Category: #creativity

Participatory Culture

I zoomed in to Catherine Cronin’s talk on “If open is the answer, what is the question?” at the recent OER16 conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. This thought resonated with me, as it’s something I’ve learning in my journey with Visual Thinkery: our contibutions matter. With a sideways glance at school, I think there’s a massive difference between…
Notice and wonder

Wondering, always wondering. The more I wonder, the more I notice. The more I notice, the more I wonder…
Conversational Thinkery

One of the areas I really enjoy is what I call Conversational Thinkery. Listening to a podcast, or being part of a conversation, and drawing what appears in my head. This thinkery was from a podcast conversation featuring Amy Burvall on the Creative Process.
Mr Unlucky

I absolutely love this. The handy work of my 11-year-old…
Flares*

It was Irish farmer practicality meets home improvement engineering. My gran grew the flowers. My mum dried them. And I, yes I, arranged them in little pots filled with cement. Pretty flowers now with added permanence… Having said that, the same practical engineering had us making rafts every summer for the river. A few of…
The Pi-clopedia

I don’t know about you but I’ve been tinkering in my man-shed. Curiosity-driven, soldering iron out, YouTube at the ready. The spirit of McGyver runs deep through my veins, and given enough time there is nothing I cannot make. The Raspberry Pi? It’s a thing of beauty. Now then what shall I make it do?…
ART!

An empty page. Create something. But what? I can’t think of anything. Why are you asking me? It’s your brain… But it’s so daunting. It’s too clean. I’ll just mess it up. And anyway, I can’t draw. An empty page is daunting. But it’s also an opportunity. You used to draw when you were a…
OER16 – Open…

What a distraction twitter is – especially if it means drawing something. I’ll see something on twitter, have a thought, and before I know it, I’m trying to create that thought. I came across Jim Groom tweeting the title for his keynote at OER16, and I couldn’t resist. I highly recommend tuning in…
To create is to notice

Let there be light! And there was light, and it created a really interesting shadow… The skill of noticing detail’s. Like any embedded skill, it takes a lot of practise. It’s like a teacher and a badly placed apostrophe (hee hee!) – it jumps out of the text and hits you on the head –…
This is my own hand

Listen… aha! There’s one! But what does it look like? Why are they saying that? Just start drawing – let’s see what shapes my pen creates, and go with it… Some of my earliest visual thoughts come from keynotes at education-related conferences. I would try to zone in and capture just one thought the speaker…
Wanted: Honest Frank Feedback

It’s easy to look at what you’ve created and see it as either good or bad. The more you create, the more you get to know your own eyes and what they’re trying to tell you, and you realise that no creation is either good or bad.
Creativity in Schools

I watched this video clip of Dylan Wiliam talking about how important creativity in schools is. I worry – and I know a lot of others do to – about the lack of importance placed on this in schools, and in particular, secondary schools. In the UK, we’re going backwards. A lot of the responsibility…