Russell Davies

there's something in the air

When I started thinking about Interesting2007 Dan Hill was one of the first people I asked to speak. He said no, which made me sad, but he has good reasons; he's got a whole lot of life going on and he's one of the four bloggers behind Postopolis, happening in New York right now. Looking at Dan's live blogging it looks brilliant and I love the look of the place, very sweaty and architectural. Plus from the look of it they've all printed off their blogs and stuck them on the wall which is surprisingly effective. As the mysterious 'we' of Influx Insights points out this kind of smallish, loose, enthusiast-generated event looks like a much better way of doing things than the big, top-down conference. And you can just tell there's going to be much more of this kind of thing. I guess it's mostly just the rest of the world learning from reboot, barcamps, open spaces, unconferences etc but they're good lessons to learn.

(picture from City Of Sound, hope that's OK)

coworking

What a good way to get a coworking project up and running.

understanding desks

Ben pointed me at On My Desk, which is a simple, lovely idea. "Creative folk share the stuff on their desks". Learner planners always ask me how to work well with creative people. One simple suggestion; notice what's on their desk, it'll tell you a lot about them.

(picture from the desk of jared chapman)

creative spaces and frames

Been reading this. Rather good. Mr Layard tells of an experiment where a sample of people were asked their social security number and then asked to estimate the number of doctors in California. The higher the social security number people had the higher the estimate that they gave. If a frame like that can shift something in that way, what do we imagine might be the effect of the frame of the space we work in?

creative spaces squidoo

I'm getting more and more interested in this 'creative spaces' idea - what kind of environment encourages good creative work?

So I've built a little squidoo to round up some thinking and links and stuff. Let me know if you have anything to contribute.

(Picture taken from the creativespaces flickr tag, contributed by vandys. Hope that's OK)

space tag

The creativespaces flickr tag is coming along nicely.

I especially like this shot.

creative spaces

I was reminded today of a post I wrote ages ago when we were planning an office move and I was thinking about the sort of environments that encourage creativity and thinking. The original post is here.

I've disappointed myself because in my head I've written loads about this and actually I've just written the one post. But I've thought about it a lot because I've I think feeding the environment is a key responsilibity for a planner. The best way of getting an idea into a creative's head is to let them think they found it themselves, and the best way to do that is to stick it on the wall next to their desk.

And I think 'creative spaces' demand a lot more thought than they normally get. (Incidentally, I also hate myself for using 'space' this way, like a gallery owner, to mean, really 'place' but 'place' doesn't quite seem right either.)

This room, for example, is the CreativityLab at Starbucks, as detailed in the Idea Sandbox blog and I'll happily concede that it's better than the average miserable conference room. But I think it's easy to confuse 'creative space' with 'brightly-coloured space' and 'stimulating environment' with 'shop at IKEA'. This seems like a good effort with minimal resources and noble intent, but I'm not sure it goes nearly far enough. And it's very existence seems to suggest that you're not supposed to be creative in the rest of the building.

This seems like a really important topic to me.

What are the right kind of spaces for 'business creativity' to happen in?

(And I don't think this is about art, it's about creative spaces that have to incorporate the realities of business life.)

I'd like to explore this some more, maybe it even demands its own blog. But in the meantime I'd like to try and exploit the collective wisdom of all you lovely people. Many of you are in very creative spaces, many of you aren't, but should be, or you've carved out your own creative space in a bigger non-creative one. Or you have favourite places for working. Or places you'd love to work. You know the kind of thing.

I'd love it if you'd share thoughts, links and, above all, images of the creative spaces (or anti-creative spaces) you come across. Maybe starting with the view from your chair. That's always a good start. You can add thoughts and comments on this post. And you could upload images to flickr with the tag 'creativespaces'.

Or, if you can't be bothered, don't. That's fine too.

Here's the view from my chair.

creative spaces

We're going to be moving offices soon. So I've been starting to think about what kinds of offices and buildings and environments make for thinking and imagination and creativity.

I came across this great little series on NPR - artists, writers etc talk about the spaces where they work:

There's Steven Bernstein (jazz trumpter), James Prosek (fishy artist), Phylicia Rashad (actress and former Huxtable) and Daniel Silva (spy novelist). None of them are neccesarily people whose work I'd follow but its fascinating to hear them talk about the way and the where they get things done.

I've also been thinking (in a geeky way) about this kind of secret Danny Hillis lair stuff. The concealed purpose and playfulness of Brooklyn Superhero Supply / 826NYC is similarly inspiring. As is this urban camouflage.

I'm also convincd that I've read something somewhere about the kind of buildings that make for productive, inspiring thinking. And that for some reason it talked about cathedrals. But I can't remember where I read it.