Creative Sparks
Throw a bunch of young writers, art directors, and designers in a room together, and sparks are sure to fly. Send them off to the Viking Cooking School, have them develop a salsa recipe, then make it, brand it, and package it, and you’re liable to start a firestorm of creativity. Cooking school? Yep. It’s just another of the unexpected ways Portfolio Center pushes students outside their comfort zone in order to expand their thinking and boost their creativity.
Instructor Sam Harrison, creativity guru and author of the book Zing! Five Steps and 101 Tips for Creativity on Command, takes a no-kumbaya approach to teaching a subject that some would consider esoteric. In fact, Harrison doesn’t claim to teach creativity at all, observing that creativity proper can’t be taught. Rather, he focuses on stoking it and, more precisely, the work behind productive creativity.
The Creative Sparks Manifesto states, “For creativity to have market value and rise to artistic acclaim, it must be well-crafted and packed with a potent message. And you have to collaborate with peers, clients and suppliers for your idea to reach its total potential.” Harrison’s goal is to inspire PC students to become familiar with their creativity and engage in their creative pursuits with intense commitment. He teaches them the five steps that can make their creativity stronger and more readily available, especially when deadlines are looming.
Harrison requires students to keep a process book, a diary of everything they do in the class, from concept to deliverable, which is de rigueur among the visual artists in the group but often a new experience for the writers. Students agree that this journal makes them more aware of their strengths and weaknesses, where their energies are flagging, and where they’re being lazy. It also gives them insight into their participation in the collaboration process—whether they’re being controlling or controlled.
Students are urged to take risks, even if it means making good mistakes (“strong effort, bad results”). When they don’t know something necessary to execute an idea, Harrison insists they go learn it or find someone who can help. “Impossible” is not allowed. One writer learned to use a scanner and just enough Photoshop--two things she’d avoided like liver and onions--to bring her idea to fruition. As a result, students gain initiative and become more resourceful.
Make no mistake, this is no crib course; it offers plenty of challenges and a hefty workload. And there’s that nerve-wrecking taste test competition during the last class. Feta cheese in salsa--who’da thought?
