The Secret of Creativity....... at TED Talks The Hague, February 8, 2009

[Yolanthe]

TED Talks The Hague is going well. Last Sunday, February 8th, 7 people gathered in the Gallery of Tennispark Berg & Dal. It was a pretty international group: French, Italian, Portugese, Dutch-Moroccan and three Dutch people. The conversation was mostly in English, with a bit of Dutch thrown in for good measure.

The theme: CREATIVITY.
Yeah, what is creativity?
According to Wikipedia:
Creativity is a mental and social process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts, creativity is fueled by the process of either conscious or unconscious insight. An alternative conception of creativeness is that it is simply the act of making something new. Blah, blah, blah.
What do you think? Do you consider yourself to be 'creative'? What fuels creativity? What kills creativity?

The first video showed Tim Brown, taped at the 2008 conference entitled: Serious Play. Tim is the owner of the innovation and design firm Ideo. His talk focusses on the role of PLAY in creativity and how we lose our playfulness as we age. According to Tim there are three important elements which we see observing kids at play:

* Trust, to take creative risks,
* Openness vs Fear (of punishment and ridicule)
* The importance of role play in designing a process or experience



Next we saw and heard David Carson, "grunge typographer” on Design, discovery and humor. He delivered a slide presentation full of whimsical images and comical well-timed comments. His eye for the absurd makes for extremely casual graphic design bordering on Dada and Fluxus (anti) esthetics. He makes a case letters as art and for using intuition to find what you are looking for.


The last video was the very popular talk ‘Do schools kill creativity” by educational consultant Sir Ken Robertson.
Ken Robinson just published a new book:The Element, how finding your passion changes everything.


So far we've seen a lot of men talking. Next TED Talks will feature three female speakers ;-)

[Yolanthe]

Yes, let it simmer. But not too too long, because you know what happens eventually when you leave it sitting on the stove. The moisture eventually evaporates.

[Ralph Oei]

Thanks Yolanthe. This was a very good session, may many more follow.

For me, creativity emerges from action, immersing yourself into a problem (or challenge, if you're that kind of person) and strictly separating action from analysis. You need both to create something worthwhile, but they tend to get in the way of each other. Often it's also helpful to step back and let it simmer for a while. The subconscious will eventually see the patterns.