TheatreArtLife: Uncovering the vast and untouchable realm of creativity is perhaps our final frontier. As the mother of all invention, creativity is rarely underestimated and its significance evident. The ability to create, to innovate, to find hidden patterns, to connect the unconnected or to perceive the world around us in new ways is what makes us human. Creativity is what sets us apart…
7 comments:
I really enjoyed this article's take on how to create creativity. This is something I think about often as a manager due to the nature of our work. I thought the acknowledgement that creativity is one of the hardest things to "make" was a great preface to their attempt to break down the creative process. Their approach, the 4 P's, captured some really key ideas that I've heard before but not really as simple as they made it. I think that simplicity really benefits what they are trying to get across, which is that you can provoke further creativity in your business without having to overhaul the whole company. Additionally, I liked the author's noted that if you say you are going to be a space for open creativity, you need to continue that in practice all the way through from start to end. Creating a space for creativity is an active decision for an employer and/or manager and should be treated as such and worked on continuously in a company's journey.
This article took a great look at creativity and seeing how to work with it. I agree with the article when it says to do research. Now for a school project or a school production, no one is going out to spend money in order to do a little research or study on the creativity required and to optimize it but people make notes and adjust how they manage the creative based on past experience or asking certain types of questions to the creative time. This isn’t formal research but it is impromptu research that could help manage a creative team. I think this article does a really neat thing when dividing up creativity into the 4ps. It makes a lot of sense and helps to make such an abstract idea concrete. Another amazing thing that this article points out is how managers of creative teams must provide a framework. This can’t be emphasized enough because in my little management experience I have seen so many issues when managers try to be completely hands-off or put too much opinion in on the situation.
This article really hits our lives as theatre makers. This article seems to speak to all creatives from designers to businesses, and so forth. However, what they talk about is something I have heard over and over as being necessary for designers when they are creating their ideas. This article highlights all the things we do as theatre people do when they are hiring and putting designers together for a show. And my part of the job is highly important and spoken only at the end, don’t shut down ideas. This is key for anyone who is not part of that creative team. Those people need to work through ideas and that cant be done if something is shut down before it is even developed. Overall, a good article and one that many people should read as this can apply to creative teams everywhere and really aid in the process of creating.
I really liked this article because it gave me new insight to the age old topic of creativity in a professional setting. Especially in the theatre world, we talk all the time about creativity and collaboration needing to be present to have a successful team of actors, designers, directors, etc., and while we all know this is true, I do not think we really are able to reason out why we need these things in such a deep way. One reason for this, I think, is because creativity is hard to define and quantify. We do not often break down what it really means to be creative, but this article gives some good points: to be creative is to have "intrinsic motivation", be open minded, and to have freedom in your work. Being able to put a finger on these more individual characteristics is important because it allows employers in particular to understand what they should be looking for in creative employees.
This article is fascinating, because it really provides a clear framework and process by which people can establish a positive environment for creativity in a team. Creativity is a key component of innovation in any company. The old model of doing business that allows companies to remain static in their thinking is no longer leads to success in business. Instead companies have to constantly change how they operate otherwise they risk a new company with better technology usurping their role in the marketplace. Air BnB and Uber have both uprooted transportation and hospitality industries, and Amazon has obliterated the retail industry. The key to their success has been creativity in how they operate and solve problems. Ensuring that companies have the best creative environment is key to ensuring creativity flourishes. Without creativity, businesses in the 21st century will get left behind. Articles like this are an important roadmap for how to establish this into the future.
I always make sure to read articles focused on team dynamics, since that has been such a big part of this semester for me in taking on the Rube Goldberg project and Arcade. I've really been able to make use of strategies in these articles to tackle the unique challenges of team design projects head on, without breeding conflict or halting progress. I particularly like how this article focuses in on the professional world, since even though we are not participating in that world yet, I can begin acting professionally in my studies and projects here, thus preparing me for when I eventually do enter the professional sphere. I will try to adopt these practices now, into my arcade project, which has already been going pretty well due to our adoption of some of the strategies featured on this blog. I hope to see more of these relevant and helpful articles in the future!
I think that reading as many articles as possible about what has worked in helping creative groups grow and thrive as a collective is really important. There is no one formula to make every group work perfectly, so I think familiarizing ourselves with as many strategies that have found success is a really effective thing because it allows us to add more tools to our toolbox, so to speak. There is no one way to be a perfect manager, but there are a million ways to be a really great one, and I think one of the ways we can learn to find what works with each group as quick as possible is by seeing what has been done before. I think that the biggest think is to not shut down the ideas of your teammates. It is so important to allow the freedom of artists to create beyond what they first might think possible, to allow doable, but equally wonderful ideas flow.
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