Applied lateral thinking in innovative project work
Creativity is a profoundly important human resource. The CAS Creationship shows how creativity is a malleable potential that provides us with the necessary drive when realizing our own projects. This further education course aims to trace and practise the many different facets of creativity and allow these to unfold in a specific individual project. The CAS Creationship seeks to reinforce a cultural competence that integrates imagination and innovation into participants' own thinking, actions and feelings in a brand new way.
The CAS Creationship is aimed at people who want to launch a very specific project of their own: a social campaign, a book project, a political vision, a trip, a start-up, a film project, a new professional or personal endeavour, a positive utopian idea or simply a big change in and of itself. The diversity among participants on the course is seen as an opportunity. The variety of personalities, qualities and attitudes will be a springboard for cultivating fruitful mutual exchange in the Learning Community and during project development.
On the CAS Creationship, the full potential of practical creativity is tapped in a way that very consciously focuses on helping participants formulate their own assignment. The further education benefits from the culture at ZHdK and from its location on the Toni-Areal, which functions as a kind of unique creative city: the mindsets, skills and tools of artists, designers and innovative personalities provide the perfect environment to inspire creative work and capabilities.
The key concept of creationship is “the ability to forge new connections, associations or combinations out of mutually foreign elements and thus to change the status quo”, as philosopher and ZHdK Head of Institute Dieter Mersch describes it. On the CAS Creationship, the idea of “being creative”" does not require participants to create works of art but rather refers to creativity in the sense of shaping our entire inner attitude towards our external reality.
More specifically, the term “creationship” refers to creativity in the context of everyday life and project work. The focus of part-time further education is on teaching the three skills of knowledge, skill, attitude. Lateral thinking is the common thread that weaves through the entire degree programme. It carves out space for invention and breaks new ground in our thinking. When teamed with innovative project work, applied lateral thinking encourages a process of questioning things in an exploratory fashion and experimenting with creative techniques to expand our horizons. Lateral thinking refuses to submit to convention and encourages us to find joy in contradiction – it means engaging in a significant change of perspective.
Practical application
A key objective of postgraduate further education is taking what participants have learned and applying it to their everyday professional and private lives. Creativity in practical application occurs when students develop a creationship toolbox made up of four areas:
- Acquiring practical creative techniques as mental tools for coming up with and managing ideas;
- Learning case studies and “models” as inspiration for tapping students' own potential;
- Reading texts as a source of information to help see creativity as a productive resource and force for change in society;
- Identifying principles and “rules” as a means to reinforce creative problem-solving.
The tools are put into practice through committed practice, supportive mentoring sessions and coaching and accompanying self-study.
The task of lecturers and mentors on the CAS Creationship is to help individual participants make new discoveries and to support them to successfully formulate their own assignment by asking the right questions and applying creative methods and innovative principles.