Creativity and
Daydreaming
in Practice
Diane Simpson-Little - University of Sussex
Joanna Grigg - Independent
Daydreaming
Imagine you’re on a long, boring train journey. You’re in a reasonable mood, not worried
or stressed. You finished your reading and phone calls an hour ago. You were bored
so you’ve eaten your sandwich. You’re sleepy but not tired enough to go to sleep.
What do you do?
The chances are, this state of being is when some of your best ideas emerge. You may
not ask for these ideas but they come anyway. Perhaps you had the foresight to have
a notebook ready to capture them. Or perhaps you just enjoyed the stream of
thought.
Whatever we call this daydreaming – as Freud and his successors refer to it – we
recognise it as a state where our unconscious minds throws titbits into our
consciousness.
Using this premise we have continued the development of creative practices originating
in two different domains but with marked similarities of practice and result. Today we
outline these practices (we have used the term creative visualisation ) and how we
have developed them into successful creativity tools for use in education and beyond.
They entail using a directed form of daydreaming to create a virtual, imaginary world
through which ideas emerge. All of what follows is equally useful in other domains
Product Design education
Creativity is generally about making things that are visible, whether it is a painting, design of a car, a poem,
a book, a film, a theory or an equation. But my interest in the process begins before the product is
made, in the concept stage. Here we can approach creativity from a different perspective as well as
focusing on knowledge, facts theories skills, problem solving methods, we can also develop the
knower, the sense of self or the consciousness of the student and work with the senses, emotions,
intuition and spiritual intelligence.
It is often thought that the essence of creativity requires us to be awake, alert and present, to enable us to
deliberate on a particular problem or theory. But, intelligent thought and intuition does not always need
our conscious attention. But as G. Walter and S. Marks explained in their book Learning and Change,
1981 – “People discover their deepest self and reveal their greatest creative powers at times when the
psychic processes are most free from immediate involvement with the environment’
When we daydream or use guided visualisation (a more structured version of daydreaming) the brain
becomes free to connect ideas. Daydreaming is as David Lynch said is like ‘diving within and catching
ideas like fish’. All the information that we take in, first has to be digested in our subconscious before
we can turn it into ideas. In a way we need to learn to switch off our brains so we can become more
aware and sensitive to what’s on the inside.
In the Department of Engineering and Design at the University of Sussex I have developed a set of tools
and exercises in the area of structured daydreaming to enhance creativity.
An example of this is a seminar I run with second year BSc hons degree students, on a design module
where I set them a project to design a lamp for a well-known designer. After they have done some
research, students are then encouraged with a simple relaxation technique to calm their mental chatter,
‘put away’ the present, and busy world, stop thinking about what they have been doing, what they will
be doing next and what they need to do tomorrow and focus on the ‘now’, and with the use of breathing
Product Design education
In this peaceful environment I encourage the relaxed students to close their eyes and then take them on a
structured daydream with the help of my instructional words, sound effects and music, they have to
imagine they are approaching and then inside their chosen designers home. Here I lead them from
room to room getting then to walk in, look around and use all their senses to visualise it. Finally they
are told to choose then enter the room they were going to design the lamp for, then they are
encouraged to imagine that they become the lamp. Visualising – the style of lamp, the form they would
take, the type of material they were made of, the kind of light they emitted, and their emotional
characteristics
They are then gently re-grounded and told to open their eyes, and whilst remaining in a quiet, individual
state, using the materials supplied (coloured pens, paper) they are asked to draw or write the
experience (not necessarily the lamp iteself) but maybe shapes, colours or an essence of the their
thoughts.
Afterwards they are allowed to either continue to work alone or separate into small groups for discussion.
But after each seminar all students generally agree that the process definitely enhanced their designs
and really made them focus on the overall personality of the lamp.
Results can be seen within two distinct strands:
1. Enhancing learning by encouraging
- intuitive design
- understanding
- structured daydreaming as a creative technique
2. motivate
- by encouraging self-directed learning
Creative Writing
In creative writing, as in commercial ideation, similar techniques are used. In this case, groups can be divided into
two types:
1.Groups where the exercise is given in a straightforward manner, as in the university example of the lamp design,
within a creative task environment.
2.Those where participants are given an understanding of the unconscious, of meditation and how this process
works. This might be used where there is no specific task but where participants are learning how to use
visualisation tools for their own practice as part of development of Personal Creative Toolkits.
Examples are:
In student academic writing, participants enter an imagined room during a creative visualisation, and listen to
what people are saying about their project or essay. This gives them new insights into their work in progress.
In business, participants take a design brief into an imagined studio or office containing every conceivable
material. Other imagined people in the studio or office could be expert craftspeople, or perhaps customers.
The participant watches these people use the article they need to design, promote, or advertise. Seeing a
variety of materials encourages lateral thinking about a new design. Hearing customers talking about a
proposed product gives an understanding of customers’ needs from another viewpoint.
In poetry, participants build a virtual world that might, for example, contain a writing desk, that they enter when
they want to write. They write from inside their imagined world. See example on next page.
example
One poetry project involved writing a present-day
version of the Beauty and Beast fairytale. I built a
virtual palace where Beauty was imprisoned.
Poems coming from this project have since been
published through the poetry press, such as this
one in The Rialto. It is about an adolescent Beauty
who is very messed up, and self-harms (who
wouldn’t with a father like that?). I have no
personal experience of this, thankfully, but being in
the palace allowed me to ‘be’ her during that
writing time. (See poem on next page)
Example of poetry written through
creative visualisation
Puberty
Her bones held the map under her flesh,
etched, she knew, though she couldn’t see it.
And in places where bone met skin - kneecaps, knuckles –
the images were too blurred; she couldn’t read it.
She tried everything: moaned of aching joints, was x-rayed,
took the negatives, scanned them carefully but no –
still couldn’t see. Threw herself from a boulder in mock-hysteria,
broke the requisite arm and, fainting in and out of pain,
asked the nurse to show her: white as bone, her bone.
Not knowing how to access data she became disconsolate,
smouldering until her bleeding started; she was shocked
to find herself turning inside out. Delighted,
she gathered every saturated pad and soaked them,
collected reddened water, evaporated it in wide salt-pans
of kitchen dishes, placed the nothing-dust that remained
into a phial she’d filched from school
and crept about the labs looking for a microscope.
The dust was crystalline, a million sunset snowflakes
each tracing out a different word. Unravelling the code
would take years, she knew, time she hadn’t got.
She binned the lot, went back to slicing into flesh
in search of bone, the map.
©Joanna Grigg First published in The Rialto
Visualisations can be simply tailored to specific
group needs.
When an individual becomes accustomed to
various imagined worlds they are led into,
they may then learn to create these worlds
for themselves.
We all think in a slightly different way with our
different minds containing different
experiences and memories. We therefore
each need to use and adapt creative
methods to suit our own needs.
Barriers
Just as not all individuals are convinced they are ‘creative’, so not all individuals
are able immediately to engage with creative visualisation.
Even people who consider themselves very creative may be scornful of the
process. The term ‘meditation’ may be avoided for this reason. The key is to
gain their agreement to be present, even if not to participate ‘If you prefer
not to participate, for any reason, please sit quietly so as not to disturb
others.’ It’s important to exclude the use of laptops as their use might disturb
others. Non-participants will come to understand the creative potential of
these techniques after seeing results from participants. The theory of the
mind behind the processes can be explained if necessary. It can take
several sessions with some groups for it to become its most effective.
Most of us are most creative when relaxed and doing the equivalent of
daydreaming. Participants who are very anxious or stressed about external
matters may not find it immediately useful. Exercises in deep breathing, or
the use of music, help to relax a group prior to visualisation techniques
being used.
There is room for further research to determine whether participants who
understand the theory of the mind find creative visualisation more effective
than those who do not. This would be for ongoing groups; for one-off
sessions, participants need to be led to trust the facilitator. This can require
Summary
Given that these practices have developed from different domains and backgrounds there are
surprising similarities between these two sets of practice. They both involve a three-stage
process whereby participants:
1.
2.
3.
Learn skills prior to visualisation, and are (usually) set a task. This uses the conscious
mind
Engage in visualisation allowing the unconscious mind to participate.
Return to using skills using the conscious mind to develop the ideas and bring them to a
conclusion whether this is a successful work of art, a design project, or a product to
market.
We call this the Creative Sandwich •
•
•
Skills - bread
Unconscious exploration – filling
Skills – bread
(Note that visualisation is just one of many hundreds of creativity techniques, many of which
also encourage ideas from the unconscious mind – many of these might form the ‘filling’ of
the sandwich.)
Room for further research
Participants who understand the theory of the mind more effective?
Use of control groups and analysis of course gradings over a number of years in a university
setting, with quantitative analysis to ascertain the efficacy of creative visualisations in
design education.
Quantified results from commerce
We’re setting up a collaborative project open to discussion re collaboration –
welcome to join us.
Contact
Diane Simpson-Little
• University of Sussex
• d.simpson-little@sussex.ac.uk
Joanna Grigg
• www.joannagrigg.com
• joannagrigg@hotmail.co.uk