Impact of Environment Upon Your Creativity?

[Alan (Robert Alan Black, Ph.D., CSP)]

How do or have the various types of Environment that you deal with impact your creativity, creativeness, creative thinking?

physical
visual
virtual
psychological
social
emotional

Please share

[Marc Hurwitz]

I do poetry workshops occasionally and also write. When it comes to my writing, I basically can't write a decent word unless I'm in a big city. Coffee shops help a lot, too. I think it's the sensory overload that allows me the 'freedom' to engage my muse. Many poets also seem to write their best works either depressed or unhappy... not sure what that says about poetry?

In my poetry workshops, one exercise has participants picking a hat from my collection (many of them silly!). People usually choose a hat that represent their personal style, or some other perception of themselves. Next, I force participants to exchange hats, i.e., wear someone else's choice on their head. It is astounding how liberating people find this small manipulation of their personal image (heck, you can't even see the hat once it is on your head)! So, I would agree that physical spaces, and especially peripersonal spaces, are important for creativity.

[Alan (Robert Alan Black, Ph.D., CSP)]

thank you very much for your reply. I am about to do a webinar focused on IDEA SPACES and through Twitter, and several creativity groups I am trying to gather some more current responses to add to those I have collected in various ways over the past 25+ years since I began focusing on creative thinking development.

I attended one of your sessions at Mindcamp a couple years ago.

Alan

[Hal Portner]

Alan,

I'm not sure how this fits into your categories, but most creative moments (i.e., when off-the-wall connections and ah-hahs most often happen for me) is during that magical time when I emerge from sleep/dream to not quite awake/aware.

Then, when I apply those creative insights (usually in the form of writing), I do so best in an environment devoid of as much sound as possible. Perhaps this is because my preferred mode is auditory, and extrainous sounds capture my attention. For example, if music is playing in the background, that is what I focus on rather than writing. True, that background sound may impact my creativite thinking and doing positively, but those mements are few and far between.

On the other hand, strangely enough, visual cues do sometimes stimulate my creatively. For example: subtile color variations, the play of shadows, and unexpected movement sometimes "wack me aside the head" and shift my viewpoint.

Cheers,
Hal

[Alan (Robert Alan Black, Ph.D., CSP)]

Hal

Thank you for your response.

Often the inkling or beginning of ideas that clear up cloudy issues or as some people call them BREAKTHRUS happen for me also as I am waking from a deep sleep. I also prefer quiet or only natural sounds.

I appreciate your message and ideas.

Alan

[john.sedgwick]

Hi Alan, Since doing the workshop; "Don't Debate... Facilitate", I have become very aware of the socio-psych 'wet blanket' we have in many aspects of our culture because we do not realize that the standard mode of interaction is based on debate conditions. The first, and perhaps the most important factor I would argue, is that we need to contract, and struggle to maintain, the willingness to drop all the debate mode behaviours and hold firmly to the conditions of facilitated group CPS. I have seen this so often in the workplace, but even in setting such as families, churches, schools, we still see the win/lose idiom and hence we see very little creativity.
sedge
PS to Hub readers, Alan did a wonderful job on a slide show for Sid'd Tribute in Buffalo last week and they are now posted. Thanks Alan

[Alan (Robert Alan Black, Ph.D., CSP)]

Since I got involved with CPSI in 1978 I have become very aware of the psychological, social and emotional aspects that impact creative thinking, creativeness and creativity in general.

What culture(s) are not based upon polar thinking, right/wrong thinking?

A breakthrough for me in the last 30 years was Telos Thinking (a name I penned) which is based on Poly-thinking, infinite answers, viewpoints, perspectives thus 6+ billion people can thus produce at least 6+ billion perspectives, viewpoints and potentials even answers or solutions.

We celebrated one of the very people most of us have met in our lives because of his totally

NON-JUDGEMENTAL nature


Sid Parnes.

Currently I am working on collecting photos from the total weekend to add the best of those to the Sid Parnes Tribute website so that everyone can enjoy the experience(s) we all had last weekend at least visually, virtually.