Recently, I had the wonderful experience of reconnecting with one of my students who was a participant in a Creativity Workshop I was teaching at business school in France called INSEAD. In our conversation, my student shared with me that she was actively prototyping some of the concepts that she had learned, and one of the interesting questions that arose from our conversation was:
“How does one create a creative culture?”
This is such a meaningful thought that it deserves to be explored further, because I believe we can all use a bit more creativity in our lives on a daily basis.
In my book called Creative Strategies, I detail 10 approaches on how to solve everyday design problems with the underlying theme that, if you want to have more creativity in your life, then actively practicing it is the best way to go about it. One of these approaches, entitled “Reality Hacking”, is aimed directly at inspiring a culture of creativity in your community. And coincidentally, I recently participated in a design project that achieved just that.
The core idea of “Reality Hacking” is that if you want your immediate environment to be more creative, let it be your home, your community or your organization, then you can be the one that starts the process by producing creative ideas and using them to challenge what is perceived as the “normal” status quo. What I have observed time after time is that acts of creativity have the tendency to spin clones, which is to say, peers surrounding you will feel compelled to exercise their creativity as well.
This is a result of humans instinctively mirroring each other's behaviors - for better or worse. In a given community, let’s say some of your friends that you like to hang out with, everyone will do their best to contribute to shared experiences, believe in similar values, and discuss similar topics of interest. And if in this context you introduce a creative pop-up, your peers will be awakened from their routine and become curious if they can contribute as well. This was exactly the case on a recent design project that I was contributing to, and it was in the shape and form of a float for a parade as part of an event called “Topanga Days” held annually in Topanga Canyon, California.
Topanga Days is actually a three-day-long music festival leading up to Memorial Day, where the main boulevard closes for a parade of floats from local businesses and individuals. It is a rather colorful and vibrant event where just about anything goes. Close friends of ours had, on a whim, reserved a spot in the parade and asked if we would like to help to participate in designing the actual float. I do not have a very high barrier when it comes to joining a design challenge, so I accepted on behalf of our family. It was decided to make the theme loosely about “Planting Native Plants” to help spread awareness of the damaging effects to our eco system caused by invasive plants.
As step one of the design process, I chose to exercise one of my favorite creative strategies from my book called “Planting Limits”, where certain restrictions (you could also call them obstacles) are deliberately put in place to ignite the creative process. I chose the first two, and my friend and master mind of the float, Collin, contributed the third:
- Nothing New - everything had to be sourced with found or borrowed materials.
- More is More - we would multiply a simple theme (in this case origami butterflies and hand-drawn posters) and thus create complexity for the decoration.
- Human Powered - the float would be pulled by bicycles and hence be a surreal, reality hacking style experience for all.
These limitations helped unfold the magic of creativity in complex layers of engagement that were both joyful to experience and an example of the theory that creativity inspires more creativity.
“Nothing New” meant that everything had to be made with things we already owned, found, borrowed or re-purposed. It was incredible to see the ideas multiplying as we designed the structure and decoration of the float. We added butterfly wings on our backs made from recycled newspapers, towed a tiny 60-year-old trailer we borrowed from our neighbor, and strapped a makeshift platform made by upcycled materials to display pots of native plants. In the absence of overnight delivery, the mind re-awakens from mental dormancy and races to find connections that will drive the design process
“More is More” meant that we needed a simple idea that the kids could all contribute to, and it came twofold, in the shape of origami butterflies combined with hand-drawn posters. And it was the poster activity that really drew in all of the kids as they were looking over each other's shoulders to get inspired by each other’s approaches. It created a shared experience and catered to all skill levels. The posters were then further enhanced by adding the three-dimensional butterflies; I think we had close to 500 origami butterflies in total, covering the entire structure.
Ultimately, though, it was the fact that the trailer was human-powered - or rather pulled - that had the biggest impact. Our neighbor, from whom we borrowed the trailer, did not think we would be able to pull it just with bicycles. Actually, with the exception of Collin, nobody thought it would be possible, including me. And yet somehow, after a bit of prototyping, Collin somehow got it to work! Then, on the day of the parade, we pulled the trailer for 2.5 miles, the length of the parade, sled-dog style on 5 bicycles.
Almost immediately, when we reached the end, all of us started to come up with even more creative ideas on what we might want to attempt next year. There were discussions about new mechanisms, costumes, themes, and designs that were all a direct result of the initial reality hack of attempting to do something different. To me, that is the magic of creativity: it has the power to inspire ideas in others simply by being part of the moment.
And then, as the final ripple effect, when we returned the trailer to our neighbor, he, too, shared his creative ideas for next year with me. To me, it was so humbling to see Collin’s “simple” act of creativity spun so many clones…
Happy Creating!
Frido
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