I have some visceral abstract sketches to encapsulate my excitement at going to futuregov's #benefitscamp next week.. up wonder if I could livedraw it?
I shall be doing a bit on politics falling between the cannons of normal inspiration....
lastly I wanted to say I found someone who I think is an awesome artist, the wonderful #hollymcglynn.. see the photo and marvel.. marvel I tells you!
all of those bubbles are going to be little personas..
I think it's a very introspective piece, but cheerful...
One of the gifts that will be available in the Museum of Modern culture is the Radio 4 box - celebrating the station famed for it's intellectual rigour and innate whimsy. This simple cardboard 'four' has two little speakers and some controls. It is loaded with every episode of in our time and I'm sorry I haven't a clue, to show the range the channel had.
Unfortunately Otto hadn't time to fabricate one yet, but let me photograph his orignal sketch. "It seemed an excellent way to express the station", he told me, "an expression of a specific sound in a single artefact. It seems strangely counter cultural in the iPod age - luddite even. However, the technology inside has to be infinitely complex to create an object so simple, especicially when compared to our last such audio comparator, the CD or vinyal record."
Otto has also considered adding a discovered digital object as a 'bonus track' - It was created by long time Radio 4 enthusiast Russell Davies. However, Otto would like to also attempt a hard house remix of it before inclusion.But what does Otto hope to achieve by trying to archive this horde of ephemera. I ask him if he doesn't feel like the opposite of King Canute - desperately trying to hold the tide towards him, as it slips through his fingers. "It isn't like that", he depletes in the modular accent of expensively taught business english.
So I got the box of stephen hawking's google searches from the Museum of Modern Culture in Berlin. If it looks a bit amateurish, that's because it is. The plain card boxes come from a famous large European flat packed furniture store. The museum's curator simply labels up what he can find and stores them. The museum is four rooms that makes the entirety of the first floor of otto schmidt's bauhaus inspired town house.
The MMC was established in 2010, as a place to store some of the most precious and transient knowledge that has floated from the depths of the internet before it is sucked out to sea by the rip tide of time.
I wanted to share the box from prof hawking, as it is a bit like the box of sound I made earlier. Although a box full of ten months of web searches is about half the size! I got a few objects from the curator Otto Schmidt, which I will post periodically.
Take any mind. Open its doors.
Remove all news, all views on wars, The ratio of slights to cheers. Evict the hearsay, then the fact, Smugness for all you have achieved. All shopping lists, tasks underway, Take your own mind. Knock down the walls. Then, with the view completely clear,
The thought of censure or applause,
Peel back the clutter of the years,
Paranoid doubts, ungrounded fears.
The wondering how you should react,
The dream of what your life has lacked,
Banish whatever you've believed -
All doctrines, proved or preconceived,
The papers piled in your in-tray,
Tomorrow, ditto yesterday.
Let wind gust freely through its halls.
Empty the grand tier, circle, stalls.
Real life as far as it is near,
Sit back and have your best idea.
1. Role mismatch
One of the easiest ways of killing creativity is by giving a job to the wrong person. It could be an assignment or the whole role. Employees need to feel their abilities are stretched, but that the assignment is within their grasp.
Within many organisation the usual system is to give the most urgent work to the person who appears most eligible (i.e. is most senior/most junior/has the least work/is the next cab off the rank etc.). Managers typically fail to really look at the requirements of the job/assignment and then at the skills of the employee. Mismatches are a recipe for an unsatisfactory and creativity-free result.
2. Restrict freedom
Yes, people need specific goals set for them, but they also need freedom in how to achieve these goals. If you want to kill creativity, then simply restrict employee's freedom in how they reach their goals. Two common methods are by changing the goals too frequently or by implicitly communicating to your staff that new methods are not welcome. Employees will soon get the message and stop trying.
3. Ration resources
Creativity requires time and money; to kill it off restrict both. You can do it by setting impossibly short deadlines or by restricting resources to a minimum.
Managers tend to be obsessed with physical spaces, thinking that it's bean bags, fussball tables or funky furniture that engenders creativity. Far more important, though, is mental space. People need enough time and resources to come up with good ideas. Put people under hideous time and resource pressure, though, and you'll soon squeeze out all their creativity.
4. Reduce group diversity
Groups in which people are very similar tend to get along well. They don't disagree, they don't cause any trouble and they are frequently low in creativity. If you want to make sure that creativity is kept to a minimum then reduce the diversity in groups.
In contrast when teams are made up of people with different skills, abilities and viewpoints, their different approaches tend to combine to produce creative solutions. They may take longer and they may argue more but diverse groups breed creativity—so avoid them.
5. No encouragement
It's easier to be critical than it is to be constructive. If you want to stifle creativity then meet new ideas with endless evaluation and criticism. Also, one of the problems with new ideas is that often they don't pan out. So to discourage further creativity, make sure you really punish people whose audacious ideas don't work.
Once people know they're going to be endlessly interrogated about their new ideas—and punished if they don't work out—they'll soon stop producing them.
6. No support
Infighting. Politicking. Gossip. All can easily kill creativity. If the organisation is turned against itself, it's unlikely to produce truly creative work. Try to avoid letting information flow freely and discourage collaboration, because both are likely to boost creativity.
Without support, attempts to be creative will quickly wither and die and employees will become demotivated and cynical.
You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea - Picasso
