Curious People and Creative Acts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For inspiration I have been borrowing books from my friendly local public library on broad topics like curiosity and creativity. An excellent book from 2021 is Sarah Stein Greenberg’ Creative Acts for Curious People – how to think, create, and lead in unconventional ways.

 

The fourth and fifth paragraphs in her Introduction say:

 

“At the Stanford d.school, we’ve created an environment where normal rules are suspended and we constantly use our imaginations. Our purpose is to help everyone unlock their creative abilities. We cook up special ways for people to interact with each other. We make a lot of time for feelings, and we act like that’s no different than doing any other kind of work. We speak a language of encouragement. We’re hard on work but soft on people, and we don’t confuse kindness with weakness. We try things out before we know exactly what will happen, and then we spend time thinking and talking about what, exactly, just happened. Our furniture rolls around.

 

Our way of being and working contains a standing invitation to everyone to join us. Almost without exception, we can convince you to come up with a secret handshake at a moment’s notice. We know how to engage a room of adults in a fierce game of Rock Paper Scissors played at top volume. We can give you a bin filled with art supplies, and teach you to make something world-changing with them. We can show you how to stop self-censoring your most interesting ideas.”  

 

There are 81 assignments in that book, divided into the following 16 categories:

 

See things in a new way

Work well with others

Make sense of your insights

Come up with ideas

Build something

Tell a compelling story

Put your work out there

Take control of your own learning

Locate your own voice

Get out and discover

Pick up the pace

Slow down and focus

Have fun

Work toward equity

Peer into the future

Tackle a whole project

 

For example, consider these four assignments.

 

Assignment 2 is titled How to Talk to Strangers:

 

 “….Your third mission is harder.

Pretend you’re lost and ask a stranger for directions to a specific destination nearby.

If you get the person to give you directions, then ask them to draw you a map.

If they agree to draw you a map, then ask them for their phone number so you can call them if you need more help and get lost along the way.

If they agree to give you their phone number, then call them to see if they answer.

If they answer, thank them for their help and let them know you found your destination.”

 

Assignment 17 is titled Expert Eyes:

 

“Walk around the block for twenty minutes or so. This could be anywhere: your neighborhood, a farm, a bowling alley, and so on. Draw what you see in a notebook.

 

Repeat this exact same walk three or four more times and ask someone with a different expertise to join you each time. Being an ‘expert’ can mean many different things: you just want to be with folks whose discipline has trained their eyes in a specific way. Try a civil engineer, an artist, a landscaper, a historian, a transit worker, a community volunteer, or a small business advocate.

 

Ask your expert to talk aloud and tell you what they notice. Each time, sketch what the expert sees. Afterward, compare your original drawing, the one you drew when walking by yourself, to your subsequent drawings.What new and varied details or insights are there? How has your perception of the area shifted?”

 

On February 28, 2014 I blogged about walking around and finding Speech topics from near your neighborhood. And I described having your perceptions shift in a post on May 25, 2018 titled Cognitive biases and the frequency illusion.

 

Assignment 52 is titled Tell Your Granddad:

 

 “Your goal is to take an abstract concept and attempt to express the idea in as many ways as possible using metaphors, analogies, and similes. To do so, first imagine an audience of someone you know well and understand but who is very different from you. For the purposes of this game, call him Granddad.

 

Granddad probably grew up in a pre-digital technology era. He may still prefer a toaster to a panini press. He reads the newspaper in print and always buys his movie tickets in person, at the theater. He’s a smart guy, but he’s just not into all this modern stuff.

 

Your goal is to make sure your communication has reference points Granddad will connect to and immediately understand.”

 

Assignment 81 is titled I Used to Think & Now I Think. For it you make a two-column list with your previous ideas about a topic or another assignment, and your present thoughts (after completing it).

 

The image of a man using microscope in a lab was adapted from one at the Library of Congress.