A Bit of de Bono

Ken Robinson recommends this in 'Out of Our Minds'.

Six Thinking Hats® is a simple, effective parallel thinking process that helps people be more productive, focused, and mindfully involved. And once learned, the tools can be applied immediately!



You and your team members can learn how to separate thinking into six clear functions and roles. Each thinking role is identified with a colored symbolic "thinking hat." By mentally wearing and switching "hats," you can easily focus or redirect thoughts, the conversation, or the meeting.

The White Hat calls for information known or needed. "The facts, just the facts."

The Yellow Hat symbolizes brightness and optimism. Under this hat you explore the positives and probe for value and benefit.

The Black Hat is judgment - the devil's advocate or why something may not work. Spot the difficulties and dangers; where things might go wrong. Probably the most powerful and useful of the Hats but a problem if overused.
The Red Hat signifies feelings, hunches and intuition. When using this hat you can express emotions and feelings and share fears, likes, dislikes, loves, and hates.
The Green Hat focuses on creativity; the possibilities, alternatives, and new ideas. It's an opportunity to express new concepts and new perceptions.
The Blue Hat is used to manage the thinking process. It's the control mechanism that ensures the Six Thinking Hats® guidelines are observed.

As you know, the difference between mediocre and highly effective teams lies not so much in their collective mental equipment, but in how well they use their abilities to think and how well they work together.

Six Thinking Hats® helps actualize the full thinking potential of teams. And when used as a meeting management tool, the Six Hats method provides the disciplined process for individuals to be focused and to the point.

But possibly most important, it requires each individual to look at all sides of an issue.

Employees like the way the Six Hats method neutralizes employee rank in a meeting where several levels of employees are present. It also puts people who are quiet and reserved on an equal playing field with those who are more talkative and might monopolize a meeting.

from http://www.debonogroup.com/six_thinking_hats.php

Umi's writing techniques

Umi Sinha, a writer and writing facilitator, came to talk to us at the second Arts and Learning day yesterday, and passed on some invaluable exercises which I shall use with my students.  The chicken's in the oven, so I'll be brief....

Warm up exercises:
Walk around the room with pad and pen, finishing off any number of one liners starting with 'I see'. Here are a few of mine:
I see tangy lime walls without any juice
I see pin boards empty of ideas
I see horizontal lines, beachless pebbles, harsh lights and sharp-faced buildings
I see empty streets, a lone cyclist with nowhere to go
I see empty spaces waiting for life

This was designed to connect us to our visual senses and then Umi asked us to turn one of those lines into a metaphor by changing the 'I see' into 'I am'. Because I was in a bad mood, I chose 'I am an empty space waiting for life'...

We then used the diamond shape to try collaborative story telling as another warm up;
I worked with Jane and we took a line each in two stories so that we each had a go at the beginning and the end of a nine word story.

Leaves (Jane)

fall softly (Gilly)

in the woods.(Jane)

Another day (Gilly)

closes (Jane)

Panic (Gilly)

takes over. (Jane)

Quickly, they realise (Gilly)

time has (Jane)

stopped (Gilly)

We studied texts by Dickens ('Great Expectations'), Geoff Dyer ('But Beautiful') and Jean Rhys' 'Voyage in the Dark' to look at use of senses in describing place and emotion. Lovely stuff!

Umi showed us a great writing technique that I'll try with my students at UCH. The poet, Roger Stevens, had taught it on one of his writing courses and told her to pass it on. I do love the generosity of the creative mind.

Write down the following:

• an emotion
• a sport
• something you enjoy at work/school
• something you enjoy at home
• a bad habit
• a good habit

Now write down an animal you would associate with each of them.

Now write a line for each, starting with 'There's a (your animal) in me that....'

Et voila; you have a poem that explores the very essence of you.

Here's mine;

There's a dog in me that wags her tail at the sound of the key in the door

There's a chimp in me that leaps onto your hip and buries her neck into yours

There's a lion in me that watches you play, occasionally stretching out a paw to warn you how loud I can roar

There's a cat in me that curls up on the deep red sofa as soon as the sun slips behind the yard arm

There's a tiger in me that pounces on anyone who steps out of line

There's a meercat in me, eagerly spotting the next opportunity to give away my love

We talked about working with teenagers at the end of the session. Umi asked us to try out this exercise to see how to get deep safely.  She asked us to write down a time when we felt grief. We all selected the death of a family member. My original line was 'I felt grief when I read 'She is Gone' at my mother's funeral and looked out at my father and brother and knew that, to them, she really had.'  Turning it into a definition kept the power but distanced it from the personal so, 'Grief is looking at at my father and brother as I read 'She is Gone' at my mother's funeral and knowing that for them, she had.' 

Out of Our Minds

I wonder if Ken Robinson ever did automatic writing - with or without the Aggiss stimulus.

Creative processes draw from all areas of human consciousness. They are not strictly logical nor are they wholly emotional. The reason why creativity often proceeds by intuitive leaps is precisely that it draws from areas of mind and consciousness that are not wholly regulated by rational thought.  In the creative state, we can access these different areas of our minds. This is why ideas often come to mind without our thinking about them.  

Robinson, K. (2001) Out of Our Minds. Learning to be Creative. p154, Oxford: Capstone

Odd is Good

Another Arts and Learning day is just around the corner, and it can't come soon enough. I've even had to resort to my own creative techniques in class, and my students are beginning to look at me from under furrowed brows.

Actually that's not really fair; Professor Liz Aggiss was so scary, so Gothicly odd in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZNXk1JZems  that I think they saw me as cuddly, if a little batty in comparison. I'd shown them Motion Control, part of Aggiss' Dance for Camera series, as I had with all those taking part in my 'Write Rhythm' research project (see http://thewriterhythm.blogspot.com/) to see if such weirdness might stimulate the kind of writing they didn't know they had in them.  As I recorded their thoughts after five minutes of automatic scribbling,  I admit I was rather pleased. Looking down at their pages, most of them told me that they saw something they didn't recognise as their own.

I'm sure I'll come back from Saturday's session armed with a bunch of new techniques to use, but for now, I might just Google 'odd dance' and see what happens.