Creative Genius

Open Workshop
Originality is at the heart of creativity. So how do you ensure your ideas are as original as possible? It’s all about finding fresh ground by going against the grain and ignoring the rulebook.

Details

This engaging open workshop will help you bring fresh inspiration and ideas to your projects and goals.

You'll find out how to bring proactive and practical creative thinking approaches to your everyday work, by learning proven techniques to spark fresh ideas and new perspectives.

  • Understand the creative process
  • Learn the right mindset for creativity
  • Learn a number of proven techniques
  • Apply them immediately to your work
  • Get inspiration and feedback from others

Sign up today and prepare to be inspired!

Download Factsheet
FORMAT
|
Open Workshop
DURATION
|
2 hours
PRICE
|
£ 195.00 GBP
FORMAT
|
Open Workshop
DURATION
|
2 hours
LOCATION
|
Online
PRICE
|
£ 195.00 GBP
FORMAT
|
Open Workshop
PRICE PER PERSON
|
£ 195.00 GBP
Select the number of team members you would like to include in your assessment. We currently accept a minimum of 5 team members, and a maximum of 20.

What's Included

What to expect when you purchase this product
Online Workshop

Online Workshop

We're adept at running engaging workshops online, using Zoom and a number of visual software applications such as MURAL, Miro and Sli.do. You'll receive registration details prior to the workshop start date.
Cohort Group

Cohort Group

You'll learn with a cohort of interesting individuals from a range of organisations and industries. This isn't a passive learning experience - you'll be expected to engage in discussions and activities with others in the workshop.
Bring Your Work

Bring Your Work

Our workshops are practical in nature, so to get the best results we encourage you to come armed with a few live projects or briefs, ready to apply our tools and methods to your work immediately during the session.

In Depth

Our brains are natural pattern making machines. They take everything we see around us, sort it into categories and look for matches in things that we’ve seen before. But the problem with our brain as a pattern machine is that it tries to make us think in that way - to follow established rules and copy others, so as a result we can end up sounding like everyone else.

This means that we have to be mindful of the way that we're thinking and we have to be brave in the ambition and style of the thinking that we do. Some of this can be achieved by adopting a certain mindset, and some of this can he can be achieved by using a set of techniques and tools to jump start the process.

This workshop will help you use these approaches to come up with original ideas and new ways of working.

Creative Genius

Learning Experience

Carefully designed to help you learn new concepts and apply them to your everyday work
Online Workshop

Online Workshop

We're adept at running engaging workshops online, using Zoom and a number of visual software applications such as MURAL, Miro and Sli.do. You'll receive registration details prior to the workshop start date.
Cohort Group

Cohort Group

You'll learn with a cohort of interesting individuals from a range of organisations and industries. This isn't a passive learning experience - you'll be expected to engage in discussions and activities with others in the workshop.
Bring Your Work

Bring Your Work

Our workshops are practical in nature, so to get the best results we encourage you to come armed with a few live projects or briefs, ready to apply our tools and methods to your work immediately during the session.

Workshop Outline

Read about the content, activities and tools you'll experience in this session
Creative Process

Creative Process

Innovation
content detail
If you ask many people how they come up with ideas, they will describe it as a magical process, where ideas appear at random times and places, such as in the bath, or just as they're falling asleep. But something, somewhere will have enabled that idea - whether by design or chance inspiration.
outcome
It’s not necessary to religiously follow a creative process but we find that it helps to be aware of the idea that there might be one, because it helps you to recognise what stage you’re at in your own creative thinking. Highly creative people are adept at jumping back and forth at will between the various stages.
Creative Blockers

Creative Blockers

Innovation
content detail
Our brains hate taking risks, because we’re naturally wired to avoid failure. This is useful - it keeps us safe in an unpredictable and complex world. But it also keeps our ideas safe, so we don't run the risk of getting things wrong. Unfortunately, safe and reliable doesn't equal creative and original.
outcome
In order to come up with something new and original, we sometimes need to break the way we naturally think. So we need to somehow short circuit or bypass this pattern making process. This means that we have to be mindful of the way that we're thinking and we have to be brave in the ambition and style of the thinking that we do.
T-Shape

T-Shape

Innovation
content detail
It can be helpful to view creativity by looking at what some call the T-shaped person. Think of the vertical part of the T as the expertise most relevant to your job, i.e. law, or advertising, or rocket science. This is great, however to be more creative, consider focusing on the horizontal part of the T...
outcome
You might have started your career in a different industry, or you might have hobbies unrelated to the kinds of things you work on during the week. These diverse interests and experiences mean you can draw on different approaches to problems, and make unexpected connections.
Alternate Uses

Alternate Uses

Innovation
content detail
The Alternate Uses Test asks us to think of as many uses as possible for a simple object, like a brick or a paperclip. The test is usually time-constrained. It measures divergent thinking, in that it is looking for as many ideas as possible.
outcome
One of the best quotes about creativity comes from Linus Pauling: "the best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.” The Alternate Uses Test encourages us to use fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration and openness to generate great ideas.
Perspectives

Perspectives

Innovation
content detail
Looking at a problem from different angles or vantage points can change how it is perceived and interpreted. This might mean taking on a different persona, or changing your thinking style slightly. We can use an "Empathy Mapping" template and a "Personality Swap" worksheet to help with this.
outcome
By putting themselves in the shoes of their customers, stakeholders or colleagues, gaining empathy by seeing the world through their eyes, participants are quickly able to see their work from a variety of different perspectives. This leads to new insights and innovative ways of solving problems.
Constraints

Constraints

Innovation
content detail
Constraints are often the source of our best ideas. Think of Twitter's 140 character limit, or the 18 minute limit for TED Talks. We invite participants to write a list of all the constraints on a current project, then make them worse or introduce more severe constraints to force more radical, ambitious approaches. What new ideas does this provoke?
outcome
This technique offers a quick route to innovative suggestions. It challenges participants to be much more bold and groundbreaking than usual, in response to the unusually harsh constraints they are presented with.
Idea Collisions

Idea Collisions

Innovation
content detail
Many creative thinkers get their results by connecting existing concepts together to create something original. Here we try this systematically with ideas generated so far. How can the aspects of one idea merge with or be added to the aspects of another idea?
outcome
This technique always generates unique ideas, partly due to its random nature, and partly due to the necessary act of "colliding" several existing ideas together - something participants wouldn't normally do. The result is something new and original.
Making It Happen

Making It Happen

Accountability
content detail
Now we discuss applying everything you've learned into your daily practice. What feels natural? What will need some work? What will make the biggest impact? What learnings and advice will you pass on to others?
outcome
Our workshops are designed with practical outcomes in mind, so we encourage participants to think about how they will apply learnings while the content is still fresh. Ideally we're looking for something tangible, that can be added to a to-do list.

Tools & Resources

You'll also receive extra items to help you in your work

Creative Genius Guide

The Guide tells you how to use some of our favourite creative thinking techniques.

Creative Genius Tools

Every tool and method covered in the workshop, including worksheets, examples and user guides.

Better Brainstorms

This guide covers everything you need to hold a great brainstorm, from ideation techniques to facilitator notes.

Measurement Factors

This assessment draws on these key indicators:
Innovation

Innovation

Team members are open to new ideas and approaches, and share thoughts and experiences with each other.

Tools & Resources

You'll also receive extra items to help you in your work

Creative Genius Guide

The Guide tells you how to use some of our favourite creative thinking techniques.

Creative Genius Tools

Every tool and method covered in the workshop, including worksheets, examples and user guides.

Better Brainstorms

This guide covers everything you need to hold a great brainstorm, from ideation techniques to facilitator notes.

Great Value & Outcomes

Our approach is designed to provide tangible outcomes and results

PROVEN METHODS

We've been using the methods shared in this workshop for many years with organisations including American Express, ITV, Oracle, P&G and more. They're designed to be easy to learn and use.

APPLY IMMEDIATELY

Right from the start, we encourage you to use our methods on real projects, so you can see immediately how they can be used on a day-to-day basis. You'll be able to generate useful ideas quickly.

CLEAR OUTCOMES

We guarantee that you'll leave the workshop with fresh ideas and approaches for your current work, that will enable you to make new headway and create tangible results.

Our Approach to Learning

We believe in practical learning through discussion, experience and reflection - with insights and tools you can apply straight away

💬 Discussion

The informality of our workshops enables participants to relax, express themselves freely and find common ground with others. This lends itself perfectly to idea generation by encouraging positive interactions and sharing.

💡 Experience

The approach is designed to be highly transformative, encouraging engagement and experimentation wherever possible. Participants make creative leaps and imagine the future, leading to insights and lightbulb moments.

🪞 Reflection

Participants learn valuable tools and achieve tangible outcomes by reflecting on what they have heard and experienced. This reflection aids recall and helps behaviours stick. Live feedback from peers takes this a step further.

Experience & Expertise

Creative Huddle partners with organisations in the UK and beyond to help them take an innovative approach to work.

This workshop is facilitated by James Allen, Creative Huddle's founder and lead facilitator.

Since launching Creative Huddle in 2011, James has facilitated brainstorms, meetings, focus groups, strategy workshops, team building events and conferences for a wide range of clients, including Google, Oracle, Marks & Spencer, American Express, ITV and P&G. He’s worked on many kinds of projects with groups of 10-1000.

James’s workshops are filled with field-tested tools and techniques to prompt and provoke participants into fruitful discussions and new ways of thinking. He’s an avid collector of tools and approaches from the worlds of facilitation, innovation, design thinking, brainstorming and decision-making, to help individuals create new ideas and collaborate effectively.

Trusted by the best

We’ve worked with a range of clients, from corporate household names to agencies, public sector bodies, universities, charities and startups.

Team Learning

Our workshops and toolkits are great for individuals, and great for teams and organisations too.

If you have a group who would benefit from these methods and tools, you can speak to us about making a bulk order or running a bespoke workshop for your team.

Benefits of learning with your team include:

  • Share experiences and compare approaches
  • Collaborate on projects and solve problems together
  • Build team spirit and shared ways of working
  • Benefit from group pricing and extra resources

Contact us to learn more.

Team Workshop

Any Questions?

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