Creative Conditions - RSA/RBS Brief

Having just returned late on Sunday evening from a five month ERASMUS exchange in Mechelen, Belgium, I was thrown back in the deep end on Monday morning with my return to DJCAD, Dundee.

In the morning we were greeted with a brand new project exploring the issue of creativity and where it is lacking in modern society and why. Using the live brief from RSA in partnership with RBS we have been asked to create a new creativity-provoking space or environment accompanied by a 1000 word business plan, and all of this must be completed within a short five week timeframe.

Beginning the research straight away I began looking into existing creative spaces but it wasn’t long before I found myself asking the question - “what actually is creativity? And what makes us creative?”. It’s something we, as design students, take for granted being immersed in everyday but how do we take that magical thing (creativity) and relocate it into a mobile space ready to consume those in need…

With this in mind, I started looking into the importance of play and having touched on it briefly during a previous project I had a little basis of knowledge to build on. Coincidentally I returned home at the end of the week to hear one of my flatmates (who studies at the Medical school) mention how recently there has been a few articles flying around regarding the lack of emphasis on creativity in the Medical sector resulting in poor decision making skills from students, added stress further down the line and increasing numbers of medical professionals abandoning their jobs due to monotony.

Interested in what she had to say, I looked into the issue and discovered multiple reports and articles exploring the issue over the past few years and decided that this was both a relevant and interesting problem to solve - How to re-inject creativity into the Medics of tomorrow?