the longterm effects of the creative q

I have now had two people let me know that they have started producing more creative work as a result of their participation in the Creative Q pilot program. I can't possibly explain how happy that makes me feel. This project has changed people, their behavior, their feelings...exciting.

I am pretty sure I will work on making it apply to a broader audience (possibly a business) and use it as my project for Venture Studio...

the creative Q

The Creative Q is like a wine-of-the-month club for artists/crafters/creative people who have stopped making art or feel uninspired. Members receive a simple physical object and a related prompt that is open-ended and "media agnostic" so they can interpret it in any way they choose and make whatever they want, whether its a painting, a song, creative writing, etc. There also a little mini envelope that comes with the prompt in case the members wants more "Qs", but they only open it/look at it if they need more help. The goal is to provide just the slightest amount of help to get the creative person "unstuck" without limiting or really changing how they choose to express themselves.

Another key part of the service is an online virtual studio, where members upload their work, write about it, and give feedback to their peers. Work will be tagged with the associated challenge # so people can see how other people responded to the same prompt/object.

the creative Q home page

the creative Q studio page 

 

my solution: code name "creative challenge"

Creative Challenge is a subscription-based service (web or snail mail) where users receive prompts, materials and timelines to create work and share it in a virtual studio.

INSPIRATION

My interviewees cited a lack of time, inspiration or funds to create art. There was also a common longing for the structure of art classes and the sense of community found within a working art studio...so why not create a service which provided minimal structure, subtle prompts and a responsive community to get them back in the habit of making art. I do not want to create a "crutch" for artists, merely a set of training wheels to allow them to acheive balance and gain confidence, only to remove the training wheels and ride off on their own in the future.

If people were to receive creative prompts, they would make work and share it with others. This could create a virtual “studio” space where artists could interact, seek feedback, and express themselves. Eventually people may get back in the habit of making art without having to receive the prompts.

creative anxiety

Apparently creative anxiety is a hot topic.

There are creativity coaches, like the multi-book author Eric Maisel, PhD who help people deal with anxiety related to creative production. In a write-up on this random blog, Barbara Martin quotes Meisel, saying:

“We get anxious when we fear that we are about to embark on something with potentially negative consequences for our mental, emotional, physical, existential or spiritual health. That is not irrational. That is the epitome of rationality.”

and comments that:

Anxiety or fear can prevent us from creating at our best and sometimes causes blocks, stopping us from creating at all. These fears can make us hesitate at the outset of a project or take a detour in the middle or fail to complete, and fear or anxiety can skew our decision-making in ways intended to protect us against bad consequences.

research findings show that multi-cultural exposure enhance creativity

Kathryn found this article and forwarded it to me: Think outside your box: Enhancing creativity through multicultural interactions. It covers a few scientific studies (questionably valid experiments, in my opinion) that imply that creativity is heightened by exposure to other viewpoints.

While it was shown that multicultural experiences can promote creativity, the authors believe that people’s receptiveness to foreign ideas is another important creativity-enhancing factor – that people can receive greater creative benefits when they are open-minded.

and

When individuals are aware of the differences among ideas, they would want to arrive at a deeper, more complex understanding of these ideas through comparison, differentiation and identification of commonality