Creativity » Judy Nolan

Thinking sideways

Dec 022012

I’ve been an absentee blogger for a couple of weeks, I confess, because I’ve been involved in creative or creativity-promoting endeavors, in addition to getting ready for the holidays. If decorating for the holidays can be counted as a form of creativity, then I guess that’s one more creative activity that has been on my plate! Two craft shows, one very successful and the other decidedly less so, are behind me, as well as two conferences at which my husband and I promoted the Destination Imagination program in Iowa. This program, by the way, focuses on the process of teaching creative thinking, from imagination to innovation, for young people from primary age through college and university age.

Yesterday I spent the entire day running a Destination Imagination facilitator workshop, which was both an emotionally exhilarating and a physically draining experience, the latter because I don’t normally spend all day on my feet.. We hosted a small but very energetic group of adults who were excited about learning how to be better Team Managers for their teams. We spent a lot of time, in particular, learning about the value of doing mini-challenges, short versions of on-the-spot problem-solving that the Destination Imagination program calls Instant Challenge. There are three types of Instant Challenges: performance-based, task-based and combination. Our group focused on task-based challenges and how to make materials work.

You might ask what learning how materials work has to do with creativity, and the answer is everything. Artists, engineers and scientists focus on the business of knowing the intended purposes of materials, and exploring alternative uses for them. On a small scale, Destination Imagination students do the same thing. Their materials could be straws, paper clips and rubber bands, but their real world counterparts are PVC pipe, cable wire and bungee cords. The program is predicated on the assumption that with practice, creative thinking is possible for everyone. I do believe, in fact, that the more you think sideways, the easier it becomes.

I chair a committee of Instant Challenge writers, all of whom are state Board members of a non-profit organization called Students for a Creative Iowa. This is the same organization that administrates Iowa’s Destination Imagination program. Every year we spend several months a year, writing practice Instant Challenges that we offer at a team workshop, and later post in our Instant Challenge Library. As we brainstorm ideas for Instant Challenges, we bounce these ideas off each other, and one Instant Challenge leads to another—an example of creative thinking becoming easier simply through practice! Anyone who is interested can download these challenges for free from the library. They are great to use in a classroom, an after-school program, a community group such as Scouts, or among homeschoolers.

Yesterday’s series of workshop mini-challenges involved solving a series of problems using items from a single pool of materials that grew smaller with each challenge. The materials included 10 plastic straws, 12 paper clips, 12 mailing labels, 10 toothpicks, 4 index cards, 5 sheets of 8-1/2 x 11-inch paper and 2 sheets of newspaper. Participants solved each challenge in six minutes or less. They built a lightweight tower that supported a ping pong ball, created a bridge that supported two ping pong balls, designed a path and propulsion system for a ping pong ball to roll into a cup without touching the ball itself, and developed a system to launch two ping pong balls down the length of a bridge they built without touching either the bridge or the balls. With each successful solution, everyone learned not only that there was no single solution that was the so-called correct answer, but also how to manipulate their materials in ways they were never designed to work. They also grew in confidence, a necessary component to taking risks, making discoveries, and developing creative solutions.

I like to think that the Destination Imagination program for which my husband and I volunteer is helping to develop the minds of young people who will be tomorrow’s creative problem-solvers, people who could be artists, engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs and more. I also like to think that that I am one of those problem-solvers, in my own corner of the world where I create and sell handmade goods on Etsy. Below are examples of creative thinking on that same Web site. If you click on the large photo, you’ll be taken to Etsy, where you can click on individual thumbnails. Hooray for creativity!

Recycled/upcycled/repurposed materials, top to bottom row, left to right: zipper & wine cork, birch bark, vinyl records, magazines, old metal (tin, sugar bowl, vacuum tube, forks, spoon, springs, keys), coffee filters, cereal boxes, tennis ball, plastic spoons, silver spoons & forks, T-shirts, bottle corks, flour canister & found metal objects, cardboard, dryer lint, and pencils & book.

Inspired by (others’) creativity

Creativity, Memories

May 312012

When John and I return from Destination Imagination Global Finals each year, we are fired up about creativity in general, and are ready to start writing practice Instant Challenges that the participants of the Iowa affiliate of the program can use. If you have never heard of Destination Imagination, it is a creative problem-solving program for student teams from kindergarten through university age that emphasizes creativity, teamwork and problem-solving through the use of creative and critical thinking strategies. On September 1st each year, Destination Imagination releases six competitive Challenges, each with a specific academic focus: technical/mechanical, scientific, fine arts/theatrical, improvisational, structural, and community service. There is also a non-competitive Challenge called Rising Stars!® for primary age students. The teams, consisting of 2 to 7 students, work for several months on these Challenges, generating their own solution without Interference from adults or non-team members. This idea of non-Interference is a basic tenet of the Destination Imagination program; adults provide organizational guidance and teach general skills, but all ideas and the implementation of those ideas must come from the students.

This Iowa team from Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment placed 7th out of 46 teams in its secondary level Challenge, The Solar Stage.

Destination Imagination is not just about long-term problem-solving, but also about on-the-spot problem-solving. Students learn how to solve on-the-spot problems by practicing Instant Challenges about which they have no advance information. At competition, teams have 5 to 9 minutes to solve a performance or task-based Instant Challenge. Their Instant Challenge score is added to their Team Challenge score, and then the teams are ranked. The first place team in every Challenge, in every level (elementary, middle, and secondary), earns the right to advance to Global Finals.

This improvisational team from West Des Moines, Iowa took 1st place out of 46 teams in the secondary level of its Instant Challenge.

My husband and I have officiated as Instant Challenge Appraisers at the last seven Destination Imagination Global Finals competitions, enjoying the creative problem-solving skills of the best teams from around the world. This year was the biggest Global Finals event ever, with 1,276 teams competing from 45 states, 7 Canadian provinces and 13 countries. There are actually 30 countries besides the U.S. that participate in Destination Imagination, but not all of them compete at a tournament, instead choosing to focus on the creative problem-solving process within their schools or communities. Teams are managed by adult facilitators called Team Managers; the non-profit program as a whole is run by 135,000 volunteers from around the world. At the Global Finals tournament alone, it takes an enormous team of officials to evaluate Instant Challenge, since every team passes through the Humanities Building where Instant Challenge is held.

Instant Challenge Appraisers

John and I got involved in Destination Imagination many years ago, when our son was a participant and I managed his team. When he moved on to other activities, John continued as an Appraiser, the program’s designation for a scoring official. Both of us eventually became state Board members, with John serving as Iowa’s Affiliate Challenge Master for Instant Challenge, and me becoming Iowa’s Co-Affiliate Training Director. I focus on training and support for Coordinators, Team Managers and teams, while my counterpart (the other Iowa Affiliate Training Director) provides training for Challenge Masters and Appraisers. In reality, though, our roles overlap, since we both support each other. All of the Board members wear multiple hats, serving wherever they are needed. We are all friends, enjoying each other’s company whenever we get together, which is monthly from August through December, and almost weekly from January through April, Iowa’s competitive season.

Students for a Creative Iowa Board members, front row (left to right): Mary Koester, Judy Nolan, Kristie Rhysdam, Sharon Wallace, Alisha Heisterkamp, Jay Swords. Back row: Bruce Antion, John Nolan, Keith Kutz, Steve Klawonn, Brenda Kutz, Mark Wilkins. Missing: Sam Hapke and James Honzatko.

Not all of us volunteer at Global Finals, but this year Iowa was represented by five individuals—four in Instant Challenge, and one in the Score Room. Your Affiliate Director nominates you in December, and then you are invited to apply for a volunteer role. Volunteers are selected from the applications with the goal being to balance such factors as experience, geography, age, gender and even problem-solving styles. My own Global Finals Appraisal team consisted of two men (Doug Memering from Indiana and Jake Carleton from Ohio) and two women (Ramona Booth from Mississippi and myself) of various ages, each from a different part of the country, with a range of years in program experience. A couple of us were external thinkers and the other two were internal thinkers. This diversity reflects the same kind of diversity you would expect to find among students who are part of a typical Destination Imagination team.

Clockwise, left to right: Doug Memering (Indiana), Head Appraiser; Ramona Booth, Mississippi (Timekeeper), and Jake Carleton, Ohio (Runner).

Global Finals volunteers arrive in Knoxville, Tennessee on Monday through Wednesday the week before Memorial Day each year. Many of them serve as Team Challenge or Instant Challenge officials, but others help out with team registration, sales, or one of the activity camps held during the competition. The Knoxville Convention Center, for example, is a hub of activity. Students meet there to trade pins with each other in much the same way that Olympians trade pins; it is a way to make friends and learn about international cultures. An Innovation Expo takes place with such exhibitors as NASA, ThinkFun, Casio, Texas Instruments and others presenting interesting and useful information. Books, games, bumper stickers, pins and other souvenirs are sold downstairs in the Convention Center. This year 3M held an event called “Explore the Uncharted Challenge” which was so popular that it remained open one evening so that officials could participate. Teams were challenged to design and construct crafts to safely transport life-sustaining supplies to new planets.

Global Finals begins with Opening Ceremonies on Wednesday night at the Thompson-Boling Arena at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. It is the largest university arena in the nation, which is essential when you have to accommodate 8,000 students, their supporters and Team Managers, volunteers, VIPs and Destination Imagination staff members—altogether about 17,000 people. Opening ceremonies includes a fantastic laser show, as well as a Parade of Flags.

Both competitors and their supporters are able to choose from a wide range of activities from the time of their arrival to the day they depart, including a Family Camp, an Improv Fiesta, and the Team Managers & Officials Challenge.

Other events include a Global Pep Rally, a Glo Ball for high school and university students, and the 3M International Costume Ball where thousands of participants dressed in duct tape creations.

Competition takes place on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Teams perform their Team Challenge on one day, and their Instant Challenge on another day. My Appraisal team evaluated middle school projectOUTREACH® (community service) teams who performed an Instant Challenge called “Tapestry.” They had 9 minutes to weave a picture using 50 colored strips of fabric on a loom, and to design a performance selling the tapestry to the Appraisers. Then they had 2 minutes to act out a presentation that had a complete beginning, middle and ending. We were amazed by many performances, but especially by the first place team from Minnesota that used every strip of fabric to weave its tapestry, and then sang for its entire presentation. We also saw international teams, who were accompanied by a translator. This is always an interesting experience! If you watch the video below real carefully during the Instant Challenge section, you’ll see a team weaving cloth into the loom. This video also does a good job of summarizing the entire tournament experience.

What were our days like as volunteer Appraisers? To be honest, they were a strange combination of exhilaration and exhaustion. We rose at 5:00 every morning to shower, dress and eat breakfast, then boarded a bus at 7:00 for the Humanities Building. Lunch was provided on site, but we were often too busy to take more than 10 minutes to eat, and breaks fell by the wayside as we attempted to keep on schedule. Our feet ached and swelled, and on the last day of competition, when it was 95 degrees, there was no air conditioning in the building until noon. Despite the physical challenges, we felt privileged to be a part of the creative process going on around us. One of the really fun things to do before the teams competed on Thursday was to go from room to room, solving (or attempting to solve!) some of the same Challenges that the students would be doing. After 3 consecutive days of appraising, we took down our Challenge and said our good byes before we got ready for an officials’ reception dinner and Closing Ceremonies. Thank you, Knoxville—we had a great time, overall, and hope to be back next year!

Closing Ceremonies at Thompson-Boling Arena, University of Tennessee-Knoxville

Fleshing out your ideas with ABC brainstorming

Creativity, Creativity, Tutorials

Oct 242011

Many of you know that I volunteer for Iowa’s Destination ImagiNation® program, which is focused on promoting creativity, teamwork and problem-solving among young people who are of pre-school through university age. My husband and I originally became involved through our son, who participated on a team. Eventually I became a Team Manager and my husband an Appraiser; now our son is graduated from college and living his own life in Chicago as we continue to volunteer for the program as state Board members wearing various hats. This program, which is near and dear to our hearts, is especially meaningful to me since I pursue my own brand of creativity through my writing and handmade projects.

One of the tasks all Destination ImagiNation (DI) teams are charged with is to manipulate materials effectively in order to generate unique (read: creative) solutions to challenges. In DI jargon, this means that all materials can be identified as connectors, controllers and/or extenders, each with its own set of properties. The first year that I managed a team of six middle school boys, it was apparent that they were bright, inquisitive and imaginative, but also that they were handicapped by a lack of knowledge about the materials available to them, and how they could make them work. They were too young to drive, of course, and didn’t have a lot of spending money, so they did not spend their free time in stores, where they would have been exposed to potential materials for the Team Challenge they had to solve during the season.

To help remedy my team’s lack of exposure to different types of materials, I sent the boys off on various scavenger hunts to different types of stores, where they were asked to generate lists of connectors, extenders and controllers. They were told that connectors, extenders and controllers can be used alone or in combination with other materials, that connectors are used to fasten or hold things together, that extenders are used to make materials longer, and controllers are used to guide or contain materials. The lists my team generated became important resources as the season progressed and the team sought unique solutions to challenges. For example, the team used sewing machine bobbins as pulleys, a type of controller. They discovered that PVC pipe, which comes in tube and joint forms, can be used as connector, extender or controller, often at the same time.

I sent my team to a craft store, a home improvement center, an office supply store, and a fabric store. One of my team’s biggest surprises was that a fabric store contains a broad range of connectors, not just fabrics and sewing notions for costumes. They also learned that a fabric store is an important source for adhesive products. Did you know, for example, that Jo-Ann Fabrics has a free glue guide that describes 8 brands of adhesives, or a total of 58 products? The materials related to these adhesives include fabric and trims, leather, beads, jewelry findings, paper, cardboard, plaster, felt, Styrofoam®, glass, crystal, plastic, vinyl, metal, wire, wood and more. If your local store does not have one of these guides, you can contact the corporate headquarters and ask where you can get a copy: Jo-Ann Fabrics Corporate Office | Headquarters, 5555 Darrow Road, Hudson, OH 44236, Tel. 330-656-2600.

So, what does all of this have to do with fleshing out your ideas, which is part of the title of this post? One way to solve the type of problem that the boys on my Destination ImagiNation team had—namely, to generate as many options as possible in regard to locating connectors—is very similar to the challenge facing anyone who creates anything, whether it’s a story or poem, a sculpture, a scrapbook or fiber art. Our goal is always the same: to come up with a unique perspective that reflects our goals and dreams. Before we can get to that point, however, we have to generate a lot of ideas while ignoring the Editor standing behind our backs, picking apart our ideas. We need to pay attention to novelty, even if it seems odd or crazy or impossible. And we need to think about ways to combine these different ideas because doing so might lead to something really new and different.

Beginning this idea-generation process can seem daunting if you don’t have a fun-but-strategic way to attack it. One deliberate method (and certainly not the only one!) of coming up with ideas is to use what’s called ABC brainstorming. This is as simple as drawing a 2-column grid with the letters of the alphabet in the first column, and leaving the second column blank for those ideas you’ll be adding later. Each idea should begin with one of the letters of the alphabet. You don’t have to use all the letters, but it’s part of the fun to try to do so. If you’re more of a visual person, draw a mind map instead, with letters inside clouds. You can have jagged lines of lightning pointing to your ideas.

If the boys on my DI team had used ABC brainstorming (which I didn’t know about at the time), their list of connectors at the fabric store might have looked something like this:

A – adhesive tape

B – brads, buckles, beading cord, barrel clasps, bobby pins, bar pins, buttons, bra extenders, binding clips

C – craft glue, chain, chenille stems, cotton belting, cord, clothesline, clip rings, cable cord

D – double-sided tape, duct tape, doll joints, D-rings, decorator nails

E – eyelets, E-6000 adhesive, embroidery floss, elastic

F – floral tape, foam mounting tape, felt glue, fabric glue, foam glue, fusible bond tape

G – glue sticks, gem glue, grommets, gum

H – hemp cord, hooks & eyes, heat set fabric glue

I – interfacing (fusible)

J – jewelry findings, jump rings, jute

K –

L – laminating pouches, lobster clasps, leather cord, lanyard hooks

M – Mod Podge, magnets, mending tape

N –

O –

P – paddle wire, poster putty, pins

Q – quilter’s tape

R – ribbon, raffia

S – stem wire, screw posts, super glue, spring rings, safety pins, split rings, stretchy cord, snap fasteners, swivel clasps

T – twine, transparent tape, tacky glue, toggle clasps, thread, thumb tacks

U –

V – Velcro®

W – wire

X – Xyron adhesives

Y – yarn

Z – Zots (adhesive dots), zippers

If you sell handmade products, as I do, can you imagine how you might use this tool to generate ideas about new products, or improvements to them? If you’re a story writer, maybe you can use this tool to generate the first sentence of many different stories. If you paint or draw or sculpt, perhaps you can generate a list of adjectives describing qualities or emotions you want to bring to your work—a series of creative prompts, if you will. How can you imagine using this tool in your work? Do you use a deliberate method to generate ideas?

It’s graduation time (again)

52 Weeks Challenge, Challenges, Creativity

May 132011

It’s that time of year again, when high school and college seniors walk up the aisle and receive their graduation diploma. Among those making the graduation list this May and June are several family members and a friend. Since this special day doesn’t come around every year, I couldn’t bring myself to buy a commercial card. Instead, I decided to adapt the layout of a spring card I made in a recent Archivers class called Painted Petals. I used graduation-themed dimensional stickers from Jolee’s Boutique, self-adhesive gems from Bazzill Basics, paper art flowers from Hero Arts, and card stock from Best Creation and Boxer Scrapbooks.

After I was finished, I needed an envelope big enough to contain the dimensional card without crushing it. To do the job, I used my Martha Stewart Scoring Board to make one from white letterhead. I have decided that this is one of my favorite tools, since it facilitates the process of custom envelope-making, allowing me to assemble an envelope in just a few minutes. You cut your paper, score it, fold it and adhere the flaps, and ta-da! it’s finished. You can see the finished card below.

The above card accompanied a gift to a graduating friend who is bright and creative. The gift? A journal focused on creativity. The fabric cover owes its style to Sue Bleiweiss, a fiber artist from whom I took an online journal making class some years ago. Inside are three hand-sewn signatures, with the last page of each signature containing a surprise pocket. One pocket contains 10 handmade tags, another contains “Creative Play Cards” from Violette Clark (you can get them if you subscribe to her newsletter, Violette’s Creative Juice), and the third pocket contains “100 Ideas” to exercise your creative muscles from Keri Smith, the author of Wreck This Journal, This is Not a Book, and Mess: The Manual of Accidents and Mistakes. If you’ve ever felt creatively stuck, Keri’s books will get you moving again.

Every time I make one of these journals I like to customize it for the person receiving it as a gift. In fact, I often don’t know what will be inside the pockets until I get to that part of the process!

Fabric cover with satin-stitched edge

1st signature

First pocket with 10 handmade tags inside

1st pocket with 10 handmade tags inside

2nd signature

2nd pocket with Violette Clark's Creative Play Cards

3rd signature

3rd pocket with Keri Smith's "100 Ideas"

When left brain tasks take over

52 Weeks Challenge, Challenges, Creativity

Apr 012011

When it’s 56 degrees on a sunny spring day, and the day lilies begin to sprout in your garden, it can be challenging to stay focused enough to finish a creative project. I almost did not get around to photographing the fingerless gloves below for Week 13 of the 52 Weeks Challenge—not because of any desire to garden (actually, I detest yard work)—but because I was occupied with gathering numbers in preparation for a meeting with our tax accountant, right on the heels of completing my father’s tax paperwork. But those dreaded tasks are now behind me, and ahead of me is a list of much more delightful creative projects.

I’m still trying to decide, when it comes to especially tedious left brain tasks, whether it takes more energy to procrastinate or complete the job. It’s likely a toss-up. In any event, after I finish such work I often don’t immediately feel particularly creative. When this happens, I just have to sit back and do something entirely different, such as read a book or magazine, browse through blogs, listen to music, or simply take a walk. It’s helpful for me to sift through fabrics, too, or to organize yarns while my mind wanders. Afterward, I feel refreshed, and the urge to create is once more knocking on my door. It seems ironic, doesn’t it, that in order to play effectively (i.e., create), you have to play in a different way? I think I agree wtih Swiss psychologist Carl Jung when he says, “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct.”

What revives your creative juices after left brain tasks have taken over?

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