I wanted to share the following article about community theatre and arts practitioners who died for their work and their communities. It was written by a colleague theatre practitioner and academic from Texas University who was very close to the people in the article.
Regarding the recent assassination of Maya teacher and artist Lisandro Guarcax [...]
Would you ever send out half a football team or half a baseball team in a competition? Would you ever choose to play a game of chess using only the knights and the pawns? Would you ever dream of sending out a resume with only half your experience and qualifications?
Of course not!!
And yet most of [...]
Boal theatre techniques have conventionally been used to work with people that are struggling with certain obstacles, blocked or disenfranchised in some way. This may be through an external influence or by an internalised belief that limits action.
The aim is to bring the participants into a space where they can explore, identify and rehearse alternative [...]
… I cannot do it, I am too old, I don’t know enough, I don’t have a creative bone in my body, the man is the head of the family, drug addicts are weak, we must fight for democracy, I must own my home, this organisation does not value its workers, indigenous people are violent, [...]
We get ideas all the time, sometimes they come out of the blue, but often, they have to be carefully and intentionally captured.
There are many tools for generating ideas, one of my favourites is SCAMPER.
I first came across SCAMPER in Michael Michalko’s, Thinkertoys, a ‘must-have’ book about innovation. You can also google SCAMPER and [...]
The Harvard Business Review (HBR), Dec 2009, had a wonderful article exploring 5 qualities displayed by innovators; qualities that can be nurtured to promote innovative thinking.
1. Associating – this is when what appear to be unrelated ideas or problems from different disciplines are brought together to create something totally new. For example, eBay, the idea [...]
OK everyone, put the chairs up against the wall, we won’t really need them for the rest of the day.’
The participants looked around at each other a little confused.
‘You can put your pens and paper away too.’
With a few mumbles, groans and raised eyebrows, people slowly stood up and put the chairs away.
The reluctance [...]
Sometimes the most seemingly mundane actions can fulfil our creative yearnings. Here are some simple actions for sparking up everyday creativity:
Bake a cake (and ice it), re-pot some plants and flowers, decorate the pots with broken crockery, write a postcard to a friend, read a poem, read another one (out loud), write a poem, [...]
During a bushwalk today in the Kalamunda Hills east of Perth, I came across this. Erect and defiant in the middle of a gravelly path; grand in all of its two centimetres of height and less than one centimetre width, this most perfect flower.
I had to stop and admire it - pay it homage [...]