Adobe Flex Training

In order to expand my Programming abilities I took part in a week long Adobe certified training programme for Adobe Flex. Adobe Flex is a great alternative for programmers currently developing RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) in Flash, combined with AIR (Adobe Integrated Run-time) for desktop distribution, it presents many exciting opportunities and a useful addition to my skill-set.

Creative Partnerships – Intuition Residential

Following three days of creative idea generation at the 4ip Crossover Labs, I took part in a further 2 day residential run by Creative Partnerships. Like the Crossover Labs, the workshop titled ‘intuition’ brought together professionals from a diverse range of backgrounds; however this time the group was balanced between teachers and creative practitioners such as animators, musicians, performers and dancers.

Intuition was lead by Gordon Poad a creative facilitator with a background in theatrical performance. The labs took a very different approach from the crossover labs; they were more about exploring creativity through various forms of art such as dance and drama.

The experience was really insightful for me. I gained an insight into the approaches taken by other practitioners and also primary and secondary school teachers. The delivery was excellent and I left with some excellent ideas for facilitating my own workshops in the future.

Innovation the Crossover way

On the 2nd-4th of March I took part in the Channel 4 and Northern Film & Media, 4ip Crossover Labs. The labs were directed by Frank Boyd an expert in encouraging creativity in the media industry.

The labs were designed to bring together the best minds from the media industry. They focusedon creating new ideas by bringing together varied perspectives and facilitating the blending of ideas through a range of creative activities. A great emphasis was placed on user experience design and understanding the mind of the end user; additionally, we used various seeding techniques in order to create different routes to idea conception.

An excellent three days which improved not only my own creativity but also gave me some great insights into expert facilitation and workshop delivery.

Creative Partnerships CPD

I have been taking part in a 3 day training programme organised by Creative Partnerships to bring together creative practitioners and teachers in order to conceive innovative ways of getting creativity into the classroom. This has involved a large  variety of creative practicals, including dancing, artistic drama and tours of medieval churches.

Some interesting perspectives have been presented on how creativity can be fostered and some excellent definitions of what creativity is in the first place.

1. Creativity is knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do
2. C = O * F (creativity equals opportunity * functionality)