Facilitating Creativity: Part 1
These articles are for those keen to facilitate creative thinking in group work. Each article ends with detailed exercises and activities you can adapt to your work.?
In my last article I covered the definition of creativity, from the broadly accepted explanation of it being something ‘novel, useful and intentional’ to an extension of this, as developed during my work with the Sydney Opera House ; as ‘a way of seeing and being, enabling the novel and useful to emerge’.?
To teach people how to be more creative we need to crack creativity open further and split it into categories that I call aptitudes; mindsets that can be unpacked and strengthened.
The aptitudes of creativity outlined here are not a definitive list, but based on research and personal experience. Different people will resonate with different aptitudes and depending on context, some will be of more value. At the Opera House we used this list to develop a framework for educators to teach any subject through creative practices, but in the work I do independently, teaching innovation methodologies or as a consultant, I use different configurations for those specific contexts.?
The Key Aptitudes of Creativity are:
I’ll go through the first two in this article and follow up the rest in the next.?
Creativity Aptitude:?Listening, looking, observing, noticing, becoming attuned?
If creativity is a way of seeing and being then you must build your participants’ capacity to notice and observe the world so as to represent and reconfigure it. They must learn to see beyond the surface, to ask and probe, to listen and really hear, and to be genuinely present. All arts training begins here.?
The progression from noticing and looking is to becoming attentive and attuned to your subject matter. You also need to understand how you are seeing. What preconceptions, influences and cultural biases (conscious and unconscious) frame the way you are seeing and observing. This creative aptitude is ultimately about being attuned and empathetic. In genuine deep listening and looking, you are moulding yourself around an issue or problem to immerse yourself in it. The more senses involved in this journey, the more likely you will embody this conceptualisation as much as cognitively comprehend. It’s when you are this attuned that you can start to make deeper observations.
Here is an exercise to get people focussed and present, seeing each other and the space for a multitude of creative opportunities.?
Creative Aptitude: Listening, looking, observing, noticing, becoming attuned?
Name: Seeing Green
Objective: To make participants present and ready to be creative
Origins: This is a Frankenstein merge of 101 actor training and creative thinking exercises I’ve developed in response to Michael Anderson and Dr Miranda Jefferson ’s #CreativityCascade
Part 1
You need a room with space to move. Ask the group to move about the space, telling people to change directions every time you clap your hands
Part 2?
Ask the group to make observations and run a conversation about the brain's capacity to start seeing when it starts looking. ?
Part 3
Depending on your context, you will have to adapt this to work for you. For this example I will use a workshop I developed with school principals and their leadership teams.?
This forces them to really look at the room and find/force/discover ways to use that room. It expands their capacity to see the one space in a multitude of ways, searching for creative connections. To really push them, do it a third time.
This exercise works a treat with maths teachers. Rather than leadership, the teachers have to find a part of the room they could use to teach maths. This rapidly energises the group as 15-20 new ways to teach maths or lead a conversation about leadership emerge. It makes them look at any space as a creative opportunity. You can swap out math or leadership for any subject! How could you adapt this exercise for your needs?
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Aptitude: Rupture, de-ritualising, breaking patterns
Another fundamental of creativity is rupture, de-ritualising and breaking patterns. Disruption is such a popular term because it is a crucial part of this work. We are instinctual pattern makers. We define and refine what works and then we make it better. We stop creating and end up re-creating. This is not a bad thing, quite the opposite, it’s a survival mechanism; we are pack animals and learn by mimicry. But the flip side is that we get caught in ruts. Norms form and specific ways of doing and being become accepted. If creativity is about enabling the novel to emerge, then challenging norms and breaking patterns has to occur.
By disrupting patterns we make things new again. We are jolted back into the present because we have to make fresh decisions. Disrupting behaviours forces us to re-meet the givens of a situation, subject or place, and paves the way to somewhere completely new.
There are many entry points to this area of creative practice. For the Creative Leadership in Learning program at the Sydney Opera House we run a full day to unpack this aptitude. We start with a series of exercises that explore the senses, starting with various blindfolded exercises, before we spend time de-ritualising spaces so that participants understand how they can use thresholds, mystery, sound, lighting and the set-up of the physical space to heighten creativity.?The exercise below is about disrupting our own thinking.
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Disruption Exercise
Name: Flip, flop
Objective: Radically complexify a core issue
Origins: This is a blend of games I learnt in cultural action training, merged with the lateral thinking work of Edward De Bono.
Set up a noisy, debating session about the crucial questions you are working on. These debates should centre on a driving question at the heart of your project, exploring the numerous issues spiralling from it
The key to this exercise is to keep it fun. I frame it as a brain strain game rather than a debate. When people hear the word game they are more likely to play - and playing, or disrupting, is the key here. Disruption is more often an internal journey than external. We have to disrupt ourselves to cause a genuine rupture in sociological or psychological patterns.
Facilitation Tip: Your role is crucial to the success of the debates. You have to keep them moving by reframing what was said, paraphrasing and provoking. You need to agree with everything and disagree even more. You need to challenge and question, keeping it buoyant and playful and encouraging raucous behaviour. You need to keep the ideas flowing.
Variation: Try this game with just one participant arguing as hard as they can for both sides of an issue. Encourage the participant to make a physical change as they swap sides in the debate (eg glasses on and off) or to change their tone of voice or even insult their other self for such a preposterous argument. As part of the reflection, the participant then has to announce which side of the debate won and justify their decision! The discussions after can be fascinating.?
Every workplace, project or learning context will require different approaches to creative practice, but for the most part they will all draw on these aptitudes. How you dial up or dial down each aptitude is how you define your method. The framework we use in the Creative Leadership in Learning program is below. It was written for school teachers to explore artistic processes to teach any subject. Accompanying this framework is a full course with over 60 creative strategies. We placed an emphasis on teachers developing their creative practice by adapting arts processes into the learning environment.
Sydney Opera House Creativity Framework
Buy in: Presence and enthusiasm
Ensemble: Collaboration and Intimacy
Imagination: The fertile unknown
Question: Investigation and revelation
Make: Forging form and content
Show: Framing and judgement
Reflect: Exiting and making memories
In my next article I’ll keep moving through the creative aptitudes. For more information about the Opera House programs, take a look at this clip and check out the link below.
Please reach out with any questions about the concepts or exercises.
Independent Creative Producer, Choreographer and Performer
2 年These exercises are really great Frank, thank you for sharing. Reminds me a lot of the basics of Viewpoints and grid walking as an exercise for finding the most "powerful" place on stage, and allowing actors/dancers/bodies to explore this and then craft their responses to why they think that spot is most powerful.
Analyzing Engineering Analysis
2 年I'm loving these. As an engineer, my viewpoint on creativity is largely a technical one (as in I need this mechanism to do this task). The framework and reading through the exercises are a good way to get a different perspective. In this one, I particularly like the notion of 'de-ritualizing'. I see us engineering types often get caught up in the way things are done. This is incredibly helpful as long as we do it intentionally. Looking at the assumptions that set those patterns in place allows us to choose whether that pattern is still a good fit. In other words, don't let it become a ritual, even if you stick with the pattern. Perhaps not your original intent but it's the connection I made to it.
Facilitation | Coaching | Psychotherapy | Community-led Systems Change
2 年So so great to read these Frank Newman. It's sparking thoughts all over the place. Loving your work on this!!
Japan specialist arts consultant, Director | ArtsPeople, PhD Candidate UTS Faculty of Design, Architecture & Building
2 年Great article Frank. Paulina Larocca - Creative Catalyst You two should meet if you don't already know each other.
Performance and Creativity
2 年Hi Frank-these posts are brilliant. I have been working on a creativity program for NIDA and am happy to share. I have been using a lot of the work of ?Keith Johnstone, who wrote Impro and one of his fundamental principles is 'to notice everything'. I look forward to your next installment.