Katherine Conway-Turner

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En provenance du cours de The State University of New York

Ignite Your Everyday Creativity

188 notes

The State University of New York

Ignite Your Everyday Creativity

188 notes

Creativity is an essential skill for the 21st Century that is innate in all people and can be nurtured. We constantly need new and better ideas for almost every aspect of our professional and personal lives. The goal of this course is to help you recognize, develop and act upon the creativity that you already possess. We will accomplish this using three methods: b aware, b inspired, and b creative. Upon completion of this course participants will: Recognize the inherent creativity in yourself and others. Identify characteristics of a creative person that relate to yourself. Develop creative problem solving skills using the basic elements of the creative process. Examine qualities of a creative environment in real world settings. Evaluate an idea using the creative product criteria.

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What is Creativity?

In this module, we will be featuring the skill “Look at it Another Way”. This skill is about becoming aware of what ideas, challenges, and solutions feel like from multiple perspectives, views, or mindsets. These ideas may manifest as spoken words or internal thoughts. For example, take a moment to picture a tree. What does it look like? Does it have leaves? What season are you in? Did you picture the tree from straight on? If so, try picturing the tree from a birds-eye view, or from an ant's perspective. If your tree was in full bloom, picture the same tree in winter. It probably looks much different! That's what this module is all about looking at things from different perspectives in order to gain new insights! As you go through this module's lessons, we would like you to consider the following things: * What might be all of the different ways to look at these lessons and assignments? * How does changing your perspective spark your imagination? * When deliberately employing this skill, do you feel more creative? We encourage you to keep this description handy, as we will be asking you to apply this skill throughout the module. Ready? Let's get started! * Skill taken from Torrance, E.P., & Safter, H.T. (1999). Making the creative leap beyond... Hadley, MA: Creative Education Foundation Press.**

Brendan Bannon7:34

Katherine Conway-Turner6:26

Brian Nesline4:30

Rencontrer les enseignants

Dr. Cyndi Burnett
Associate Professor
Creative Studies
Dr. John F Cabra
Associate Professor
Creative Studies

[MUSIC]

Well, the first thing that popped in my mind when you said think about a challenge

that you over came, was a number of years ago, I was a part of a leadership program.

And it was a Kellogg's leadership fellowship, and so

there was a group of about 30 of us from around the country.

And we were all coming from different vantage points.

So I was an educator, but there were also people who were physicians and business

folks, and we had a week seminar in Colorado.

And so I grew up in a small town in the Midwest nowhere near mountains, and so

one of our tasks was to climb Mount Massive.

And so it was a very interesting process,

because I saw myself as being very physically fit.

I was involved in lots of things, riding bikes and

hiking, but not in the mountains.

And so as our little team started climbing up this mountain,

I quickly began to experience the effects of the high altitude.

And so I was just so tired and it was just really

a juxtaposition against how I saw myself and

then what was happening at that moment.

And that is that I was not the physical person,

I wasn't some running ahead being the leader.

In fact I was struggling.

And so it was quite a challenge to sort of wrap my head around

the reality that something can occur which is sort of

outside of your own will to sort of succeed.

And so we sort of huddled and had a little discussion with some of the group members.

And so just sort of talking about that, and so what that means for ourself, and

our leadership, and what we're really learning from that.

And so what I learned to do was to sort of slow down,

tell myself that this is not something you can just push your way through,

that you have to change your pace.

You have to think of a different way to tackle the physical challenge of

Mount Massive, because the normal sort of run ahead and do it, and

complete the task that I was so used to doing, professionally and

physically, was not really going to meet this challenge.

So it was a really learning experience to sort of realize

the impact of your external environment on whatever

particular task in front of you, so it was an interesting process.

It was a very humbling experience to see a limitation

that you did not know you had, didn't even think about.

And which really was artificially enhanced by the situation.

So, you mentioned the word mindfulness.

And I do yoga, so I'm used to being able to center myself and sort of move forward.

And this was an experience where I had to really go deep and be humbled,

and be aware, and sort of acknowledge the nature of the environment and that there

are things, sort of, greater than you that you need to attend to at that moment.

So it was a humbling experience for myself and some others around me.

While we were also going up Mount Massive, there was an older man

who came running past us up the mountain,

and so we looked over, and we said, we cannot believe this.

And he stopped, and he says, oh, I'm 78, and I climb the mountain every day.

And it was just sort of an amazing moment, where you

just had to think about yourself in a way that was different than we were thinking.

So we weren't leading the charge at that moment.

We were not the leader.

We were the follower.

We were learning things about ourselves.

And also just sort of that he had engaged in a practice

of climbing the mountain, in the same way that I do yoga,

and it's a practice of yoga, it's not the perfect of yoga.

Here's someone who climbed that mountain everyday, and

because of his practice, he far exceeded

what us youngins thought we were doing as we were trying to climb the mountain.

So it was just a really interesting experience and one that I did turn to,

from time to time, with other situations, because I think it's just a reminder that

we can all be humbled by things that are occurring around us.

We all need to be mindful of not only our strengths, but

the circumstances that you're facing and that every situation is different.

And so then, it reminds me to look at each situation as a novel situation,

as I try to do with each individual that I meet.

And so that no two people are alike, no two situations are alike and

so I sort of move back to that example from time to time,

because it just reminds me of how important it is to do that.

And that you can take all of your skill sets, but maybe what you need

in this conversation or in this situation, is yet something creative and new.

A twist on what you've done before.

And so it's not just about reaching into your toolkit, but

sort of utilizing that toolkit in ways that fit the situation.

This has worked for me, and I think it would work for many,

is that when you need to think about moving forth in a creative way,

look for the stillness inside yourself.

Really, sort of go inside yourself and sort of reflect and

think about it, that may mean, you are sitting in a quiet corner,

or you go outside, or you take a bike ride, or a run, but

find kind of a quiet place to sort of ruminate on what you're thinking about.

So find a quiet place, before you move to others.

So that you're clear on who you are, where you stand, and

what the options are for you.

[MUSIC]

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