This week was focused on ways to be creative, starting with what it means to be creative and how to foster creativity.
Creativity is hard to define but in my eyes is the ability to create something that does not exist, be it an idea or a solution. There are also several techniques I have learned about this week to help manage creativity. I have found that not limiting ideas at an earlier stage can produce better results and bad ideas can be removed at a later stage but should not be ignored as they may inspire better ideas.
The first technique is brainstorming which is focusing on a core problem and getting as many possible solutions, good or bad, and getting them onto paper, and connecting key ideas to create a graph that shows the relationship of the ideas. I see this as very similar to a mind map with the main difference being how things are connected. Given this difference purely visual, I don’t see myself using this technique as much as the mind map when solo but I could understand if a group would find this easier to grasp as it shows what people were thinking about when they reached an idea.
The second technique is the mind map. I use mind maps a lot as a way of presenting data as you can represent a mind map as anything with the right understanding. This is my main way of thinking, get ideas into categories and sub-branches from those categories. Once you have them all you can rearrange as needed and then generate what you need from the completed mind map. I do this for everything now having used this technique for years, for example, I could even write this post as a mind map by having categories for each topic, then each paragraph’s sub-topic, and even down to individual sentences. This is an immensely powerful way to think about large documents as it allows the freedom to write from any point, and when thinking about ideas has the same advantage, the ability to go with what you’re currently thinking about and then tangent to another area without losing your place. I wish I could explain more about the power of mind maps and may write more about them one day, but rest assured they are one of my favourite techniques for thought management and yet we learn about them at such a young age, most people never truly utilising them to their greatest extents.
This week I had the intention of using a different technique to the ones I usually use, the technique that was chosen was Opposite Thinking, which is intended to encourage the viewing of problems from a different angle. I greatly appreciated the potential for this technique as there are many world problems that when viewed from a different angle provide an understanding of the core issues of those problems and thus better solutions. I will write about the task in another post but this technique is one I can see myself using in life and not just for creativity.
I did not find every technique useful, I felt I did not require a lot of different techniques but some I did not like were collage/cut-up, Mash-up and round-robin. Round robin involves writing a solution, then passing it to another who must iterate on that idea. I felt that round-robin limited individual creativity in order to allow for group input and while novel, made a better game than a way to target actual issues with a problem. I even made a small party game around the idea or round-robin to play over the internet.
Mash-up involves breaking down the elements of two ideas and creating solutions from the elements of the two. I can see this being useful if you have two ideas to pick between but ultimately a dedicated solution would often be better.
Cut-up or collage was something David Bowie did when writing songs, he would write meaningless lyrics he liked then shuffle them and use the result to pick the final lyrics.
Unfortunately, I did not find either of these two techniques to be very useful as they both felt unoriginal, both ideas were based on reusing existing ideas and when the focus is on being creative, it felt like these two were cheating. I would personally rather make something from inspiration and experience than being given an answer through a system. Mash-up does show more promise to me though and I will keep it in mind for the future, but it would be a secondary technique, not a primary idea generator.
Crazy eights is a technique based around the idea of restricting time to get an idea out and by the time you reach the last iteration, one of them should be decent. I personally prefer to spend more time on an idea but I can see the benefits of rapidly getting ideas down without thinking too much about it, letting the subconscious learn and following the adage of fail early and fail often. I didn’t explore this one too much this week but have done sketches in a similar style to this so can see the value.
Finally the technique I think has the most potential, SCAMPER. SCAMPER is an acronym for substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to other uses, eliminate and rearrange. I like the idea of this one as it looks at the problem from a series of angles and can be applied to lots of different mediums in a way that will guarantee some success through tried and tested areas to review. I did not get to explore it too much this week but I can see myself using the technique in the future, although it does feel like it leans towards problem-solving issues with set parameters instead of creative endeavours.
The Task
For the task I wanted to try a newer technique as I normally use mind maps, I really liked the idea of opposite thinking and given it’s about perspective changes, I thought I would look at something from a different perspective. I chose to reideate a piece of music and eventually narrowed the choice to either Mr Robotto by Styx or Pink Floyd’s Brick In The Wall, after a weigh up of the two to see the pros and cons (using a mind map again) I chose to go with Pink Floyd, mostly because more people know about it and it is about education and this is for a masters degree which is itself education. I used Opposite Thinking to create lyrics that are of the same essence but from a different perspective, in my lyrics, the perspective of a struggling inner-city school teacher trying their hardest despite a lack of real resources to work with, evaluating the toll on their mental health.
Here are my lyrics compared with the original:
| Original | New |
| Daddy’s flown across the ocean Leaving just a memory Snapshot in the family album Daddy what else did you leave for me? Daddy, what’d’ja leave behind for me?!? All in all it was just a brick in the wall. All in all it was all just bricks in the wall. When they grew up and went to school there were certain teachers who would hurt the children any way they could By pouring their derision Upon anything we did And exposing every weakness However carefully hidden by the kids But in the town it was well known When they got home at night their fat and Psychopathic wives would thrash them Within inches of their lives We don’t need no education We don’t need no thought control No dark sarcasm in the classroom Teachers leave them kids alone Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone! All in all it’s just another brick in the wall. All in all you’re just another brick in the wall. We don’t need no education We don’t need no thought control No dark sarcasm in the classroom Teachers leave them kids alone Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone! All in all it’s just another brick in the wall. All in all you’re just another brick in the wall. Then Solo | Nothings left for you at home You may not have your family Your memories of the past are over Now we’re Stuck here, them and you and me Hey Kid, what more I do for you All in all it was just a brick in the wall. All in all it was all just bricks in the wall. When we get up and go to school Keep heads down, get through it all to Help the children, anyway we could We don’t ask for perfection Upon Everything you do We wanted to prepare you The world won’t let you hide from all of this But when your out, we sit at home Marking your papers till it’s late Our Husbands and our Wives Barely Coping with our lives I’m trying to give you an education I’m teaching you how to survive Your dark sarcasm will leave you lacking Students, please show some control Hey! Students, You’re not in this alone! All in all your not just another brick in the wall. All in all your not just another brick in the wall. They don’t want our education They don’t care, about you There’s no funding, you can’t afford this Should you leave the kids alone? Hey! The Teacher, She Left us kids alone All in all we’re just another brick in the wall. All in all I’m just another brick in the wall. Then the chaos of the solo perfectly represents the chaos of an unsupervised classroom |
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