Preparation

Exercise: Paper Tower

The basic idea of the exercise is to create a free-standing object from paper. The exercise allows a lot of variations with which participants experience varying aspects of the creative process.

• Single vs. teamwork: You can start the exercise by having everybody create an object on his own. Make a second round where people work together in teams of two to three people and compare the results. Did participants perform better on their own or in the group?
• Time vs. aesthetics:  You can do a first round where e.g. the fastest team wins and a second round where the most aesthetic object wins (let participants vote which one is their favorite). Ideally participants experience different perspectives depending on the target they are given. Maybe they also find a new passion for creating aesthetic objects. 
• Construction methods and tools: The biggest challenge is to build a tower only with paper, without glue, scissors or tape. Don't start with this version as it might frustrate people. But you could do e.g. 3 rounds where you take one tool after the other away. This trains people in being creative with limited assets.  

Tools

• Paper 
• Glue (optional)
• Tape (optional)
• Scissors (optional)

Targets

• Build the highest tower.
• Be the first to reach the edge of the table from the ground.
• Build the nicest tower.
• Reach the edge of the table with the smallest amount of paper.
• Build a tower only with square (or only with round) elements.

The variations are endless and basically anybody is able to build at least a basic version. 

Exercise: Digital Mood Board

Mood boards are used by marketing and design teams to gather ideas for a brand, product or a service. The mood board reflects various aspects of the project: 

• product characteristics
• design ideas
• impressions of the future usage
• target audience

It enables the team to better understand the situation in which the product will be used and focuses their creative process. But the method is not only useful for design teams, it can be applied to any creative situation. 

Typically mood boards are done in paper on the wall. The team gathers images, graphics, text snippets and objects and sticks them to the wall. Doing a paper mood board requires some space and a lot of material. For an exercise in class it might be easier to do a digital mood board.

Finding a Mission

Anything can be the mission. If you want to make it easy for participants, give them a topic they can easily identify with:

• Your/your kid's/spouse's next birthday party
• Renovate your living room
• Your next vacation

If you want to make it a bit more tricky, give participants a more abstract topic to reflect:

• What will public transportation look like in 20 years?
• What are the issues that your community is facing?
• Your employer asks you to come up with ideas for improving the company.
• How should retirement ideally look like?

Searching for Material

We recommend using material that is marked for reuse:

• Images published under Creative Commons license or any other license that allows usage:
  • Most images on Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org
  • Some images on Flickr (use the advanced search to filter creative commons images): https://flickr.com/search/?text=idea&license=2%2C3%2C4%2C5%2C6%2C9
  • Advanced image searches on search engines often allow searching for creative commons images only: https://www.google.com/search?q=idea&tbm=isch&tbs=il:cl&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CAAQ1vwEahcKEwjgyuLyrYfxAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAg&biw=1905&bih=980 
• Images from libraries that are explicitly marked for free use, like:
  • Pixabay. https://pixabay.com
  • Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/
  • Unsplash: https://unsplash.com
  • Historical images: https://historyarchive.org

Tools for Creating a Mood Board

• Any image processing software will do it (e.g. Microsoft Paint, comes with any Windows PC)
• Any presentation software and even text editing software, as they usually come with image support

Exercise: Personas

Design teams use personas to model people who represent the target audience of the product they are creating. Personas make it easier for designers to understand the situation, needs and requirements of the affected people. Again, this method can be perfectly used for any creative process to better identify with the needs of the affected people.

Finding a Topic

Either you pick a general topic that participants are familiar with or a topic from their professional domain. The more controversial the topic the easier the exercise:

• Government plans to raise taxes on gasoline so that prices will be three times as high as now.
• Hospital visiting hours will be limited from 9 a.m to 5 p.m..
• Your community decides that public transportation is free for everybody.
• Should same-sex couples be allowed to marry in church?
• Your community decides to clear an old forest to build a new road.    

Creating a Persona

As a template to create your persona, you can use the worksheet "Persona Template". It includes some aspects and questions that can help to shape a persona. If the template does not match your topic you can also gather the information in a free format. It is often easier to create personas with an image of a person in mind. You can e.g. use images from the website https://thispersondoesnotexist.com, in order not to use images of actual people. We also prepared a printable with some images.

• Start by letting each participant pick a photo of a person. 
• Discuss in the group what role this person may have for the topic. Try to cover a broad range of people that represent all relevant aspects of the topic (people who are in favor of the topic, people who are critical, people who have a business or political interest,...) 
• Give participants 10-15 minutes to write down the information about their persona.
• Each participant presents his or her persona to the group.
• Now discuss the topic. Participants should try to see the problem from the position of the persona and try to find ideas and solutions.

The Persona Method helps people to see a problem or topic from different perspectives, which gives new insights and creates a better understanding for all people affected. Personas become virtual team members that allow creative teams to adjust their perspectives from time to time. 

 Exercise: Topic Booster

Sitting in front of a blank paper often blocks peoples creativity. Students e.g. often have a hard time figuring out a topic for an essay. If you have ever taken part in an idea contest you might have stumbled across the same phenomenon. Here are some ideas how to gather inspiration on the internet. Even if the first  results may not serve as a topic, you might find a suitable topic by thinking about why they don't fit.  To create an exercise for your participants think about a suitable situation that reflects their situation:

• Your kid asks you to build something with building blocks.
• You want to do a new decoration for your kitchen window. What could it be?
• You need to give a task to other people. What should they do?
• Your kid needs to write an essay. Help him or her to find a topic. 
• Your friends ask you to prepare a birthday surprise for a friend. What could it be?

From the following sources gather ideas and develop answers for the questions: 

• Quote of the day/week on wiki: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day
• Search for the lyrics of the last song you heard on the internet.  Pick the 5th noun from the song text
• Go to Google and hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button on the start page.
• Get a word from http://wordoftheyear.me/ 
• Go to your favorite Social Media channel and pick the first noun in the first post.

Method / Process description

• Input: Introduce the basic idea of creativity ( (Module 6 > 6.1. Introducing Children to Digital Skills > Creative and Critical Thinking > Introduction & What is Creativity?). Questions might arise whether creativity and (fine) arts are tied to each other, what the difference between creativity and imagination is. Some answers and inspiration can be found in this article: https://theartofeducation.edu/2019/02/14/5-surprising-things-you-might-not-know-about-creativity/
• Group discussion: 
  • Gather examples of creativity and discuss them using the definition of creativity "Creativity is defined as the ability to create something new or original, which is useful or usable. Novelty contributes to a stronger perception of creativity than usefulness (Runco & Jaeger, 2012)."  
  • If participants have not brought up examples from their professional life so far, let them focus in a second round on creativity in their job. Where is creativity necessary? Where is creativity lacking? What new ideas do they have that are not realized?
• Exercise Paper Tower: Choose a variation of this exercise that matches your participants best. Evaluate the results and let participants express how the experienced the exercise:
  • Are they satisfied with the result?
  • Do they have other ideas they want to try out at home?
  • Did teamwork work fine?
  • What did they find hard? 
• Exercise Digital Mood Board and/or Personas: Depending on the amount of time you have available in class you can either do one or both of the exercises. If you want to strengthen participants' media production competencies, select the Digital Mood Board. If you want to focus on analyzing more complex topics select the Persona method. 
• Reflection: 
  • Gather participants impressions: With which method did they feel best? Which methods could be suitable for work? Which methods are they going to try out with their kids?
  • Let participants do the Topic Booster exercise at home and let them report about their experiences in the next lesson.

Download material

• Worksheet "Persona Template"
• Printable Persona Images

References

• 24+ Sites to Find Free Images You Would Actually Use for Your Marketing: https://buffer.com/library/free-images/
• Mood boards as a tool for the “in-discipline” of design (Annie Gentes, Frédéric Valentin, Emeline Brulé): https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01246049/document