Creativity is in everyone. How do we use it? Having the ability to call on your creative resources and enjoy the flow of ideas is an important skill.  This exciting and participatory workshop is the perfect introduction to the field of creativity. It will provide you with tools and techniques to discover and maximize your own resources in order to live a more creative life. 

We will explore what creativity means and how each of us expresses our own ‘style’. The tools and techniques introduced will help you open up to ideas and suggestions and evaluate them in a positive manner.

OUTCOMES:

As a participant in this workshop, you will:

• Identify personal blocks and barriers to creativity

• Examine blocks and barriers that exist within organizations and groups

• Promote openness to new ideas and innovation

• Learn idea generating (divergent) tools

• Learn tools to make effective choices among all the possible ideas (convergent tools)

POSSIBLE APPLICATIONS:

• Improve your own ability to both generate ideas and choose among them

• Incorporate creative thinking skills into your teaching/training

• Address challenges in your business or organization by using CPS

Clowning: Connect with Successful Solutions while just 'Clowning Around' - Robert Alan Black

Clowns change perspectives by looking for the funny to entertain. Clowning with problems can also change perspective and open us to new ideas. This workshop is designed to expand, deepen, explore, and explode our imaginations as we are learning clowning techniques to produce both laughter and great ideas.

OUTCOMES: During this workshop, participants will:

• Explore the power of clowning
• Play with miming and imaginary clowning
• Create your own clown characters

POSSIBLE APPLICATIONS:

• Use clowning in teaching and training
• Find new ways to play and laugh

During workshops and presentations, warm ups and activities can be more than just fun and a time to move. During this workshop you will explore how to incorporate the fun and movement in ways that are meaningful. You will participate in activities and then discover the variety of applications each activity might have.  Enjoy learning together as you work playfully!

OUTCOMES: As a participant in this workshop you will:

• Actively participate in a  number of warm ups and activities

• Consider guidelines for choosing the appropriate and effective exercise or energizer
• Identify a number of meaningful applications for each activity

POSSIBLE APPLICATIONS:

• Incorporate exercises and energizers more effectively in your own teaching and training
• Improve business meetings  by engaging participants in relevant ways
• Remember that working playfully is both fun and effective.

Is there a change you want to make in your life? YES!! What’s stopping you? Creative Problem Solving (CPS) offers new and different ways to reframe challenges and choices.  Based on the tools presented in the book, Square One at 51, we will explore practical, easy to follow ways to deal with change. At the end of the workshop, you will have a clearer sense of who you are, your strengths, a change you wish to make, and a plan to make it happen.

Whether you think you can dance or not, dancing and movement to music and rhythm can be a powerful way to tap into creativity, create connections, enhance emotional, physical, and spiritual health, enhance sensuality, and simply enjoy life! Participants in this workshop will look at creating connections with their own bodies and with others through dance and movement to music and rhythm. Participants will engage in movement activities, so please wear something comfortable! No dancing experience is required!

OUTCOMES: As a participant in this workshop, you will:

• Explore how dance and movement can enhance health and stimulate creativity and problem solving
• Participate in a dance/movement activity --- no experience necessary!
• Consider how dance/movement can foster connectedness and interpersonal growth

POSSIBLE APPLICATIONS:

• Approach future opportunities to dance with more openness
• Add dance/movement to your own health regimen
• Enjoy dance/movement!

Participants will learn about their two distinctly different minds, how they work, how they communicate with each other, and how to access creative thought.  An experience of light to medium trance will be provided to demonstrate self-hypnosis techniques that can be used when engaging in creative processes. 

OUTCOMES: As a participant in this workshop, you will:

• Learn about your conscious and unconscious minds
• Explore how to access creative thought effectively
• Experience a light to medium trance to demonstrate self-hypnosis

POSSIBLE APPLICATIONS:

• Find new/expanded ways to access creative thought
• Use self-hypnosis when engaging in creative process
• Value your own  and other people’s two distinctly different minds

Creative genius has been described as the ability to see the world through new eyes and then translate those insights so others can see them as well. During this workshop, Tim will take you on a sensory journey of compelling exercises that will help you explore your perceptions and sharpen your insights.

You will laugh, you will wonder, and you will learn. You are guaranteed to come away with new ways of seeing, hearing, feeling – and savoring – the world around you. This session will not simply open your eyes; it will give you new ones.

OUTCOMES: Participants in this workshop will:

• Discover their own new eyes, ears, and other senses
• See what is closer to them than their own faces
• Find new ways to ‘get’

POSSIBLE APPLICATIONS:

• Build sensory experiences into training sessions and lessons
• Use your ‘new eyes’ to sharpen your own insights and perceptions

Possible Applications:

• Enhance communication and enrich relationships
• Generate and Evaluate ideas more effectively

People have worn masks from man’s earliest years - as hunters stalking prey, as people honoring a god figure...  The hunter’s mask was meant to scare the animal and perhaps even hide the hunter’s fear.  Most of us wear a mask every day for at least part of the day as we slip into roles and ‘characters’.  This workshop will facilitate exploration of the ways you use your own masks.

OUTCOMES: As a participant in this workshop, you will:

• Explore the role of  masks in personal, social, and professional situations
• Read and discuss a poem to explore the theme of masks
• Create a mask to represent the face you would most like to present in your life
• Present your mask to group participants in a silent tableau

POSSIBLE APPLICATIONS:

• Gain deeper understanding of yourself as a ‘mask wearer’
• Wear and remove masks intentionally in many settings
• Reflect on the impact of incorporating artistic expression  in teaching and learning

Since we didn't get a script for life, everything we do in life is improvised. The “rules” of improvisational theatre apply to every area of our lives.

In this fun, engaging and highly interactive workshop, you’ll be introduced to the “Ten Commandments of Improv” and find ways to connect them to your professional life. From “Thou Shalt Say YES” through “Thou Shalt Rejoice in Mistakes” the rules by which improvisational theatre works will work for you. Whether you work under contract or as a volunteer; whether you operate in a cubicle, in the corner office, in committee meetings or in your pajamas, this workshop has something for you. No acting experience necessary!

OUTCOMES: As a participant in this workshop, you will:

• Learn the ‘rules’ of improvisational theater
• Explore how these rules apply in the work setting
• Have fun experimenting with simple Improv

POSSIBLE APPLICATIONS:

• Rethink your professional or volunteer work setting from an Improv perspective
• Incorporate Improv techniques in teaching/training
• Understand theater and its applications to life
• Experience yourself and others in a more ‘playful’ way

This session begins with the “where, why and how” of Graphic Recording (or Graphic Note Taking.) Participants will then try for themselves several techniques that can quickly become field-ready. Everyone will take a ‘test drive’ with simple exercises on the wall. We’ll finish in an exploratory conversation about immediate applications and ways to further develop the skills. No previous art experience beyond kindergarten crayons is required!!

OUTCOMES: As a participant in this workshop, you will:

• Understand why graphic recording is effective
• Consider multiple situations in which to use graphic recording
• Learn and practice several beginning tools and techniques
• Participate in a short ‘graphic jam’ to experience the rapid creation of visual metaphors

POSSIBLE APPLICATIONS:

• Include graphic recording in meetings and presentations at work
• Continue developing your skills
• Actively incorporate the visual into presentations

Painting On Water™ - - A Basic Creative Innovation Tool with Amy Basic

Painting On Water™, a whole brain learning activity, is based on the laws of physics and 2,000 year-old ancient art. Engage your mind and the senses in multiple levels. This highly praised interactive program is both relaxing and energizing. A fun, unique, thought-provoking and memorable creative experience.

OUTCOMES: Participants in this workshop will::
* Build Confidence for Innovation
* Apply Universal Principles for Innovative Ideas
* Learn the basic principles of creativity flow
* Interpret Asian Wisdom and Culture
* Create their own Painting On Water™.