Platforms for Creativity

This morning marked the beginning of a series of ‘touch points’ we will be attending over the course of this semester to run alongside the ‘Creative Conditions’ brief. Having recently been awarded the title of ‘UNESCO City of Design’ Dundee was fortunate enough to receive a visit from the “man who kens his Lego” - David Gauntlet and the creator of ‘Keep and share’ - Amy Twigger Holroyd.

Kicking off the day they provided us with a lecture delivered in an interesting style - in which they basically had a discussion about their joint ideas and achievements on stage while we silently observed.

The duo made some interesting points over the course of their talk particularly when discussing the topic of ‘Creativity’ as they managed to break it down into the following 8 platforms:

1. Embrace because we want to

2. Set no limits on participation

3. Celebrate participants not the platform

4. Support storytelling

5. Some gifts, some theatre, some recognition

6. Online to offline

7. Reinvent learning

8. Foster genuine communities

They then demonstrated how you might apply all of these platforms to a creative activity such as Amy’s knitting circle which targets festival goers and gives them a chance to reconnect, share memories and reminisce via the act of knitting or David’s ’Serious Play’ workshops which allow participants to create metaphorical models in order to communicate ideas or make intangible things real!

Having a lunch break after the morning lecture allowed us to digest some of the information we had received before participating in the afternoons creative workshop alongside Jewellery, Textiles, Interior students and other members of the public. After asking us to jumble ourselves up into unfamiliar teams of 5 or 6 we were directed to share the thought provoking object which we had been asked to bring with the rest of our newly formed groups.

My team, made up of: one jeweller, a phD student, Professor of Business and a Local print work representative set about discussing the various and extremely random objects we had brought which included a scented candle, watercolour picture, toy train, play doh and an iPad. It was very interesting at this stage to meet other people from different backgrounds and hear their stories about why they felt their item was thought provoking and if there were any connections between the belongings on the table.

After the initial discussion however I felt that the afternoon took a turn for the worse and with a lack of structure or direction the room ended up engaging in general chit chat and disengaging from the purpose of the workshop.

Overall however it was an interesting day and meeting people from different disciplines and backgrounds is really what made it worthwhile for me!