Cultivating Creativity from Inspiration

We all take inspiration from somewhere or something whether it is a mere human being, a god we believe in, or a beautiful sunset on a beach.

It’s what we do with inspiration that makes us unique in our profession. And in turn, others may get inspired by what we do. And so on, and so on.

I very recently became interested in how I have being inspired by certain things and what I did with that inspiration to create something new and unique to my story and my profession. If you truly are inspired by something then what you do with that inspiration should make you authentically stand out from the crowd.

I have broken down how I cultivated creativity from inspiration into four categories. Then I have taken examples from my own career to explain each one. Behold!

Awareness

It’s vital that you are aware of the difference between copying from inspiration and using inspiration to create something new and without doubt comes from your deep admiration of and reaction to the inspiration. For example, I came up with this idea of a blog post after an experience I had recently in my profession. I thought it would be an excellent and positive reaction that would leave me feeling better than I was. So I’m fully aware that this particular approach might have been done before so I’m going to go Google it right now….ok, I’m back! These are the first few hits I found when I googled “Cultivating Creativity from Inspiration”:

I’m going to go ahead and delve into some of them and see if anyone has broken down this topic in the way I’m doing now, if there is then I will want to mention that at the top of this blog post. I see one of the links has content from Tom Kelley who I greatly admire in the world of creativity and met in Hong Kong once a few years ago.

So I have gone through 3 pages of Google search results and haven’t seen any website that is breaking it down like I am (a lot of great websites though!) I’m going to go ahead with not crediting anyone just yet and in doing so I’m hoping that this blog post is a unique and creative response to a “moment” in my profession (an inspiration if you will!). If, indeed, someone does come forward and say I have based my blog post on their work I will, without a shadow of a doubt, introduce this blog post with an explanation of my content and a link so that readers can go to the other person’s work too.

I go through this process with all my projects I undertake. We all would love to think we are uniquely creative but it’s a big world out there with many interesting people. Chances are something may have been done.

But in a sense that’s the litmus paper test right there; if it was truly a creative response then nobody will have done it before you in the way you are doing it now…

As I go through the next 3 areas; awareness plays a vital part in each one.

Content

As a technology coordinator I take inspiration from the teachers that are doing amazing things with the opportunities I’m able to give them. Most of the time, my only input is to fight the fight to purchase the right devices so they can deliver content in a style that suits them and their students. For example, for the past couple of years I’ve been able to get our physical education teacher Nathan Horne the number of iPads that he requested. I can take inspiration from him in that he is leading the way in a field where traditionally technology was not a part of. When I present on portfolios in our school and mention PE I always get his name up on screen due to the individual effort he undertakes on his own in PE class.

So back in 2010 (which is a long time ago regarding technology) I was able to get iPod Touches for the kindergarten classes and worked with Serena Fan and other kindergarten teachers in getting them into their classrooms. From what I saw there I was inspired to break down the reasons why the iPod Touches were working so well. I had content for a creative response and as luck would have it I could present my content at a TEDx event shortly after:

Again, awareness played a part with my content creation (and of course style which I’ll get to later). In breaking down the content as shown in the video I, again, Googled if anybody had done it before (specifically the words I used) and came up clean. Of course the phrase “Right tool, right job, right time” has been around in other forms for ages but my content would differentiate in that case. Since it’s been 5 years since I did this and nobody has complained I can surmise that this was a creative response to an inspiration of mine!

A few factors worked for me with the content aspect:

• The timing helped as iPod Touches were new in the realms of education so my content had a good chance of being a creative response.
• The time I had observing the students in class had given me a unique opportunity to get down on paper the positive interactions the students were having with their devices. Both these factors came together to allow me to have a creative response and to make the presentation come from a unique and personal angle.

So to produce creative content you sometimes have to be in the right place at the right time….in the right job!

Delivery

Delivery is tough. Delivery is presenting your story, your perspective, your personal response to something. You can deliver your responses in many, many different formats. If you nail a creative delivery you are pretty much assured you will be remembered or at least respected for your unique approach.

I’ve seen some creative deliveries over the years but I would like to dip out of the education realm for this one and talk about stand up comedians. I could never be one but I love stand-up comics. They are surely the bastions of cultivating creativity from inspirations around them. I see humor as a very valuable tool but extremely hard one to get right to suit a wide variety of people. Let’s check out my 5 minute Learning 2.014 Africa talk here (excuse the safari jacket but I was loving being in Ethiopia!):

This was the first time I went into a presentation knowing I had “humorous” things to say and not knowing if they would work. My delivery was inspired by feedback before my “official” talk and as my job as a technology coach. As a Learning 2 leader you get to present your talk to the head honchos beforehand and get feedback on your delivery, style, and content! The head honchos in this case being the lovely Simon May, Kim Cofino, and Madeleine Brookes. I knew humor had to be in there because my role as a tech coach is filled with funny incidents and experiences.
I doubted my humor content but they were adamant I leave it in and deliver what I gave them in my first run-through. This inspired me to tweak and fine tune the humorous elements so that my delivery was unique to me. That was me up there and they inspired me to stay…me!

Delivery is a major factor in how you cultivate creativity from an inspiration because it’s you in person doing the delivery so if you are presenting something in a delivery style that is not comfortable or natural to you then…it’s not entirely you up there.

Style

Let’s get one thing straight. You don’t own your style. You can be the first one to do something in a certain style but anyone can take your style away from you. That person can then, unethically as it may be, use your style in their context and get great plaudits from it. There’s nothing you can do but realize “well, I did it first and it was my unique style inspired by something that was personal to me at that time. At least I still feel good about myself“.

Let’s get another thing straight, there’s a blurry line between copying from an inspiration and using an inspiration as a menu of ideas for your creation. It’s up to you as the unique individual to either be creative or be lazy. Nobody can help you with that choice.

But I hear you ask “Everything’s a remix right?” Sure, I get that and it’s exactly what I did in the example I’m about to show you. But I think at the heart of remixing an inspiring form of media it is still a truly creative response to an inspiration that is totally unique to you. Let me show you my ADE application video from 2011 and I’ll then explain what I was inspired by to come up with a personal and creative style for the video:

Back in the Summer of 2010 the movie Inception came out. I was blown away when I watched it. I knew the music, the graphics, the style, and the atmosphere of the movie is what I wanted in my ADE application video. I got the Inception font (freeware) and music. I did have a moment of an ethical dilemma using the music as it wasn’t public domain per say but I had purchased the song from the musician’s website and created a link in my Youtube description to counterbalance my feelings on this. And you know.. fair use in an educational arena. In another related issue the whole blaring trumpets style music in Inception which has been horribly adapted (but inspired by!)  by every action movie since Inception is being done so much to Hans Zimmer’s chagrin.

So I had all the elements from the movie I needed to create my style. I now had to worry about the content (style!). I knew I wanted to put my face in there and I knew I wanted to work with the movie title “Inception” but change it to “Education”. I knew I wanted to put my voice in there but didn’t want to be bland so I decided I would go all out with the link in with the movie so (almost) everything I said was an amended line out of the movie:

My ADE Application Video	The Movie “Inception”
“I deal in a very specific type of integration; technology integration.”	“I specialize in a very specific type of security. Subconscious security” I wanted a line that I could use to introduce myself.
“Should students be coming into school to sleep? Nope, they should be coming into school to be woken up.”	“They come here every day to sleep?”“No. They come to be woken up.“ I thought this was an amazing line from the movie that could tie in with education.
“I’m just doing what I know and assisting students and teacher in what they need to know.”	“I’m just doing what you taught me.” This was a simple line I took massive inspiration from to create my own sentence about my own profession.
“These are interesting tools to keep touch with and keep track of reality. There are new ideas everyday to discuss and debate on.”	“How could I ever acquire enough detail to make them think that it’s reality?” I wanted to make sure we kept with the reality of…reality and the tools that can help with that.
“As educators we create the world of the dream, we bring our students into that dream. They can fill it with their creativity and knowledge.”	“You create the world of the dream, you bring the subject into that dream, and they fill it with their subconscious.” Loved this line and found it easy to adapt to our roles as teachers.
“For our students to become the global citizens that we envision, it is our responsibility to prepare them for that and guide them along the way”	Actually no link to any quote from the movie! I just had to add this in as it was important to substantiate the Skype footage as more than just online debate. It does have a loose tie in with “guiding” within the movie through the dreaming.
“We mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger.”	“Shouldn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, Arthur.” Thought this was a perfect bookend to my video and an appropriate slogan for teachers to follow.

The adding of the quotes at the end of my video from various ADEs were meant to be similar to movie review quotes you see on movie posters. They rarely appear on movie trailers but I took artistic license on this one. The quotes from fellow educators style seem to be a method a lot of people use in their ADE applications nowadays. It must work!

It is imperative you consider these 4 areas when cultivating your unique creative response to inspiration.

I believe if:

• you are aware of already created content by other people in your professional area
• you can use your own unique slant on your own personal perspective from your source of inspiration to create your content
• you can deliver your creative response in a unique and engaging way
• you can come up with your own unique style which befits the delivery and content

you can successfully cultivate a creative response to sources of inspiration.