21 Oct 2015

Creative Thinking: Strategies to Develop and Refine your Project Ideas by Node Center

Creative Thinking: Strategies to Develop and Refine your Project Ideas
An online Course by Node Center

NEW: 6 WEEK COURSE!!

Every project we want to make or do starts with an idea, an impulse that is often inspired by a subject or question we are interested in exploring. But how can we make that initial idea the best it can be? This course will expose participants to a number of different strategies for research, development, and refinement of an idea while creating visual tools to track their ideation process.

This 6 week course is for curators, artists, designers, and anyone in the cultural fields wishing to make the creative process of developing concepts more effective and to arrive at ideas that would take their projects to the next level. The course's expanded length of time will allow for participants to get deeper into their creative thinking process.

Following the course, participants will learn a range of creative thinking and research techniques, including practical and unorthodox research methods as well as visual tools to track their creative process. Participants will be able to apply these techniques to any number of project ideas, leading to the creation of each participant's unique method that is suited to their specific practice and the needs of the project.


- Duration: Nov 6 - Dec 11, 2015
- Application deadline: November 3, 2015
- Lecturer: Jennifer Danos
- Participation fee: 210 EUR (inc. tax)


Full information and enrollments: www.nodecenter.net/course/creative-thinking-2


-----
PROGRAM
Week 1: 'How to be a creative sponge'

Introductions: who are we?
Idea brainstorming techniques
Mind mapping & other train of consciousness techniques
How/where to gather & keep this information
Look at types of visual logs
In-class activity: Re-invent
Weekly activity: Collect collect collect!

Week 2: 'Organizing the chaos'

Practical & unorthodox research strategies
Filter and archive all that is gathered
Organizational strategies for the collections
Continue visual logs: Perception
In-class collaborative activity: Re-imagine
Weekly activity: Think big!

Week 3: 'Finding the needle in the haystack'

Make new connections
Find hidden threads
Look at examples of artistic & curatorial processes
Continue visual logs: Experience
In-class activity: Re-write
Weekly activity: Bringing big down to earth


Week 4: 'How can this be better?'

Critique strategies
Critical thinking & analysis strategies
Taking risks with idea development
Continue visual logs: Experiment
In-class activity: Re-wind
Weekly activity: Obstructions

Week 5: 'Putting the pieces together'

Assess initial results
Group critique five obstructions
Pick one idea to further develop & refine
Know when to keep looping back through the process
Continue visual logs: Investigate
In-class activity: Re-visit
Weekly activity: Refine

Week 6: 'Fostering a creative practice'

Examples of post-production analysis
Cultivate a creative attitude & atmosphere
How to apply these strategies to a number of different tasks
How to identify & develop your own individual practice
Analysis of visual logs
Group critique of individual work
Final Q & A

-----
CONTACT
www.nodecenter.net
courses@nodecenter.org