Why is creativity important?
Darren Pope – Director – Leadership & School Improvement
On top of hobbies and interests, we all possess creative attributes that can help as we solve life’s problems and make decisions. It is this type of creativity that enables us to plan different routes to get to the same destination, or how to fit in a trip to the supermarket when our schedule looks full.
It might not sound very creative, but this aspect of creativity relies on our ability to consider options and assess their suitability, as well as how to make decisions based on personal prior experience or what we have learnt formally or informally. These examples are known as “small c creativity” or “personal everyday creativity”.
Source – theconversation.com/au
How do you develop new ideas and lead change?
Design Thinking is a structured series of steps that forces you to dig deeper, define and refine, ask the difficult questions, and go beyond the obvious to understand the real challenge to be solved. It is an approach that always puts the user at the centre, encouraging you to get into the core of ‘their’ experience and perspective to ensure that your ultimate solution adds value to the user. As leaders, we can be creative in our approach to all aspects in our schools as we seek to create meaningful, slow, deep change to benefit learners.
Stanford d.school is also passionate about thinking creatively with a focus on students and learners.
Design thinking can be used for diverse work and is easily adopted when you are still seeking to understand the problem to work on or the right solution to pursue.
How can you use it this year? Choose a project, process or system in its early stages or one you really want to shake up.
Second, choose a challenge that has a human element to it. Design thinking helps you excel in understanding people, gaining insights that you can leverage, and experimenting your way to a solution. So pick something in which people matter. Creativity is a human quality, we all have it and even the most advanced AI can’t create the amazing things that our brains were created to do.
Design thinking…keeping people at the core.
Images: Peace Lutheran College Cairns Leadership Team prototyping designs to improve learning outcomes for students.