's content I discovered
and
rediscovered some great websites focused on:
Fun Work
Fun Workplaces
Fun, ways to have
Fun, ways to spark
Fun, Simply Fun as a Way of Lliving
This week spend your CREATIVITY DEVELOPMENT TIME exploring how
to have more fun
at work.
Monday
Doing fun work makes it easier to have fun at work. Here are a couple
examples.
http://www.pixar.com/
http://www.dreamworks.com/
Tuesday
Creating a fun environment can increase the level of fun and then the
creativity
that develops. Here are two examples: a left brain one and a right brain
one.
http://www.ideo.com/ideo.asp
http://www.ideo.com/locations/info.asp?x=1
http://www.inventionland.com/
GEORGE DAVISON'S INVENTIONLAND
George Davison's Inventionland: " More Than a Place, It's a State of Mind "
Inventionland is where the Products of Tomorrow are Invented Today.
Wednesday
Fun Places to Work. Searching the www for this topic yields thousands of
hits:
articles, websites, companies, blogs, etc. Here are 3 about 3 different
companies where FUN IS A PURPOSE that PRODUCES PROFIT.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2007/snapsho
ts/1.html
click on "Why Google is No. 1" (a short commercial will play first before the
video about Google.com)
http://www.fisher-price.com/us/hr/fun.asp
Fisher-Price
http://www.benjerry.com/our_company/our_history/
Thursday
Since I first hung out my virtual shingle as a creativity consultant hundreds
to
thousands of people have begun their own variations of companies focused
on
sparking creativity in individuals, teams, groups, entire organizations.
Here are two distinctly different yet fairly similar examples.
www.eightprinciples.com
Michael Bungay Stanier
http://www.wackyuses.com/
Friday
Since I first got involved with creativity I have discovered many people who
focus on the generation and development of fun, humor, laughter in our
lives at
work and at home. Here are a couple examples.
The Humor Project….founded by Joel Goodman over 30 years ago. This
website
alone is one of the greatest resources for humor material in the world.
http://www.humorproject.com/
Bernie DeKoven's great websites I found purely wandering around the
www in
searching of fun workplaces this morning. Enjoy.
Funsmith
http://www.deepfun.com/
http://www.deepfun.com/funnygames.html
Bernie DeKoven, funsmith
This is another website filled with great stuff about humor.
Humor University
http://www.humoru.com/articles/art_ahha.html
Have fun this week exploring how to increase the amount of fun, humor,
laughter,
joy and the resulting creativity that you can.
Best wishes,
Willingly, Wondering, Wandering Alan
Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2007-37
Let Your Mind Go Traveling
One of the primary lessons I have learned from traveling has been that it
sparks, resparks and expands my creative thinking and creativity in
general.
It works whether you travel internationally, nationally, regionally or even
locally, even in your own home in rooms, closets, shelves, filing cabinets or
boxes you have not looked in for a long time.
Often traveling in my town to places I normally do not go or have not gone
in
months to years helps regenerate, enrich or expand my mind.
This week each day travel at a different scale during the day or during your
set-aside CREATIVE THINKING DEVELOPMENT TIME.
MONDAY
Internationally
If you can physically travel this week internationally definitely do that.
Fortunately I am going to Newport News, Virginia for the very first time
and
then to the 5th Mind Camp this week outside of Toronto at the Cedar Glen
YMCA
Camp. In Newport News I will wander some when I am not involved with
the VRPS
(Virginia Recreation and Parks Association) Annual Meeting. When I
arrive in
Toronto on Wednesday a long-time creativity friend and labrynth expert,
Joe
Miguez, is picking me up at the Toronto Airport. Our first stop before going
to
the YMCA Camp is to drive to the OCAD building in Toronto to see this
amazing
new building held up in the air as if on pens, pencils and paintbrushes.
OCAD is
the Ontario College of Art and Design.
http://www.ocad.ca/about_ocad.htm
Explore museums, art galleries, famous buildings, cities, towns via
Google.com
and the
WWW.
TUESDAY
Nationally
In your country explore museums, art galleries, famous buildings, cities,
towns
via
Google.com and the WWW.
WEDNESDAY
Regionally
In your region of your country explore museums, art galleries, famous
buildings,
cities, towns via Google.com and the WWW.
THURSDAY
Locally on a larger scale
in your state/province explore museums, art galleries, famous buildings,
cities,
towns via Google.com and the WWW.
FRIDAY
Locally
locally in your town or city explore museums, art galleries, famous
buildings,
cities, towns via Google.com and the WWW.
Best wishes for a very creative week wherever it will take you.
Alan
Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2007-38 late
Investigating Your Challenges More Thoroughly
First, I apologize for the delay on sending out this CC. I was on the road all
last week and
returned late on Saturday from Mind Camp held outside of Toronto. Then
very
early
Sunday I drove to Columbus, Georgia in order to begin a week-long
program after
lunch.
While I was at Mind Camp I attended a session presented by a long time
creativity friend,
Tim Hurson, founder and partner in "thinkx" an excellent thinking and
problem
solving
consulting firm based in Toronto.
Tim was a participant in a CPSI Springborad, 4-day long program, that I
co-lead
in San
Diego at CEF's Winterfest a few years ago where he first learned about the
Osborn-Parnes
Creative Problem Solving Process that I first learned about in 1978 and
have
been
continually learning more about over the past 30 years.
Tim and his colleagues at "thinkx" have done some excellent analysis and
revisions of the
O-P CPS process over the past years and in his session he shared one of
their
processes
for exploring a problem in more detail prior to generating ideas.
Too often many of us immediately jump to GENERATING IDEAS before
we fully
explore our
challenges, opportunities, problems in order to verfiy or discover what
truly is
the
challenge, opportunity or problem.
This week's CC is meant to help your practice the Fact Finding step, phase
of
most
problem solving processes.
Each day choose a challenge: personal or professional, your own, your
team's,
your
companies, a local community problem, a country-wide problem.
Then each day practice the suggested FACT FINDING, DATA
GATHERING technique that
is
recommended.
MONDAY
Today choose a challenge, problem, wish, opportunity and...
ask WWWWWH questions:
who is involved
what is involved
where is it taking place
when is it taking place
why is it taking place
how is it taking place
TUESDAY
Today choose a challenge, problem, wish, opportunity and...
focus on exploring the people involved
who has been involved
who is involved
who might be involved
who has solved it before
who might help you solve it this time
who would not be willing to help
who is undermining or interferring with your progress
WEDNESDAY
Today choose a challenge, problem, wish, opportunity and...
Take time to simply generate a list of where you can or might find
information
about it.
Generate as long a list as you can.
THURSDAY
Today choose a challenge, problem, wish, opportunity and...
Once again explore the WHO'S that may be involved and may help you.
Start by writing the alphabet, a to z, vertically on a blank sheet of paper or
make an excel
chart with a column showing the alphabet.
Then generate names of famous, infamous people whose names begin with
the
various
letters. You might also include names of people you know.
FRIDAY
Today choose a challenge, problem, wish, opportunity and...
Focus on WHAT's today.
Details, details, details.
Organize them into categories:
physical, mental, emotional; personal, professional; past, present, future.
Challenge yourself to generate a list of 100 or more details about your
challenge, problem,
wish, opportunity.
Fact Finding, Data Gathering is often a step that many to most of us
quickly zip
over or
siimply do not do.
The more we know about our challenges, problems, wishes, opportunities
to easier
it is to
deal with them and eventually generate creative ideas that will lead to great
results,
solutions...........SUCCESS!
Best wishes for a valuable week of learning more and more about Your
challenges,
problems, wishes, opportunities.
I leave for the South Africa on Friday to travel, spend time with many
friends,
present and
attend at the 13th ACRE - African Creativity Conference at Klein Kariba
(Bella
Bella) and the
2nd Creativity in Education Conference (also being held at Klein Kariba).
Wandering Alan
Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2007-39
Curiosity leads to Creativity
For the next 3 weeks I am in South Africa
between Pretoria (Tswhane...new name) and
Warmbad/Warmbaths (Bela Bela...new name)
involved with the 13th ACRE African Creativity
Conference and the second Creativity in
Education Conference both created and
sponsored by my friend, Kobus Neethling.
We were both students of E. Paul Torrance
at the same time in the early 1980s
in Athens, Georgia.
Most of my life I have traveled beginning
with my parents summer vacation trips
around the 48 mainland US states
to my first trip completely around Europe,
reat Britain, Eastern Europe and northern
Africa to my global trips the past 10 years.
Traveling I believe has been my greatest
sparker of creativeness, creative thinking
and creativity in me.
This week travel virtually through fields
using the internet/www and/or your local library.
Each day explore a different field looking
for the new, the breakthroughs, the future thinking.
MONDAY
Explore the world of fashion and clothing design:
men's or women's
TUESDAY
Explore the field of architecture in your country
and at least one country on the other 5 continents.
WEDNESDAY
Explore the world of advertising
THURSDAY
Explore the one of the sciences: biology, physics,
chemistry. etc.
FRIDAY
Explore the world of sports.
In each case look for the new,
what you currently do not know.
Best wishes for a creatively filled week
Alan