Creative Prism — Showcasing creativity in our community
Creative Prism started with a hunch. After several years of community workouts around creativity and design in the Viennese community, we wondered how else we could showcase peoples creative capacities?
The idea was to set the stage for those in our community, that chose to be creative in one way or another. We wanted to tell the stories of everyday people. People like you and me, that started to tap into their creative potential.
The goal was to celebrate creativity and its various forms.
Our hope was to inspire others for ways to live a creative lifestyle.
Why a prism?
If you are a physicist, please skip the next couple of sentences, would you please?
We were fascinated by how a prism scatters a light beam into several colors (wavelengths?). Our understanding was that a dedicated format (prism) could channel certain input (a talk) into various possible outcomes (creative action). After that we fleshed out the idea in detail, designed the logo to it, and voilà, Creative Prism was born.
One important aspect was to invite speakers from all walks of life. There are a lot of events where you hear superstar-like individuals talking about their almost unbelievable achievements. Or where you listen to sophisticated thinkers and their aspiring ideas. This can be very inspirational and we too love those formats.
Yet we set out to design a more approachable, down-to-earth format. We wanted to listen to people, to which our audience could easily relate to. We intended to show that living a creative life doesn’t mean that you need to be super artistic, a successful founder or working as a designer. Instead we wanted to show how you can incorporate more creativity in your everyday (professional) life.
We knew that curating a “good mix” was vital for our event since we strived for inspiring a diverse audience. The first speaker was a freshly turned self-employed branding specialist, who also happened to be the most frequent visitor at our “gym workouts” (Caro). Our second speaker turned out to be a neuroscientist PhD who developed a passion for art projects and various non-scientific projects (Sabria). Then there was a startup founder, who developed a happiness training app (Christoph). Finally, we also filled a slot after a fourth speaker had to cancel last minute.
Authentic stories
Frankly, we were a bit afraid, that our speakers would talk merely about their businesses or reduce creativity to art. Therefore we emphasized in our briefing that we were looking for experiences on how to live a creative life. We were looking for rad, unconventional aspects of creativity. We wanted to present authentic stories, emotions and the people behind it.
It turned out, that our concerns were more than unfounded. We heard a fine selection of insights. For instance about tweaks and tricks to manage your creative capacities when clients expect on-the-spot-creative outbursts. We listened to explanations on the brain’s tactic to “explore, grow and connect” and how those principles were applied in personal art projects. We witnessed a mindblowing presentation about the importance of happiness that was the blueprint for a newly developed app. Eventually we also had the chance, to talk about the importance of side projects as we introduced the story of the Creativity Gym.
The audience, roughly 40 curious people form our community, liked it, too.
Thank you
In our slot we talked about the importance of collaboration and asking for support. This premier wouldn’t have been possible without the support of several people and organisations. We’d like to thank Ulla from www.arcc.art for providing aus with space. Also the friendly people behind Hakuma and Nixe for sponsoring a few trays of delicious Matcha Drinks and beer.
Whats next?
We are planning Creative Prism N° 2 in March 2018. We talked to a few potential speakers already but are open for further suggestions at this point. Shot us an email to hello@creativitygym.at if you would like to share your story or know someone who absolutely should. Give us the headline of your story and describe how you think it inspires for living a creative life.
Also, we are looking for sponsors in order to host the second iteration for even more curious people. We will use the funds to cover any expenses that come with the format. We want to design an inspiring experience for our attendees. If you think, this format fits to your company or organisation and you want to support us, say hello via hello@creativitygym.at. We are looking forward to hearing from you.
Originally published at www.creativitygym.at.
If you would like to know more about my side-project Creativity Gym, visit my website www.creativitygym.at
