Kinetic Creativity - Moving Groups with Creative Potential

"Kinetic Creativity – Moving Groups with Creative Potential" is a Training Course on exploring creativity within groups and how creativity can act as a catalyst for innovative problem solving and collaboration on global challenges in intercultural contexts. The course is intended for 27 participants including trainers and non-profit leaders involved in the field of youth work, counsellors and teachers working with socio/economically disadvantaged youth, from Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Latvia, Portugal, Ireland. Extended Program Description: The „Kinetic Creativity” Training Course can best be represented by the image of a children's slide - one that could be found on any playground. There is a ladder, there is the slide itself and - in our vision - there is also a ball, waiting to be pushed down the slide. Each of these pieces corresponds to a component of the Training Course, which are: „Go Fail”, „Innovative Imagination”, „Creative Cooperation”. In „Go Fail”, participants are invited to put the concept of failure into question and to experience the benefit of trial and error as an individual creative process. By breaking down the negative associations with failure, participants are free to be more experimental and creative in their responses to particular stimuli (like searching for innovative solutions to intercultural and/or global challenges). This component prepares participants for the experience of the rest of the Training Course. “Go Fail” corresponds to the ball in our image (I do not get the picture with the ball and go fail, I get the connection of the elements, but somehow why is “go fail” the ball? Can you help my imagination?). On its own, “Go Fail” is a powerful tool for generating new ideas, but it can gain even more momentum with the addition of the “ladder” and the “slide”. In the „Innovative Imagination” component, participants are guided through several exercises in re-framing, re-contextualising and re-defining every day objects and ideas, so that they can improve their individual capacities to think creatively. This component is about directing imagination toward function, i.e. not just seeing another idea, but seeing another idea that could work, or that has real potential. This component helps participants to become more focused with their creativity. In this way, “Innovative Imagination” represents the ladder in our image, that the participants learn to climb so that their ideas can be launched from a higher place, giving them much more potential energy than they had before. Finally, in “Creative Cooperation”, participants will engage with the issue of diversity as a resource and how individual contributions to a team can best be encouraged and combined to improve the overall capacity of that team. In addition, participants will examine the positive correlation between internal motivation and creativity, and how to support the development of internal motivation in the work place. As a part of “Creative Cooperation”, participants will have the opportunity to apply all of the skills they have learned in the first two components toward a problem that would not typically lie within their purview, illustrating the benefits of both internal motivation and diversity in problem solving. This problem solving exercise, called the “Challenge Board”, will function as an outcome of the Training Course from which participants can directly benefit. This component, as complex as it is, has two functions in our image. The “environmental” factors that are already present, i.e., the diversity we have within a group, the problems that we must face, the practicalities, the skill-sets, the time-frames that are not of our own making, as well as the positive reformations we apply to these “environmental factors”, represent our slide in the image. This is the space in which the ball will travel. Internal motivation - learning how to harness it and direct it – as well as learning how to encourage creativity in ourselves and in others, these dynamic skills represent the force that will push the ball down the slide and turn the potential into the kinetic. Expected Outcomes: The “Kinetic Creativity” Training Course is a lot of work for participants, but it is fun, and it illustrates in the course design exactly the concepts we are trying to pass on to our participants. It is also designed to have applicable results on the personal and professional levels. As mentioned in the previous section, Kinetic Creativity will provide participants with the opportunity to develop some real ideas and possibilities for solutions to practical problems that they face every day in their work or other activities. It will also give participants the space they need to explore their own kind of creativity and to think of what types of contributions they are interested in making within a group. Of course, the participants will also have the opportunity for planning future activities and actions with each other and with members of the Training Team on the last training day. Aims: The aims of the course are as follows: • Provide a theoretical and methodological framework to support the participants' understanding of how creativity can be harnessed within groups, as well as within oneself, to promote action and solve complex issues • Promote the use of creativity as a method to reach higher levels of participation, in which groups of youngsters can more deeply engage with one another and work-through potential problems or challenges, including language barriers • Raise awareness of creative processes in group dynamics, for a more conscious group facilitation • Experience and reflect on the participants' various roles as a group member in a creative process, improving team work Methods: During the training, participants will find the space and atmosphere conducive to creative activities. Strategies employed during this Training Course include a strong emphasis on active citizenship and an holistic understanding of creativity. The methods used will involve a high level of self-organisation within the group and self-organised learning. In addition, Trainers will employ the following: • visualization • reflection groups • exploration of group dynamics and group roles through drama exercises/roleplay • creative activities such as creative writing, drawing, working with various materials, music and movement • process and product based approaches including the • action planning for dealing with global challenges and implementing them in future collaborations