What’s Your Manifesto?

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Manifestos completely inspire me. Carefully thought through and beautifully designed poster manifestos that is. Like the following letterpress posters I came across on Pinterest today by Aardvark:

Another truly inspiring manifesto is by Bruce Mau Design, called “Incomplete Manifesto for Growth”.  Some of my favourite points:

  • Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
  • Begin anywhere. “…not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis.”
  • Don’t enter awards competitions. “Just don’t. It’s not good for you.” – really love this!

Then there’s Lululemon’s manifesto:

“Creativity is maximized when you are living in the moment.” I don’t know about you, but this one jumps out at me!

Wikipedia defines a manifesto as: a written public declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government. It often is political in nature, but may present an individual’s life stance.

Probably not a bad idea for us all to write a manifesto to serve as a reminder of goals and keeping our values in check. Adding this to my list of things to do!

Giving Thanks

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We spent most of this past weekend at our family cottage enjoying the gorgeous colours of the fall on this wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.

Breathing in fresh air seems to awaken my creative spirit. I find that all I want to do is get creative when I’m up there. This time we decided to make place card stones to place on our table for the big dinner (inspired by The Artful Parent’s Thankful Stones).  We successfully played around with the project at home a couple of weeks ago…

… but this time our crayon colours came out too dark and it was too hard to read the names.

Right about the time that we were discovering that our project wasn’t working so great, my handy dad appeared with a piece of birch trunk and offered to cut it up into small discs that we could use for name cards for our Thanksgiving dinner table. He’s very creative! They worked out great!

In honour of giving thanks on this beautiful Thanksgiving weekend, I decided that we could use the extra birch pieces to play a fun game. This is how it worked:

When everyone arrived for dinner I asked each person to write or draw what they are thankful for on the piece of wood and secretly put it in this paper bag.

Once I had them all, I displayed them in the center of our table for all to enjoy during dinner.

At the end of our dinner we had fun reading the thankful words, drawings, and messages and guessing who they came from!

We had a blast guessing who wrote what. Some were obvious, others not so much! We all guessed wrong for “walks with mom and dad”. Turns out it was Archie’s, my brother’s dog!

Happy Thanksgiving to all that are celebrating today!

The Global Cardboard Challenge

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Caine’s Arcade is an absolute touching story. What pulls my heartstrings the most is the proud look on Caine’s face and his sweet toothless smile!  There’s NOTHING like the look of pure joy on a child’s face when they’ve accomplished something they’re proud of.

What’s more is that this story and the response to it inspired The Imagination Foundation. “The Imagination Foundation’s mission is to find, foster, and fund creativity and entrepreneurship in kids like Caine.”

Today is actually the Global Cardboard Challenge where people around the world are hosting events for kids to create using just cardboard and their imaginations. Anyone anywhere can play. “The idea is just to bring the whole world together to play and celebrate creativity and imagination.”

What a beautiful story and important project. Love that Nirvan Mullick, the filmmaker behind Caine’s Arcade, says “this all started with going to buy a door handle” but ended up buying a funpass! He not only found joy in discovering Caine’s arcade but did something to celebrate it. Then did something even bigger with the attention his short film received by keeping the creative momentum going and starting the Imagination Foundation.  Goes to show that when you believe in something and put your heart into it, amazing things happen. I’m inspired… again.

Creating Innovators

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Creating Innovators. The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World addresses these questions through in-depth profiles of young innovators and the adults who have made a difference in their lives, as well as vivid descriptions of innovation-driven classrooms and places of work.

YES! This is what my intention for this blog is all about. Looking at what we can do as parents and caregivers and teachers to foster creative minds that will innovate and make positive changes in the world!

Some quotes from the video that resonate with me:

“Raising someone with an intention that they’ll be an innovator is actually different than raising a child that you want to behave all the time and be quite compliant.” – Annemarie Neal, Cisco Vice President

“Let them fail because they are going to learn more from that than we can ever teach them directly.”

“Our success is measured by the rate of innovation.”

This leaves me pondering: what more can I do to encourage my children to be innovators?

Here are some answers to my own question; some of which I’ve instinctively been practicing. It’s a work in progress and there’s certainly always a lot of room for pushing and challenging myself to inspire and create learning opportunities for my kids at home. In any case, this is where I’m at in the process:

  • Provide opportunities to practice decision making.
  • Support the decision made.
  • As per supporting and encouraging independent thinking via decision making (as an example), build confidence. One example is standing behind decisions that are made. Providing positive feedback and praise when appropriate and relevant. Or acknowledging good thinking and new ideas: “that’s a great idea!”
  • Provide problem solving activities regularly.  A lot of times children will come up with their own challenges to solve. Ha! Like the time V wanted to get through the fence to visit the neighbourhood girls. She decided she’d use scissors to cut a hole in the wood to crawl through. When that didn’t work she ran inside to get a pencil to draw a door that she could open. This went on for a while! I can’t actually remember how she resolved her challenge.
  • Dedicate time each day where children can follow their own interests and curiosities, daydream or pursuit a project/game/activity idea.

What are ways that you foster innovation with your kids?

Books That Inspire

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Do yo ever get into a trance like state as you walk through certain stores that inspire you? That’s what happens to me when I walk through a bookstore. Last time there, as I walked down the main aisle, I was captivated by a number of beautiful cover designs that spoke to me… a few I was familiar with but many, I hadn’t seen before.

Then I looked up and saw this…

Ah ha! No wonder I was so enthralled with every single book on this table!

Some titles I found here:

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

The Innovator’s Cookbook by Steven Johnson

The Brain Training Revolution by Paul E. Bendheim

Wreck this Journal by Keri Smith

After deciding to pick up Unstuck by Noah Scalin (which I’m LOVING) I walked around to the other side of the table… Live Creative.. very clever.

Makedo Project 1

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The possibilities are really endless with these cardboard connectors! It was also the perfect activity to take to the cottage since there always seem to be boxes around and they come in a small cylinder container making it very easy to transport.

V is still too young to cut the boxes and actually poke the holes for the connectors but she directed the entire process! Surprise surprise!  It started as a zamboni… the amount of snow outside inspired that idea!

But then evolved into a fire truck.. inspired by the flame in the wood stove…

… then a sleigh…

Very very fun! What’s really cool about these very simple (I don’t even know what to call them…) doo dads is that it’s open ended and creates the opportunity for A LOT of play. It starts with the planning and gathering materials, then there’s building and problem solving and finally playing, playing and more playing. At which point it all starts all over again with decorating, adapting and playing in different ways.

Happy Valentine’s Day

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Make Do – Yes Please!

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I LOVE LOVE LOVE this product idea.  Let your imagination run wild. I just placed an order taking advantage of the free shipping on til the end of this month.

Can’t wait to see what we make with it!

[One of my first thoughts is to make a hinged door that Baby E can play with instead of potentially slamming her fingers in the real doors she likes to swing and play with any chance she gets!  She will be in her glory swinging that cardboard door… or so I hope!]

 

8 Ways to Stay Creative

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Here’s another – the web designer’s version designed as Desktop Wallpaper.

Source

#4 and #8 spoke to me the most:

Out of curiosity I checked out the company behind this design.  What an amazing looking place to work! 4 day work week, all the perks to make you feel good about where you work which in turn inspires you to put your best work forward. Very wise and I like their design.

I’ll leave you with a graphic from their ‘Values’ page from their site.

Ways to Stay Creative

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Love this list and love the design even more.  Feeling inspired!

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