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Posts Tagged ‘Create’
Engaging with the Creative Process – Recharge Your Creative Batteries
Wednesday, January 12th, 2011
Get out of the office
Watch a great action movie
Watch a great cartoon
Go to Disneyland… or at least the Disney Store
Go to a Museum
Go to an art show
Go to a flea market (the more “hillbilly” the better)
Talk with a creative person and ask about how they create an environment in their mind
Go to an “open house” and see how they stage the house
Look up creative blogs on line
Visit a vineyard
Go on walk into the woods…especially if it’s snowing
Read a fiction book
Color, draw, or paint
Build something out of a cardboard box
Write a poem
Sing a song really loudly
Eat at a creative restaurant
Build a puzzle
Plug into places that will recharge your creative spirit
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Engaging with the Creative Process – Understanding the Law of Good Enough
Monday, January 10th, 2011
When creating a compelling environment, one needs to remember that whatever you do, you should do well. If you’re not able to do it well… then don’t. Let me give you an example. Years ago my team and I created a summer camp (VBS) that we called Space Camp – The Big Plan. To this day, it’s one of my favorites. There were so many creative elements in this program, literally hundreds! Most importantly, only about five or six of them we’re my idea. The rest came from my staff and teams of creative volunteers. One creative element that I really wanted to see was a 20-foot rocket in our lobby that had moving parts, sounds, and smoke. It was going to be awesome. As we worked and worked on the project, time and resources dwindled and I ended up with a 20-foot rock and a smoke machine. Guess what? It was awesome. I found out that moving parts and extra sounds, although they sound cool, they really wouldn’t have added too much to the end “feel”. A 20-foot rocket that shot smoke from the bottom was plenty for a 6-year-old to handle. More would have just been more.
Here’s some quick help with how you can keep your elements simple and effective
1. Know your audience
Who is your target audience? Average age? Likes and dislikes?
2. Know your limitations
Nobody likes to think about it, but there are always restraints with time, money, and resources. So what are yours? There’s something freeing in knowing what is possible and where your “natural” boundaries are. Here’s an example: If I told you to create something you might take 10-15 minute to decide what you’re going to create. You will then take a little longer to decide what you’ll use to create it. However, if I limited you to “Go create a story” it might go faster. Limit more, “go create a story about a boy going to school”… even faster. Get the idea? Know your limits and use them to your advantage.
3. Layer in the creativity according to time and resources
Decide as a group what are your irreducible minimums. What can you NOT do without? Start there. Then build on the next layer and then the next. For example: My rocket was the bare minimum! I wanted a 20-foot rocket (not a small task). Next was the smoke, sounds, and finally followed by the moving parts. We ended up with the top two and dropped the bottom two. Not too bad!
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Engaging with the Creative Process – Keeping the End in Mind
Friday, January 7th, 2011
This post may be brief, but I believe it’s very important. In many regards, it’s the glue that keeps this creative process. It’s to know the end goal and to keep it in mind throughout the process. Don’t allow yourself to be so caught up in all the details that you lose the feel of the environment. Here are three simple ways to keep the end goal in mind.
1. Remember, the end is an environment and environments are felt; therefore, the end is a feeling! If a team member is going off in a creative direction that you never thought of, don’t criticize. First talk about how it moves the environment to the end goal – a feeling. If it does… go with it! If not, then discuss how to move it back on track.
2. Don’t micro manage! Nobody likes it when someone is looking over his or her shoulder. If that’s true with everyone else, it is 100 times truer with creative people. Back off and let people create.
3. Steer towards the feeling! Most leaders will gravitate towards wanting to “see” the vision. Remember, the end is a feeling. Let your team know early on that this feeling is the end goal and as such, you are going to continually challenge them on how they’re moving the environment towards the goal.
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Engaging with the Creative Process – Creativity 101
Monday, January 3rd, 2011
You live in a creative world. Not only that, but also you live in a world where it’s easy to create. It wasn’t that long ago when their paint-stained jeans, colorful smocks, berets, and ice sculpting utensils easily identified “the creative ones”. Now days, the creative ones can be disguised as computer engineers, teenagers, and stay-at-home blogging mom. What I’m trying to say is many other people have discovered their hidden creative talents and so can you. So where do we start? Just look around and ask yourself these questions.
What do you see that’s beautiful? Ugly? Intriguing?
What do you see that inspires you?
Here’s an important principle you need to know: When we’re talking about creativity in regards to ministry, we’re talking about creating environment. Many people get paralyzed at the thought of “creating something” out of nothing. The reality is, we’re never creating out of nothing. We’re actually going to be attempting to “re-recreate” a feeling (an environment) that we either saw or felt at one time. This environment may be one singular event or a culmination of several events. This environment that we want to re-create is desirable because of how it made us feel. Let me give you a few examples: Describe these “environments”.
The Disney Store
Hollister
The Apple Store
If you had difficulty with this exercise, I recommend you get out a little more and experience what’s out there for yourself. Why? Because the world in which you live in understands how to creatively capture the hearts and minds of our children (and adults) and we need to appreciate this and better understand what it takes to make this happen.
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