Dave Jarman & Lorna Tutton Dave & Lorna’s Creativity Challenge

“It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to always be right by having no ideas at all.” Edward De Bono

In this session Creativity exercises Attitudes to creativity o Divergent and Convergent approaches o Principles of Creativity Creativity Challenge Tactics for generating more ideas

Creativity exercises Individual exercise o 1 minute to identify as many different ways of using the object as you can o Theory of Categories Group exercise o 2 minutes to identify as many different ways of using the object as you can o Theory of Variety

Different approaches Convergent thinking Good for evaluating ideas Rubbish for generating ideas Divergent thinking Good for generating ideas Rubbish for evaluating ideas

Principles of creativity Suspend judgement o Only converge after diverging! o Quantity not Quality Feed your brain something different – variety ‘As if’ – free your mind Involve other people but don’t be intellectually precious

Idea-generation Challenge ’50 things challenge’ In groups: o I want 50 ways in which the lives of researchers at the university could be improved o Quantity not quality! o What ways might other people suggest? o Colleagues, supervisors, partners, Gandhi, Gandalf, Colonel Gaddafi?

Tactics for a more creative life… Do the things you don’t normally do o Different activities in… o …Different places with… o …Different people Take an alternative route Write your ideas down Share even the silly ideas with others Have more holidays (or at least days away) ‘As if’ Put a different sock on first in the morning…

“Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” Albert Einstein