Tag: creative

Mood Poetry

Pick a mood right now. Write a poem about it and share the poem with someone.

I opened Twitter on Friday and my friend Zoe Mounsey had posted up a Stop Doing Dumb Things Card. This one:

Pick a mood right now

Here is the poem Zoe wrote to accompany the card.

Worry

Thinking, thinking, overthinking
What if? what next?
Fear of the unexpected
Thinking through the worse case
Hoping for the best case
It doesn’t help
But it keeps me busy
Worrying and worrying

Great stuff! I love the poem and I’m left wanting to know what happened next…?

I thought I would reply, and here’s what I sent back to Zoe.

Optimism

The idea is a spark
The conversation oxygen
Action is the flame
Light a fire in your life

There was a positive reaction to both pieces of verse on Twitter, and I thought I’d share them with you here today. If you fancy adding a poetic contribution in the comments – it would be lovely to hear from you.

Developing Art For Work’s Sake

The Past

I facilitated another Art for Work’s Sake session in Milton Keynes a few days ago, and it went down a storm. Something that really interested me about the session was how we enabled a mixture of conversation and emergent thinking and action to develop around a framework, albeit a loosely structured one. We also cocreated a safe space in which to talk, work and experiment which certainly helped.

The Present

Here is some of the learning from recent Art for Work’s Sake sessions, pulled together for you in a SlideShare. I hope this stuff is helpful to you, feel free to download and play if you would like.

The Future

I can also confirm that I am off to Chicago again in the Autumn. I will be delivering an Art for Work’s Sake session for the people at the Illinois 2014 Society for Human Resource Management conference, with my co facilitator, Joe Gerstandt. I’m hugely excited about the work itself and about collaborating with Joe. Joe and I have been in touch for a good while now – patiently impatient – looking and waiting for a chance to do something epic. We haven’t rushed it – we’ve kept in touch – we’ve shared the good and bad in the process. And we are now ready to serve. More details on this soon.

And if that wasn’t enough, I received confirmation from Ohio over the weekend that I will be heading their way in September to do likewise. I love the way that the HR community is responding so positively to this creative and artistic way to improve the way we work.

I’ve received a lot of requests to run further sessions. Even though I am London based I’m very happy to travel to help spread the word, I think this work, this use of artistic practice to make work better, is important. So if you’d like me to come to your town or workplace – drop me a line and let’s talk.

And finally, to celebrate the great start to 2014, we are giving away our 2014 tour t shirt, a copy of the very excellent book, 101 Things To Learn In Art School, by Kit White, and a set of Stop Doing Dumb Things cards. We have three sets to give away. To win, all you have to do is leave a comment on the blog and say you’d like to go into the draw. We’ll draw the winners at random in a few weeks and then get in touch to ship your goodies to you.

Prize Draw

Art for Work’s Sake – Milton Keynes

After the success of Art for Work’s Sake in Euston a few weeks ago, we’re running another one in the new year. This time it will be taking place in Milton Keynes. Full details and how to buy tickets are shown below. There are a maximum of 16 places available, six have already been taken. It would be great if you can join us, and please tell your friends and colleagues.

Art For Work’s Sake

You are invited to Art for Work’s Sake, a workshop designed to help people explore art and artistry as a way of making work more effective.

During the workshop you will have the opportunity to try out a variety of drawing, sketching, painting and other art forms. These techniques will be combined into a series of methods designed to help you think more clearly and creatively about your day to day work.

A guest at our recent London workshop left saying, ‘It seems I can draw, despite 20+ years thinking I couldn’t! It only took 60 seconds to realise I can’. Despite this, the purpose of this workshop is not to turn you into an artist, it is designed simply to give you the time and space to explore a few new techniques to help you think differently at work.

Art for Work's Sake example sketch

All materials will be provided and you will get to keep all your work plus pencils, charcoal, a set of water colour paints and some high quality heavy duty cartridge paper.

You have the option to purchase a discounted set of Stop Doing Dumb Things Cards when you buy your ticket. These cards have been designed to help unlock creativity and make work better and are in use in the UK, Canada, USA and Australia. The set of 48 cards normally sell for £36 per pack inclusive of VAT and shipping. When you purchase them as part of this workshop the cost is only £23. Make sure you select the Stop Doing Dumb Things Special ticket and you’ll get your set of cards at the workshop.

Stop Doing Dumb Things Cards

I am facilitating this workshop and donating my time for free on this occasion, and the venue has kindly been provided by Boots The Chemists, thanks to Helen Amery. We will break for lunch – the cost of this is not included in the ticket price.

Tickets are available here, and I hope you will join us for a few hours of useful and enjoyable creative work.