YOU Are Creative, But You May Not Know It Yet

Written by Education Intern, Alicia Bucks

“Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up” -Picasso.

Somewhere along the way to adulthood, be it through regimented school curriculums or the pressures of our economic system, many people lose the belief that they are creatively talented.  An article published recently by Psychology Today, entitled Creative Thinkering: Resurrecting your natural creativity through inspiring techniques and practical examples describes twelve aspects of creative thinking that for the most part go untaught.  The article is written by Michael Michalko, an expert in the field of inventive thinking.  The first, and arguably most important, of these twelve aspects of creative thinking that often go ignored is: YOU ARE CREATIVE!   This means that there is no intrinsic difference between a renowned artist and a person who does not pursue any creative endeavors.  The difference lies within people’s beliefs about themselves.  Michalko explains that all people are born with the ability to be creative, spontaneous thinkers, but as they form their self-identity they either choose to believe they are creative individuals or believe they are simply uncreative, as if there was some sort of special essence these “creative types” have that they must be lacking.  The expression of this self-identity leads people to either pursue creative projects, and therefore develop their creative thinking skills, or to write them off completely.  Michalko explains, “the reality is that believing you are not creative excuses you from trying or attempting anything new.  When someone tells you that they are not creative, you are talking to someone who has no interest and will make no effort to be a creative thinker.”   This sort of denial of a person’s own creative ability can easily turn into a lifelong self-administered stifling of one of the most beautiful aspects of being human, the ability to create.  The wonderful thing about the Children’s Creativity Museum is that it gives visitors the opportunity and encourages them to realize that they are creative, even if they have lived their whole lives denying their abilities and depriving themselves of the fulfillment creative endeavors often bring.  Through CCM’s education philosophy of “Imagine, Create, Share,” visitors of all ages are able to bring their sometimes forgotten creative sides to life.

Children and adults alike who enter the doors of Children’s Creativity Museum become instantly immersed in CCM’s education Philosophy, which is encapsulated in a design process referred to as, “Imagine, Create, Share.”  This process is a great way of easing people into creative endeavors without any of the pressure often associated with making art.  In each of the numerous interactive exhibits at the museum, from the Animation Studio, to the Innovation Lab, to the Music Studio, and beyond, visitors are encouraged to Imagine, Create, and Share in ways that conventional schooling and workplaces often ignore.  Visitors Imagine, maybe for the first time in years.  They are given the opportunity to try out something new, observe the creations of others, get inspired, and let their imagination run wild.  — Simply put, play!  Being not only allowed, but encouraged to do this can reawaken the creativity that so often lies dormant in people who believe themselves to be uncreative.

Once visitors are drawn in to one of the numerous activities available at CCM through Imagination, Educators facilitate an environment where everyone feels free to let their creative juices start flowing.  A big part of the creative process at CCM has to do with imparting Creative Confidence in visitors, and is one of the major goals of Educators at CCM.  This means instilling in people the freedom and courage to take risk without fear of failure, judgement, constraints, or a need for “perfection.”  It is confidence in the knowledge that every idea you create has value.  CCM challenges visitors to discover new materials and tools, see things in new ways, make connections, take risks, and collaborate with each other in order to create something new and exciting.

The Creative process at CCM is also facilitated by Imagination Starters, which are provided in many of the exhibit spaces.  Imagination Starters consist of 20% inspiration, in the form of a prompt, question, or challenge that visitors will provide the other 80% to in order to have a complete product.  This makes getting started on a creative project much more approachable than being confronted with a blank page and a pencil.  For example, in the Music Studio, fill-in lyric sheets (similar to Mad-Libs) help visitors to write their own songs which they can later create music for and perform in front of a green-screen.  Similarly, the Mystery Box Challenge gives people a box full of random objects which must be transformed into a new creation based on a prompt, such as, “build a space suit for a shark.”  These Imagination Starters are a great way to get creative juices flowing and make being creative less intimidating to people who have told themselves they are incapable.

Once a visitor of CCM has Imagined new possibilities and transformed some of those ideas into tangible Creations, they are encouraged to Share their masterpieces with others.  Every visitor receives validation of their ideas, positive feedback, and ideas for building upon what they have done to make another great project in the future.  Whenever possible, visitor creations are displayed in miniature film festivals, frames on the museum’s walls, on CCM’s website, and in take-home formats, such as a DVD copy or emailed link to their project.  This sharing of visitors’ ideas is an important way to make each person feel validated in their creative abilities and confidant to make something else in the future.

By the end of a day spent at Children’s Creativity Museum visitors will come to accept that they are in fact extremely creative.  Sometimes they might just need a little guidance, in the form of CCM’s supportive environment to help them realize it.  Being allowed and encouraged to Imagine, Confidently Create, Share with others, and to be given the first 20% to get started can go a very long way in reviving a creative spark that has almost gone out.  We hope that you will pay a visit to CCM and learn that YOU are creative too!

From audience to idea: rapid prototyping in action

As a true believer in co-creation, I’ve been doing everything in my power to encourage our Creative Community Council members to blog about their experiences. However, I realize that a full-fledged post is a lot to ask of high school seniors, parents and community advocates so instead we tried a mad lib.

Today we…

• Did the Mystery Box Challenge, brainstormed ways to find solutions to our Point of Views, chose our favorite ideas and presented it in a skit
• Created our prototyping for the specific age groups/families as a way to put our top choices to the test
• Came up with some great ideas on how to better reach children in our age group

The process was…

• Really great, in our groups we cam up with so many different ideas to reach out to the community, things I never would have thought of on my own
• One that allowed us to think about how to engage our target population and advertise our prototyping
• Creative, inspirational, and fun

I liked…

• Brainstorming, watching the skits, the warm-up, the grapes!
• The active participation and stretching exercise
• Making the skit
• Coming up with a lot of ideas, narrowing them down, and creating a presentation
• I really enjoyed the different ways we shared ideas
• Working with my group and getting inspired
• Just having fun and playing

I wish…

• More group interaction, bring back the chips!
• We had more time to prepare for the video
• There were more grapes because they were delicious and helped revamp my brain after a long day of school
• The mini-marathon would come to life. I would love to see it happen
• There was more time to give feedback to other groups about their ideas

I wonder…

• Which of our ideas will actually be implemented
• About other ways to engage families through Facebook, Newsletters, and let them know what the CCM has to offer
• Our idea would carry through and become a reality
• What my families and children will think about our ideas
• Where we’ll end up – it’s kinda fun not to know and trust that we’ll get there!!!

Check out the videos each of our groups developed to show off their initial prototypes! Over the next two weeks they will share them with the children and families as well as our staff for questions, ideas, and tips on how to make their prototypes into action plans! What advice do you have for our groups?

User-Driven Community Engagement

By: Irina Zadov

When I first began at the museum in 2008 my supervisor and mentor shared a story about the Louisiana Children’s Museum’s response to Hurricane Katrina. In the aftermath of the storm families came together to share food, resources, and basic necessities, activities which radically strayed from the LCM’s mission of “promoting hands-on participatory learning for children of all ages.” This made me wonder: what is the role of a children’s museum in the lives of the families it serves? Natural disaster or not, what is our responsibility? To whom? And to what end?

For the CCM, being a “community resource” is one of the top priorities in our Strategic Plan, but we’ve always struggled to articulate exactly what that means. Over the years there have been numerous concerted efforts by individual staff and passionate community partners, but there has never been a systematic approach to community outreach and engagement.

We know it takes more than an active commitment to involving community artists, innovators, and youth in the co-creation of our programs and exhibits. We know it takes more than simply offering fee-waived family memberships for families from low-income neighborhoods. We know that for many families challenges around finances,  leisure time, linguistic and cultural norms, and legal status present a barrier to access. To help develop community outreach and engagement strategies that will be meaningful and lasting, we are choosing to focus on assets rather than needs.

“We are forming the Creative Community Council – a group of community leaders who will co-create a meaningful and sustainable platform for outreach and engagement.”  - Audrey Yamamoto, Executive Director.

Launched in the winter of 2011, the CCC is a group of 15 youth and adult advocates with strong ties to youth and families in our target age range.

The CCC includes folks like Yohana Quiroz, the Director of Youth and Family Programs at Family Service Agency of San Francisco who supports teen mothers, infants, recent immigrants, and elders in the Mission district. “For me it’s exciting – we work with low-income, high-risk families and if I could list five families who know about CCM, that would be amazing – I want to make sure that this resource is accessible for all of them.”

Other council members represent old friends. Fatimah Guienze, a teaching artist with Galileo Learning and Leap Arts in Education has worked with the museum for years as a facilitator, exhibition developer, and advocate.  ”I am sincerely grateful and feel thoroughly blessed to be sharing the power of CCM with my San Francisco and East Bay community – I am always amazed how few of my students have had the chance to experience the freedom and creativity of the CCM – the need is great.”

Finally, we are thrilled to include youth representatives like Kai Lyons-Kuster, a senior at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts whose passion for music and early childhood education brought him to the museum as a C.I.T.Y. Guide where he was nominated by his peers to be a youth community advocate. “When I was in middle school, band was the only thing that got me through the day, when that went away in high school I had to transfer. When I graduate I want to be a music teacher so that all kids have access to creative expression.”

Inspired by the IMLS award winning Wing Luke Asian Museum Community Process  and the Oakland Museum of California Community Advisory Council our council is focused on developing long term and short term engagement strategies for each of our three target audiences: children ages 3-5, children ages 6-12, and families. Rather than forming an ongoing committee with monthly meetings into eternity, we chose to launch a task force with a clear deadline and action goals: to develop a Community Outreach and Engagement Plan  just in time for our March Board Retreat and its inclusion in the FY13 Operations Plan and Budget.

We chose to use the Design Thinking Process as a model of human-driven innovation for our bi-monthly meetings. Over the course of six weeks, the CCC will develop empathy through site-visits, observations, and interviews with each of the target demographics; a point of view or a need statement which will guide the design process for each demographic; they will ideate (come up with ideas); prototype (make mock ups of those ideas); and finally test them with our ultimate end users who include community members, staff, and board.

The outcome? A Community Outreach and Engagement Plan designed by and for youth and families whose needs are currently unmet by our organization. Of course, like everything in our museum, this process is an experiment, perpetually in beta and strengthened by our ability to fail forward.

Has your institution tried something like this? What were the results? Are you part of a community which doesn’t typically use the resources of a children’s museum? What suggestions would you give us as we embark on this adventure? 

Defining Creative Confidence

Defining Creative Confidence

-By Ben Grossman-Kahn

Creative Confidence is a term that gets tossed around a lot at our museum. David Kelley, of IDEO fame, mentions the term frequently, and building creative confidence is one of the guiding objectives of the Stanford d.School.  We have adopted this mantra and integrated it into our educational approach and design process of “Imagine, Create, Share”, and until recently have felt pretty confident that we were imparting the skills and coaching needed to be creatively confident.

However, during a recent education team meeting, one of our interns asked what exactly we meant by creative confidence, pointing out that it was hard to measure unless we knew what such confidence actually looks like.

This prompted some deep soul searching among the Education team and prompted us to utilize the backwards design approach.  We began by trying to define the enduring understandings we want to impart and asked ourselves, how do we define creative confidence, how do we make sure we are teaching it, and how might we recognize it when we see it?  Falling back on our own design process, we began with interviews to understand how others interpreted this phrase, and asked our office staff, interns and high school CITY Guides “What would be your definition of having creative confidence?”  Some of the responses were:

“Knowing that your creative contributions and ideas are valuable”

“Creative confidence can be obtained when you try something you’ve never done and learn something new about yourself from that attempt”

“The confidence to put yourself out on a limb”

“Knowing that you don’t have to find the one right answer”

“Knowing there there is not a single right answer to a problem, and feeling empowered to create and test out multiple solutions.”

“Not being afraid of your imagination.”

“Being able to create anything and feel happy about it.  Not hesitating to build whatever comes to mind”.

“The confidence to trust your instincts and share your ideas with a group”

As designers, we took these statements and looked for patterns and themes that we could synthesize into one clear statement.  Two themes that recurred were the confidence to share your ideas with others and the knowledge that there is always something that can be learned from creating or expressing an idea, even if it doesn’t turn out the way you imagined it would.  With these in mind, we crafted the following definition

Creative Confidence:  Having the freedom and courage to fail/take creative risks and the knowledge that all of the ideas you create have value.

Once we had defined this statement, we were able to pull back and look at our programs and the way we facilitate them and ask ourselves whether we were truly imparting this knowledge and confidence to our visitors.  The question we asked ourselves was “When and how are we explicitly letting our visitors know that it is ok to take creative risks and try new things? What are we doing that would let them know that their ideas have value?”  The results? We realized that we encourage creative confidence in very subtle ways that don’t always resonate with visitors.  We have educational signage with “creative tips” which encourage visitors to experiment with different tools or build a castle out of foam blocks,but a recent observation showed that few visitors seem to engage with these prompts.  With regards to validating the value of what our visitors create we are doing slightly better, with our Creativity Stories project that celebrates the stories behind projects, but once again the percentage of visitors who interact with this experience is smaller than we’d like.

After much internal discussion, we realized that the single best way for us to communicate these values to our visitors is through our facilitation and personal interactions with visitors.  We conducted another brainstorm, this time with our high school City Guides, to develop things we could do or say to inspire this confidence.   Here are 3 concrete tips to try at home:

There is no wrong way to approach a project:  Everyone has a different process for tackling creative projects- some start with sketches or a brainstorm, while others observe their environment for cues and inspiration.  Some may find it helpful to develop a process that can be repeated while for others, finding inspiration might take a different path every time.  We often develop mental blocks or construct artificial rules and constraints for ourselves, such as assuming that we can only use the materials we are given (a cardboard box for example) or that we can only use the materials as they were originally intended (i.e selling the box for $2 to buy new materials would be ‘cheating’).  The next time you find yourself or a child asking questions that begin with “Am I allowed to..” or “Can I do…”  affirm that the answer is always YES.

Take pictures and document/celebrate the process:  There has long been a sense that only the best works of art or creations are worthy of being framed, hung on the mantle or displayed for all to see.  How often have you walked into a room to see a display of blurry photos, or a smudged painting left half- finished?  However, the story behind those beautiful objects lies within those very same ‘mistakes’, and should be celebrated as well.  The Reggio Emilia school system does an incredible job of documenting conversations and artwork from their 3-5 year old students, and displaying these documents prominently on the walls.  This display and celebration of the thought process and artwork of children is an incredibly empowering model and one that we strive to emulate.  The responses we get from kids when we ask if we can take pictures of their prototypes and creations to share with other kids on Facebook and our blog is priceless- huge smiles, a surge in confidence and a feeling that their work is special and worth celebrating, no matter what it looks like.

At the end of a project, ask what you’ve learned and how you could do things differently the next time.  There has been a lot of talk in the business world recently about the importance and power of failure.  One of the key ideas that has emerged from this discussion is the idea of “Failing Forward”, or using lessons learned from an experience to drive forward your next iteration.  There is a huge difference between blindly accepting failure and plowing forward and actively reflecting after each project on what worked, what didn’t work and what you would do differently the next time.  A recent school group was working on a claymation movie- unfortunately their computer crashed three times during the filming process.  By the third time around, the students knew exactly how to get started without any support and were much more sophisticated in their approach.  Had they not been forced to pause and reflect on their process in between reboots, their final product would have been much more choppy and confusing.  At the end of each project, leave time to debrief on “I liked..”  “I wish..” and “What if…”.  By capturing these lessons learned, you are calling out the fact that all of the ideas created had value in that they offered valuable lessons and learnings for future projects.

With that in mind, we now end our daily meetings with one very important question for all of our staff:

“What did you do today that would explicitly let a visitor know it is ok to take creative risks and that the idea/project they created has value?”

How do you or your organization define creative confidence? How do you foster it?  Share with us! (And know that all ideas you share are valuable and will teach us something new)

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This is not a blog post. It’s a…

By Jill Slagter

Have you ever given a child the box that a new refrigerator came in or even just a plain old empty box? What did that box turn into? When I was young, I have a clear memory of my older sister pushing me around in that box/fort/truck/plane for hours.  However, I can’t remember a thing about the refrigerator.

We often start our meetings and brainstorming sessions in our education department with a creative warm-up and one of those warm-ups is called “This is not a…”. Any random object is passed around and we take turns saying things such as  “This is not a marker, it’s chapstick for an alien.” Or, “No, this is not chapstick for an alien, it’s a lightsaber for a mouse”. And so on.

This game is used to get our creative juices flowing, but it also reminds me that when you let your imagination take over, as children often do, there are a million different ways to see the world. When engaging with children, I always try to remember that they may see a world completely different from the one I see, and letting that imagination go wild does wonders for a child. Kenneth Ginsburg, a pediatrician specializing in Adolescent Medicine at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, reported last year in The American Academy of Pediatrics, that child-driven play contributes to “cognitive, physical, social and emotional well-being”. It has been shown to help children develop empathy, self-confidence and creativity, among a multitude of other beneficial traits. (http://www.aap.org/pressroom/playFINAL.pdf)

Boxes turned into a space station at CCM

As an educator at a children’s museum, I get to see child-driven imaginative play almost everyday. And, when I just ask questions and encourage children to create meaning for the objects they play with, I’ve been rewarded in many ways, including getting to eat a big plate of clay eggs, meeting a monster that can shrink people and crawling through a tunnel in a princess castle. Had I looked at those objects with my “grown-up” vision on, I may have just seen a big hunk of playdoh, a strange looking blob character, and a big mess of foam noodles and blocks to clean up.

A powerful example of the meaning children embed into objects can be seen in this story of Queen Critical. You may think these just look like paper people, but you’ll never believe the story the child has created about these characters. And all we had to do was ask.

Recently, I was playing with my friend’s 3-year old daughter and bought her a puzzle made out of blocks. Instead of putting the puzzle together as the box describes, she started building the highest tower she could build. My initial reaction was to show her how to do the puzzle, but then I realized, “Why can’t this be a game where we build the highest tower we can?”. Allowing her to play the game as she sees it and encouraging her, instead of trying to correct her, helps her realize that there is value in her ideas, which is a big part in developing what we at CCM call “creative confidence”.

Here are 3 easy strategies you can try at home to foster child-driven play:

1. Engage children in the fantasy world they are creating:

When you see imaginative play happening with your child or among a group of children, ask a few simple questions to help you understand the world they have created.  Try to include yourself in the questions so that they know you are a part of this fantasy.  Questions like “What are WE doing here?”, “What are WE going to do?”  and “What should WE do next?” not only empower children to take charge, but show them that you understand the immediacy and urgency of the (imaginary) situation. Follow along, support them, and resist the temptation to take the lead.

2. Provide open-ended materials and objects that lend themselves to creative use/interpretation (true toys):

Find some unique props to stimulate dramatic play and set up a situation. There are lots of open-ended children’s toys that work for this such as dollhouses, wooden trains, blocks, or castles, but don’t be afraid to use what you have lying around as well such old clothes for dress up, big boxes, blankets, etc.

I have a drawer full of little plastic animals at home. I’ve seen those animals talk, hide, fight, swim, fly, raise families, and even disappear during magic shows.

3.  Read!

Nothing inspires imagination and stimulates scenarios for play like hearing stories. Show your child the cover of the book and ask what they think it might be about. When reading to your child or a group of children, ask questions such as “What do you think will happen next?” and “Why do you think that?”. You can also occasionally try to read a book aloud without showing your child the pictures. Let them just listen and imagine the characters or have them draw a picture of what they think the main character looks like.

Finally, for a little inspiration check out a book I like.

Not a Box by Antoinette Portis

Walk This Way

There is no denying that the Animation Studio is a popular place to be in the Children’s Creativity Museum. It only takes a few minutes for claymation’s endless possibilities to draw in visitors of all ages. What would it be like to be a professional animator?

CCM interns heard about claymation from an expert last month. Dave Osmand from Shademaker Productions, a stop-motion animation company in San Francisco, visited the museum and spoke to educators and interns.

Osmand brought along some of the tools of his trade: wooden implements for shaping clay and creating detailed expressions in his characters. He demonstrated their use and then let CCM staff practice molding their own clay characters. Meanwhile, Osmand captivated everyone with stories and sage advice about animating. He outlined the main principals of animation (of which there are a large but variable number, depending on who you talk to).

Osmand has been animating all his life. He loved cartoons as a kid and gravitated towards Daffy Duck. He always enjoyed playing with clay and that remains his favorite medium for stop-motion animation. As a professional, Osmand became a stop-motion lip-sync expert and worked on films like Wallace and Grommit and Chicken Run.

The highlight of the visit was the opportunity to see an animator in action. Osmand graced the CCM stages with his stop-motion skills in a wire figure walking demonstration. His audience challenged him to make the wire figure (or armature) sneak across the stage. Osmand’s personality came through in his movements and he was a captivating storyteller.

Animation by Dave Osmand

While Osmand painstakingly adjusted and readjusted his armature, he explained some of his techniques. Practicing movements he was animating with his figure was an important part of the process. Osmand tried a sneaky walk over and over again himself so he could get it just right in the animation. The result was impressive!

Dave Osmand left CCM staff in awe of the time and effort that goes into professional stop-motion animation. He also contributed some exciting new ideas for our animation studio that we can’t wait to try!

Imagination Starters

-By Ben Grossman-Kahn

If you’ve ever been handed a blank sheet of paper and told to “draw something creative” you know how hard it can be to generate ideas out of thin air.  As they say in the design world, innovation is a process, not an event. Without any sort of prompt or direction, the possibilities of that blank page are limitless- you could draw a new solar powered flying car, or an underwater monkey kingdom, or… you get the idea.  For some people, this problem is compounded by a fear that the moment they touch their pen to the pristine white page, they are ruining it with their scribbles.

During my years as a teacher and summer camp director, I saw the “blank page” problem rise again and again, and not just with art.  When children enter a new environment or space, they look for cues that help them figure out where to go/what to do, and the fear of getting this wrong and looking foolish can be paralyzing.  For that reason, whenever we set up a classroom we would always pre-set the games, puzzles and blocks on the floor, removing them from boxes and laying them out in an inviting manner.  With blocks, we would spread them across the floor and build some half-finished structures that invited kids to add on to them.  With murals and artwork, we would always draw several images and lines that showed kids that yes, it was ok to scribble on the paper.

The concept that people are more likely to engage with an activity if they feel like it has been started for them was validated in a UCLA Business school study conducted by Professors Joseph C. Nunes and Xavier Drèze.  The study looked at two car wash businesses who gave away customer loyalty cards.  Car wash #1 gave away a card that required 10 car washes to earn a free wash, but pre-stamped the first two.  Car wash #2 gave out a card which required 8 stamps to earn a free car wash, and did not pre-stamp the cards.  After tracking the customer redemption rate, the professors found that the cards that had been pre-stamped showed a 34% return rate over a 19% rate from the 8 stamp cards.  Although these cards required the exact same number of purchases, the pre-stamped cards gave customers a sense of ‘endowed progress’- the feeling that they were already on the road to achieving their goal, rather than starting from scratch.

At Children’s Creativity Museum, we have taken this concept of endowed progress and made it one of our Pillars of Creativity, calling it “Imagination Starters/ 20% Inspiration”.  A few examples of how this is employed include:

Person, Place, Problem prompt cards.  Even for the best writers, storytelling is frequently a challenge.  We have observed that families who come to our animation studio often struggle to come up with stories they want to tell.  To help get them started, we offer a deck of “Person, Place, problem” cards which they can draw at random to generate a story prompt.  Examples might include “A penguin, in outer space, being chased by an evil twin” or “A chicken, under the ocean, looking for his lunch”.

            Creative Challenges:  During our Creative studio workshops, rather then giving participants materials with a totally open ended goal, we typically offer a box of randomized challenges to get them started.  Most recently, we ran a Mystery Box challenge that asked kids to draw a random card from a “Challenge Deck”.  Kids could select an easy, medium or hard challenge, and the cards asked them to create “The world’s fastest race car” or “An amusement park ride from the future”  using only the materials we provided in a small box.

By constraining the materials as well as giving prompts via the challenge, we typically see a much higher engagement and participation rate.  Even more interesting, once kids complete that first challenge, they begin to see themselves as a “Super Designer” and build their creative confidence. (We support this by handing out badges after each challenge with different rankings- Design Agent, Design Ninja, Design Expert).

Wander Monster:  We have been totally inspired by Pratt Insitute instructor Robb Kimmel, who sends his son to school every day with a ‘Wandermonster’ prompt- the paper includes a half written story and half finished drawing. At lunch, his son opens the prompt and completes the text and photo with his own imagination.  This is a marvelous example of sparking the imagination through both prompts and a creative challenge, and is a concept that can be applied to a wide range of mediums.  At CCM, we have embraced this approach and created similar prompts (Complete a story+ add to the image/code) using Photoshop, Scratch programming, and iStopmotion.  We also empower participants by asking them to create their own creative prompt for someone else, thus allowing them to participate as both a designer as well as instructor.

By providing these imagination starters, we are not only modeling potential interactions and uses of different media tools, we are also giving kids a launch pad for their creativity.  Just as with any form of scaffolding, these prompts are designed to be slowly removed as children start learning to generate their own prompts and challenges.

The best part? What we often see is children becoming empowered to create their own challenges to give to peers, developing a “By kids, for kids” community of creative thinkers and doers.

Have a great example of an Imagination starter you’ve used? Please share with us!  Leave a comment below or email us at Education@Creativity.org with your ideas and we’ll share them in a future post. 

Taking Creative Risks and Failing Forward

By Ben Grossman-Kahn

One of our favorite mantras within the Education department is “Failing forward”. This phrase captures a key creativity lesson- most of us don’t have perfect ideas the first time around. In fact, what we frequently find is that the best ideas come out of our ‘spectacular failures’. James Dyson, the billionaire inventor of the Dyson vacuum, famously spent over ten years and developed 5126 prototypes before achieving financial success with his Cyclone vacuum. Since then, he has gone on to found the Dyson Foundation to encourage design and engineering education. He describes the power of failure below

“…The foundation encourages kids to fail. Or rather, not be afraid to fail: to experiment, test ideas and make something new. Students need an alternative to read-and-repeat. They need to use their heads and hands to identify problems and go about solving them. Taking things apart and developing new ways to do things. Not to be mistaken for playtime, it’s how children develop critical thinking skills and the practical knowledge for how things work. And it’s fun. “

- James Dyson “In Praise of Failure” (Wired UK)

This summer, we ran a workshop for teachers called “Camp WooHoo” that introduced the growth mindset theory made famous by Carol Dweck. During the workshops, we encouraged teachers to explore their own comfort with taking various types of risks- social, professional, artistic. During the debriefings, many teachers expressed the discomfort they felt when they were pressured to produce a perfectly drawn picture, or to follow instructions perfectly. Others talked about the importance of having time to make mistakes and explore the programs they were working with.

As we talked about how these same pressures might be felt by students in a classroom, it became clear that all too often we put these expectations of perfection on activities and assignments. When leading a writers workshop, for example, are you making it clear to students that early drafts are an opportunity to try out different plot ideas and take creative risks? When you introduce a new program or digital tool to students, are you giving them time to play and explore in an open ended fashion before expecting them to complete assignments using those new tools? Woodside Priory, a private secondary school, has made a school wide commitment to “Fail Forward Fridays” once a month, where teachers, students and administrators try out new curriculum, furniture arrangements or lesson plans. Just as valuable as the experiments themselves are the debrief discussions and lessons learned that emerge from these days- we would argue that there is a key distinction between merely failing and ‘failing forward’.

Share your strategies for encouraging risk taking and failing forward in the comments below, then check out these amazing videos of creative legends discussing failure.

Intern Training: Creativity in Practice

“Come on in! There are craft supplies in the birthday party room. Make yourself a name tag telling the story of how you got here.” Thus began my first day of training as an intern at the Children’s Creativity Museum.

 
I picked out a rectangular piece of blue foam and fired up my long-dormant coloring, cutting, and gluing skills. Needless to say, it had been a while since anyone had asked me to tell a story with pictures. I’m a word girl most of the time. My new internship already had me thinking and working outside my comfy academic routine.

 
The Children’s Creativity Museum (CCM) drew me in with the promise of experience working with kids in a museum setting and learning about education through principals of design and creativity. I say museum, because CCM calls itself a museum, not because it looks or feels anything like any museum I have ever experienced. Coming from an academic, object-centered museum background, an environment devoid of glass cases filled with shiny old things took some getting used to. What were we supposed to teach kids about if there were no exhibits, no history, no content?

 
Okay, so maybe I already knew it wasn’t fair to say the CCM had no content. I knew the value of creative expression and play going into this internship, at least I thought I did. Over the course of my training with fellow interns and our first few days on the job, I learned that I had been grossly underestimating the substance of this object-less museum.

 
My first days at CCM are already a blur of mini art projects, clay, music videos, and playing with computer programs. Sounds like fun, huh? Of course it was fun but I was also learning valuable lessons that would be indispensable to me as an education intern. That is, I was learning about the design process and how it could draw creative thoughts out of my brain that I didn’t even know were in there. We interns are expected to facilitate the three C’s of 12st century skills: Creativity, Collaboration, and Communication, which is the Children’s Creativity Museum’s mission.

 
Training to work as an education intern involved moving though the interactive exhibits ourselves, an experience that got us playing with the same tools and activities our young visitors would use. Initially, I was self conscious about my lack of drawing skills, shy about singing and dancing on camera, and worried that I would not be able to guide kids through the same activities.
However, it only took a few hours of time with my fellow interns before the sense of camaraderie and lessons we were learning loosened us up. We learned to Imagine, Create, and Share, which involved exploring crazy ideas, building prototypes that sometimes failed, and expanding upon the ideas of others within our group. I haven’t felt so liberated since before I cared if the kid next to me in class was better at coloring inside the lines!

 
Above all, I think the most important thing I learned over the course of training was only obvious once I started working with kids in the museum. That is, that innovation is a process and it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Superficially, I knew these things already. I studied anthropology in college and graduate school so I am familiar with how cultures influence each other and constantly change over time. In practice, however, I tend to focus on finished products and try to come up with unrealistically original ideas because I want to be totally unique.
There is nothing like watching a family shape clay characters for hours on end to drive home the concept of innovation as a process. There was not only innovation going on at their table, but learning, playing, and collaboration.

 
As to the lack of a vacuum, all I had to do was hang out in the Music Studio for a few minutes on the CCM’s grand re-opening day to have that lesson hammered home. I heard kids sing the same song as the two kids before them and I saw others perform off-the-wall, highly choreographed music and dance routines. The extent to which children influence each other as well as draw inspiration from popular culture should not be surprising but sometimes it manifests in incredible ways.

 
Personally, the most meaningful thing I learned during education intern training was that the Children’s Creativity Museum hopes to teach kids and families to use their creative juices and design skills to send messages, accomplish goals, and generally make an impact on society through innovation, collaboration, and communication. That is a principal that I am proud to support and excited to share.

A paperclip or a robot’s fingernail?

In honor of the new school year, we thought we’d offer a tip to spark some creativity in the classroom.

Are you trying to figure out what topics to study, what books to read, or what projects to give your class? Instead of giving the topics, why not let them decide themselves with a brainstorming session?

Start with a prompt such as “If you could only study one thing for a year, what would it be”, “What are you an expert at”, or “What would you like to be an expert at”.

Some important things to remember:

1. No criticism or debate. Make sure students know that NO idea is a BAD idea and all ideas should be respected. Even if a student thinks it is ridiculous or impossible, it goes on the list.
2. Emphasize quantity over quality. The goal is to have as many ideas as possible. Wild and crazy ideas are encouraged.
3. Encourage students to build off of others ideas. Copying is OKAY in a brainstorming session.
4. This is a team activity and everyone should participate.

If you feel that they might be hesitant at first, start with a warm-up brainstorming session, something that’s fun and crazy, to get students used to the possible excitement in a brainstorm. Find an item in your classroom and prompt the students with something like “100 uses for a paper clip”. You might get answers such as “holding paper together”, but participate with some crazy ideas like a robot fingernail or an ant maze.

We’ll leave you with a quote by Thomas Edison, “To have a great idea, have a lot of them.”