How Miami became a creative hotpsot

Ten years ago Miami was known mostly for its beaches and nightlife. Today it is a cultural destination with burgeoning ambitions. The city’s museums are expanding and its private spaces for art are increasingly active.http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/How+Miami+became+an+artistic+hotspot/25134
What lessons might we learn for our communities?

Some easy ways to teach creativity

You're never too old to make your mind agile, flexible, self-aware, and able to see patterns and connections that more rigid minds miss.
Here are some ways you might do that.
http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/11/the-kaleidoscope-mind-some-easy-ways-to-teach-creativity/248790/

Creative Dreaming

via Tara Grey Coste znd the American Creativity Association

For thousands of years, our ancestors believed dreams contain powerful messages. In very recent history, dreams have been dismissed as nonsensical bits of irrelevant information. The current scientific research is that dreams contain valuable information for problem solving and creativity.
http://republicanherald.com/news/slice-of-life-be-creative-with-your-dreaming-1.1235989

Creativity bursting forth

Shared by Tara Grey Coste and the American Creativity Association

Many of us abandon our creative impulses as soon as we shed childhood's exuberance. We become boxed in by adult constraints, rarely allowing ourselves open time for artistic play and exploration. Doing art for its own sake, the way a young child becomes immersed in the spontaneous glory of line and color, is gone. Whole afternoons making up songs on guitar become a thing of the past. Reclaiming this part of ourselves later on is one of the surprising pleasures of growing older.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-gets-better/201111/creativity-bursting-forth

They can't commoditize creativity

Britain and America need to reinvent their economies. That has been common ground since Lehman. As the nations who gained (and then lost) so much on the back of the supercharged financial centres of Wall Street and the City, the US and the UK have been forced to do a great deal of self-examination in recent years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-jefferson/smile-they-cant-commoditi_b_1108576.html

Creative Kiwis

Re:START have used shipping containers to create a temporary retail center on the site of the shopping mall destroyed in the Christchurch earthquake.
http://www.springwise.com/retail/temporary-shipping-container-mall-stimulate-economic-recovery-christchurch/

Creativity in pairs

What makes creative relationships work? How do two people—who may be perfectly capable and talented on their own—explode into innovation, discovery, and brilliance when working together?
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/creative_pairs/2010/09/two_is_the_magic_number.html

Paul Smith talks business

Here's a fascinating interview with fashion design guru Paul Smith, who talks about many aspects of growing a business in the creative industries. Shared by David Parrish
http://blog.davidparrish.com/tshirts_and_suits/2011/11/paul-smith-interview.html

Live without regret

What are you doing about your forgotten dreams?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTFji8nDZPQ
Shared by Francois Coetzee

Creative Camping

For those of us who are about to enter summer - and have families!
http://dornob.com/tent-tenements-modular-system-connects-multi-unit-tents/

Hard work plus talent equals creativity

This from Keith Sawyer
The lesson is to choose an endeavor where you start out with some natural talent, and then to move forward and invest the necessary hours.
http://keithsawyer.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/hard-work-plus-talent-equals-creativity/

6 tips to running a creative business

Some useful tips from a young entrepreneur.
http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/resources/2011/11/22/thursday-bram-on-selling-and-creating

Rethinking Business Schools

I believe that the domains of art and creativity have something to offer American business schools and the larger economy which they serve. This from Tom Tresser.http://blog.artsusa.org/2011/11/15/time-for-new-thinking-being-in-our-business-schools/

HEADS UP!! START SAVING!!

The planning has begun for a creativity gathering in New Zealand In March 2013.

It will be the three days leading up to a wonderful 3 day festival of music, arts and dance - WOMAD -  www.womad.co.nz - that people might like to stay on for.

Six days of creativity in my home town http://www.newplymouthnz.com/VisitingNewPlymouth/ - not to be missed.


This is my first time organising such a gathering so advice, expressions of support and interest, access to networks, spreading the word, guidance and millions of dollars would be much appreciated.

You can email me on wayne@future-edge.co.nz

Thanks

Creativity Money Love

"What does the education and skills system need to look like in order for people to lead fulfilled creative lives, and in order for the creative and cultural industries in the UK to thrive?" This is the question at the heart of the book Creativity Money Love: Learning for the 21st century, which was launched by Creative and Cultural Skills and youth arts organisation A New Direction.

You can download it here:
http://creative-blueprint.co.uk/downloads/CCS_CLM_PDF.pdf

The Creative and Cultural Skills site is also well worth a look. You can download the book from there as well.
http://www.ccskills.org.uk/

How 3D printing might revolutionise art.

Gavin Artz shows the main avenues for digital, networked culture have the capacity to change real world processes. He also explains the growing complexities of the interactions between arts, community and business processes.


"For the first time since the industrial revolution arts, culture and creativity will be drivers of the economy and industrial processes." Gavin Artz


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE3MRHzuYQs&feature=youtu.be

A creativity bias?

CEOs, teachers, and leaders claim they want creative ideas to solve problems. But creative ideas are rejected all the time. A new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people have a hidden bias against creativity. We claim to like creativity, but when we’re feeling uncertain and anxious—just the way you might feel when you’re trying to come up with a creative solution to a problem—we cannot recognize the creative ideas we so desire.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/is-there-a-hidden-bias-against-creativity.html

Hiring for Creativity

Every company wants innovation in one form or another, and innovation comes from creativity. But where does creativity come from? Finding the right kind of inspired individual to bring into your office is sometimes as much a talent as the artistic qualities you're looking for in the first place.
http://www.inc.com/guides/201107/expert-tips-on-hiring-for-creativity.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=button

Teaching Creativity

From Brian Cohen in the Huffington Post.


"Genius is the error in the system." -- Paul Klee


When a student asks me, an art teacher, how to do something, I often don't answer. It's not that I'm especially possessive of my acquired knowledge; to the contrary, I don't think knowledge belongs to anyone; it should be shared, or better yet, discovered.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-d-cohen/arts-education_b_1084498.html

Are you having fun yet?

The wrong kind of organizational culture can kill innovation.More from Gregg Fraley. http://www.greggfraley.com/blog/?p=2437

The future of business is in the arts

Some years ago Business Week magazine (BW) the leading publication for business said: "The game is changing... It isn't just about math and science anymore (Although those are surely important disciplines) It's about creativity, imagination, and, above all, innovation."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-m-eger/the-future-of-business-is_b_1091774.html

The creative benefits of constraints

One of the many paradoxes of human creativity is that it seems to benefit from constraints. Although we imagine the imagination as requiring total freedom, the reality of the creative process is that it’s often entangled with strict conventions and formal requirements.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/need-to-create-get-a-constraint/

Creativity needs a muse or a drill sergeant?

"Creative" industries such as advertising, software design, and the like are supposed to require a loose, anything-goes culture, in which workers are free to come, go, and dress as they please. Not according to Stan Richards.
http://www.inc.com/magazine/201111/stan-richards-unique-management-style.html

Creative Thinkering

Resurrecting your natural creativity through inspiring techniques and practical examples by Michael Michalko
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/creative-thinkering

is creative collaboration all it is cracked up to be?

We’ve all been there. The boardrooms with flip charts at the front of the room and candy on the table. The all-hands emergency meetings to come up with ideas to fix the latest mess. And of course, the off-sites in drab hotel ballrooms that are supposed to somehow spark creativity. But does it?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/efforts-to-push-creative-collaboration-might-actually-clog-the-wheels/2011/10/31/gIQAlMCzqM_story.html

Does education stifle creativity?

The idea that formal education reduces creativity appears to be supported largely by anecdotes rather than scientific evidence, although it is sometimes cited as if it were a well established fact. More here:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/youre-hired/201111/does-education-stifle-creativity

Creativity and Curiosity

Professor Colin Lawson asks, "Do we make stuff up or find stuff out"
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/11/09/creativity-and-curiosity-do-we-make-stuff-up-or-find-it-out/

Deadlines

Lessons to be learned.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jgvx9OfZKJw

Turning fear and doubt into fuel for brilliance

JONATHAN FIELDS is the author of the book “Uncertainty. Turning fear and doubt into fuel for brilliance.” It’s an important book for creative people.
More here: http://www.business2community.com/podcasts/ideasicle-podcast-episode-19-creativity-expert-jonathan-fields-091635

21st Century Enlightenment

Matthew Taylor explores the meaning of 21st century enlightenment, how the idea might help us meet the challenges we face today, and the role that can be played by organisations such as the RSA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7ANGMy0yo&feature=player_embedded#!

Visual Storytelling

" We now live in a world where information is potentially unlimited. Information is cheap, but meaning is expensive. Where is the meaning? Only human beings can tell you where it is. We’re extracting meaning from our minds and our own lives.” George Dyson
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/10/25/visual-storytelling-gestalten/

The shared experience of absurdity

TED Talks Charlie Todd of Improv Everywhere causes bizarre, hilarious, and unexpected public scenes: Seventy synchronized dancers in storefront windows, "ghostbusters" running through the New York Public Library, and the annual no-pants subway ride.
http://www.ted.com/talks/charlie_todd_the_shared_experience_of_absurdity.html

Rebranding your creative business

More great stuff from Mark McGuiness of Lateral Actionhttp://networkedblogs.com/pYaEt

Community Organiser as Entrepreneur

Another installment of my friend vivian Hutchinson's book How Communities Heal- stories of social innovation and social change. Well worth the read
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6110524433218764527

Mercedes Whole Brain Ads

What might we learn from them?
http://blog.entrepreneurthearts.com/2011/11/09/mercedes-whole-brain-ads-musicpaintpassion/

Business and the Arts

"Business is creative. It’s like painting. You start with a blank canvas. You can paint anything – anything – and there, right there, is your first problem. For every good painting you might turn out, there are a zillion bad paintings just aching to drip off your brush. You pick a colour. The next colour you choose has to work with the first colour. The third colour has to work with the first and the second…


People who bad-mouth businessmen and women in general are missing the point. People in business who succeed have swallowed their fear and have set out to create something special, something to make a difference to people’s lives."


Richard Branson from Mark McGuiness in Lateral Action. Another great blog from Mark. You should sign up to his blog and consider joining his next Creative Entrepreneur Roadmap course.


Blog and information here:
http://networkedblogs.com/pAZM7

Creative Thinking Techniques

Link to a site that has 10 creative thinking tecniques in some detail.
http://www.squidoo.com/creative-techniques#module48231882

The Physical Act of Creativity

New research is pointing to a possible link between bodily movement and creative thinking. Psychological scientist Angela Leung of Singapore Management University (working with colleagues at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and Cornell, and others) got interested in this possibility because of the many common metaphors linking creativity and physical experience—“thinking outside the box,” for example. A rich body of recent work has suggested that such metaphors may derive from an actual and intimate link between abstract concepts and concrete experience, and that priming physical sensations can activate abstract ideas.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/full-frontal-psychology/the-physical-act-of-creativity.html

Creativity and Video Games

Despite what your mother might have told you, a new study suggests that playing video games might not rot your brain.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2395824,00.asp#fbid=4FAwAOg5-Vm

Dr Dirt: Street Artist

Street artist Moose Benjamin Curtis was having some difficulty with the police. The officers had just arrested him for creating designs on a wall in South London. But it was complicated -- as things often are when Moose is involved.


You see, Moose doesn't use spray paint or wallpaper paste -- the usual tools of this trade. Instead, he wields scrub brushes, old socks, cleaning fluid, and, when he's living large, a high-pressure hose. He creates images by cleaning shapes into filthy urban surfaces such as retaining walls, signs, and tunnels.


People have called it "reverse graffiti," "clean graffiti," and "negative space." Moose prefers "grime writing." He has called himself "a professor of dirt."


http://www.grist.org/cities/2011-11-04-dr.-dirt-street-artist-scrubs-images-into-the-urban-landscape

Made by Hand

We meet writer turned knife maker Joel Bukiewicz of Cut Brooklyn. He talks about the human element of craft, and the potential for a skill to mature into an art. Creativity = passions + hardwork.http://vimeo.com/31455885

The persistence of memories

Pioneering programs at MoMA and other museums show that engagement with modern art can improve quality of life for Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers.
http://www.artnews.com/2011/11/01/the-persistence-of-memories/

Tracking the talent, finding the leaders

Our existing models of leading are not proving so successful that they ought not to be challenged.Organizations need talented people more than talented people need organizations. So -- in these times when top talent is hard to find and staff are less loyal to employers -- successful businesses are focused on building great leaders.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/31/business/talent-training/index.html

Decisions as products?

Creativity is about new ideas and new decisions. In this interview, Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman says organizations should think of decisions like any other product, and apply quality controls.
http://networkedblogs.com/pjk1W