Creative Quarter

I went for a cliffhanger approach at the end of my last Creative Bite when the first question was "Is there time to be creative?" My argument was that there was a lot that we could do to create time through collaboration and sharing. When I reflected on the examples that there were of this, it made me think about another question, which is why we seem so ready to accept activity as a substitute for action?

Recently I had the opportunity to try Paperlater a new service from the smart people at Newspaper Club.  It's a service that enables you to take web pages you’ve been meaning to read and collect them into your own personalised newspaper with little more than a single click (or email if you like).  When you have enough pages hit the order button and your issue is then printed & delivered for £4.99

“We have to understand that the world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is more important than the eye…The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.”

(Bronowski, 1973)

We’ve been running some design thinking ‘crash courses’ over the summer.

The ‘crash course’ is a short, hands-on, introduction to the design process – developed by the d School at Stanford University. In pairs, we take a real-world problem and come up with some solutions. In 90 minutes.

The first thing I learnt having a significant life long impairment is that to succeed in the world as a credible disability consultant and activist is that I had to do things differently to make the most of my situation. Time, energy and of course money are the three things in my life I never have enough of and therefore I have needed to find often creative ways to use these resources as effectively as I can.

Good assessment of someone's care and support needs to start from a blank sheet of paper. This is a notion that has the power to strike terror into hearts of seasoned professionals - or does it?

When one of organisations I've been working with decided to experiment with blank sheet assessments there was an uproar, as some people saw it as reducing their professionalism.

Six months on and moving away from ' boxed in' assessments has allowed people to use their creativity and be creative in finding solutions to the care and support issues people were presenting.

Through the very act of asking people, I’d connected with them, and when you connect with them, people want to help you.

This quote comes from a brilliant TED talk by the musician Amanda Palmer called ‘The Art of Asking’. It’s only 15 minutes long and well worth a watch:

I have boards on Pinterest full of quotes and images that I have collected because I am instinctively drawn to them. They talk to me, the quotes in an obvious way, the images in a not so obvious way, but they still have something to say.

In busy working lives it is very easy for individuals to get bogged down with the flood of urgent requests that we experience every day. At work, we have the continuous stream of electronic and face-to-face demands for this, that and the other from our managers, team leaders, colleagues and clients whereas at home we have  the never-ending administrative tasks and social interruptions of just living a 21st century life, bursting with multi-media and mobile communications.

How can the empathy of designers help us in our quest for better social services?

Hafan y Mor ( Haven by the Sea) is a new unit for children with disabilities in Swansea, Wales.

The families chose the theme for the centre and photos of the children enjoying an arts day on the beach cover the walls. The doors to the consulting rooms are beach huts and kites fly everywhere…