Congratulations to Gina Deininger for completing her PhD in Creativity

Gina Deininger recently completed her PhD in Creativity at Cardiff Metropolitan University. The title of the thesis is: Does State of Being and Dynamic Movement have a relationship with Creativity?. Follow the link to get access to the full thesis. Below is the summary of the thesis.

“Creativity research is a fast growing area of research. In our modern society there is recognition that creativity is becoming more and more important (Adobe Survey, 2012). David Bohm and David Peat applied a universal approach to explaining creativity. Peat and Bohm explain the movement that occurs in the creative process by way of intrinsic and generative orders. They also highlight the importance of ‘state of being’ and an interaction both externally and internally of a person in the creative process. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who is a well-respected modern researcher of creativity, also includes aspects of state of being in his flow concept, as well as pointing out the importance of interaction and feedback from an external world. This doctoral research series is based on three main factors – my 15-year self-study as a practising artist, an analysis of contemporary creativity and mind theories and empirically testing the key propositions that arise from these analyses in eight seperate studies. The research explores whether there is a relationship between ‘state of being’, ‘dynamic movement’ and creativity. The contribution to knowledge are clear definitions of ‘state of being’ and ‘dynamic movement’ and a practical application of these terms in the context of creativity. The methodology used to empirically explore the relationship of these propositions could also be regarded as a contribution to knowledge as it extends the triangulation metholology to include ‘dynamic movement’. The results from the eight studies start to show a relationship between ‘state of being’, ‘dynamic movement’ and creativity.”

Plans for new School in Munich

Gina Deininger is leading an initiative called CreateSchools. Part of that initiative is the establishment of a new school in Munich for creative children, original thinkers and children with special potential. The school will open in September 2014 for Years 1 – 6. You can find out more about the plans and philosophy of the CreateSchools by going to http://www.createschools.de.You can also sign up for a newsletter to get new updates on developments.

Creativity MasterClass at LEAD Wales event

Gareth Loudon recently ran the first of a series of creativity masterclasses for team leaders and owner-managers from across Wales as part of the LEAD Wales, Programme run by Swansea University.

“LEAD Wales is a 10-month Leadership Development programme designed with leaders and owner-managers of small and medium sized businesses and social enterprises in mind.” – LEAD Wales

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Workshops with Samsung’s design students and staff in Seoul

Gareth Loudon spent the first week of July in Seoul, South Korea running a 3-day summer school programme on creativity with design students at Samsung’s Art and Design Institute (SADI) as well as running a seminar on creativity for designers at Samsung Electronics. The aim of the three-day summer school programme was to introduce the students to the factors and processes that affect creativity and to highlight tools that can be used to help improve creativity and problem solving abilities. The three-day programme culminated in an egg race design challenge. The seminar to design staff at Samsung Electronics focused on how organisational culture affects creativity and what can be done to further support creativity at an individual and organisational level.

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SADI Creativity PosterSADI OfficeSADI WorkshopSamsungSADI studentsEgg VehicleSADI students sitting[/slideshow]

Collaboration with Agder University, Norway

Gareth Loudon has being working together with Professor Frank Reichert at Agder University in Grimstad, Norway from March to May running a course for research staff and students from across Norway on how to discover, design and develop research project ideas and plans.

 

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Presentation at Design Creativity Conference

Conference on Design CreativityGareth Loudon presented work undertaken on  ‘Play, Autonomy and the Creative Process’ at the 2nd International Conference on Design Creativity in Glasgow, UK this month. The work explored play to understand more about the type of play and its affect upon the creative process, including physical, imaginary, social and non-related play, in relation to solving a creative problem. Surprisingly, the condition with the highest scoring and fastest completion times was the non-related play condition. This would suggest that there is more going on than just iterative feedback when a person is playing in the creative design process. Relatively new research has started to show that play may also be important because of the intrinsic motivation that is inherently part of the nature of play. This intrinsic motivation and elements of autonomy have also been shown to have an affect upon people’s feelings of well-being. This study supports the idea that play may be even more important to the creative process because of the affect it has upon a person’s ‘state of being’.