Unleashing your creativity

When I have to create new material for a workshop or training programme, I love to be able to start off with a complete blank piece of paper (I need to draw the ideas out) and then start to think about the learning styles of the group, how to map out the design - in this instance, I used UCL’s ABC (Arena, Blended, Connected) approach and produced Creative Thinking in Healthcare for a NHS Trust. It is a highly interactive session and at first there were people who felt that didn’t have a creative bone in their body. They were thinking about creativity from an artistic perspective but you can be technically creative in the work that you do. We looked at programmed and lateral thinking when generating ideas and the 5 steps to enhancing creativity by using the 5 Why’s.

We did an activity on how to break patterns and looked at how we could improve the patient experience at their Trust, we used four concepts - re-expression, related words, revolution and random links, originally derived from Sticky Wisdom and the ideas that came out of the session was fantastic.

If you are interested in creative thinking then Michael Rosen’s, Book of Play, (2019) has lots of ideas to think differently as does Rod Judkins book, The Art of Creative Thinking (2015).

Let me know what helps you to think creatively and if you’d like me to send some fun things to do to help stimulate your creativity then drop me a line and I’ll send it through!