One of the ways that personal creativity is more likely to have social value is if the creative object is co-created ie where an individual expresses their creativity through their particular talents and another  individual who understands the symbolism in the artefact and guides its creation with suggestions. I have recently experienced an example of this in working with an illustrator to create a cover design for a Guide to Reflection we are publishing.

In commissioning the work the artist was sent a copy of the Guide and title page 'Learning through Life' A Guide to Reflecting on Experience. But the first sketch that came back was disappointing seeming to represent life as an up and down linear journey. (image 1). Following an initial email conversation that this did not represent the sort of understanding of lifewide learning that we were trying to convey, K created a series of sketches over a few days and I gave him feedback to move the imagery in the direction that contained more meaning for me and for the other people involved in our lifewide learning project. The following series of sketches depict the evolution of a new design through a continuous email conversation.

To: Norman Jackson <[email protected]> 
Sent: Thursday, 24 May 2012, 14:55
Subject: RE: chalk mountain commission

Hello Norman,
Please find the revised front cover image roughs. I have read the text you sent me and worked on the thought that Lifetime Learning is not linear and introduced a sort of jagged structure to try and indicate this rather that try the mountain based approach. I have also included typography in the illustration, to make the ideas much stronger, as well as adding more colours.

The image can be edited and I can move the text around and make them bolder. Please let me know your thoughts and if you feel this is the right direction for the rest of the illustrations. Please also let me know from the previous batch what needs altering or, after seeing this, if you would like all of them redone in  similar fashion. I would be grateful if you get back to me as soon as you get this, the quicker your feedback, the quicker I can refine and edit the images.

Regards K

On 26 May 2012, at 08:38, "norman jackson"wrote:
Thanks kiboko this much better. Here is a little more guidance to help us get us there

1) Bottom left box needs the word DISCOVER under it and an image of someone finding something.. like a eureka moment .. perhaps kneeling down to look at a flower?
2) Image of  person on the right needs the word LEARN written vertically behind him so the words around him are REFLECT, IMAGINE & LEARN
3 Top right figure needs to be kneeling putting his hand out to help the person climbing the ladder.
4) Get rid of two back packers at top and word DISCOVERY
5) The word next to the top figure lending a helping hand should be SHARE
6) I would also like the word LEARN to be written along the diagonal line where the boy is reading.

best wishes
norman
 

We were now well on the way to creating an image that I thought had the right sort of meaning. My suggestions were to add an image of someone exploring the unknown and to add another image of the person on the bottom right at the top with the word BECOMING next to it.

This is the final drawing which I thought represented the ideas very well.

And here is the final image which I really like.

Looking back it was an enjoyable experience working with K to produce an image that we both took ownership of. Although I did not create the image I did contribute to the form and content of the image so that it held the meanings that were important to convey in the guide.

As a committed lifewider I'm a firm believer in the principle that what you gain from an experience is proportional to what you put into it. One of my failings perhaps is, if I'm busy, I don't try things for long enough or put enough effort in to appreciate the value in something. I had made my mind up to put effort into our twitter week long conversation even though I was quite busy. And looking back over the week I can see that I did learn lots of new things. I knew next to nothing about how to use twitter before I started and the practice I had had only confirmed my prejudices so I suppose I was quite sceptical about its value to me. But I can now appreciate some of the value in twitter (thanks to the people who helped me - Nick, David and Jane in particular) and how I can incorporate twitter into my personal learning strategies

1) Knowing next to nothing at the start it is easy to see that I now know something.I am now confident in composing and posting messages and being able to search for people and topics.

2) I gained some new experience in trying to engage people in the twitter conversation and in setting up the invitations on the website.

3) I have to say that I found the form of conversation frustrating and I didn't think I progressed my understanding of LWL beyond what I already knew. In fact I found some of the ideas confusing I think because I was not appreciating the contexts in the minds of those offering the ideas. But I acknowledge that others did seem to get excited by things that I wasn't able to appreciate so there is value in witnessing how others are inspired. 

4) Which takes us into the affective domain. We all look for inspiration and I posted a question on a Linked in forum this week relating to what inspires us. I could clearly see that some of the posts that were made on twitter seemed to inspire people and I did towards the end of the week (see below) experience some inspiring moments. So I can now appreciate that posts made in twitter can be a source of inspiration. * I'm also trying to engage with linked-in so I have been able to make comparisons between twitter and linked in and see how twitter posts are used in linked in.

5) The event introduced me to new people and their work which was important new relational knowledge and off-line I approached one person with a view to trying to engage them as a supporter of and contributor to our work.

6) I took the trouble to search out blogs that provided concise and useful knowledge about twitter so began to use codified knowledge and personal wisdom gained from experienced users. Twitter now began to make more sense to me because I have had the practical experience of trying to use it (see attachment)

7) By Day 5 (thursday) I was beginning to adopt an exploratory approach - forcing myself to go beyond the conversation. I was not so interested in what people were saying in the conversation as the links to video's and blogs that people provided. I started to follow up links e.g #learning that one of the participants was providing. And then did my own searching for messages that looked interesting following up the links in them. I came across David Gerteen who I was aware was a well known thought leader. L clicked on one of his links and it took me to a great website with some excellent video speaker content - now I realised that by following links that looked meaningful I could find resources that were useful to me - my work and expanded my understanding. I began to see for the first time the value of twitter from the perspective of incorporating it into a personal learning strategy. But I had to invest quite a lot of time to get to this stage of enlightenment.

8) Then moving from links to people I identified one or two people who seem to be productive thought leaders in fields that I am interested in and began to follow them so on Friday morning I spent 20mins checking up on links provided and found some interesting resources. So I can see the value of following and hopefully if you post things of interest to others - of being followed.

So all in all I have developed through this experience some useful experience-based insights (some knowing how to), acquired and made use of existing codified knowledge, gained some very valuable relational knowledge, identified and connected to some thought leaders that I'm sure will inspire me, improved my media literacy ( a little), and I can now see how I can incorporate twitter into a personal learning strategy. In other words, through taking the time to engage in activity through which I might learn something new,  I have shifted from being ignorant, sceptical and having no competency in using this technology to a position of relative enlightenment and having some new capability, confidence, interest and belief. And I have overcome my prejudice and scepticism.

Not bad in 5 days!! 


APPLYING MY LEARNING 19/05/12
Learning about something and then enacting what you have learnt are two different things. On Saturday morning I added a twitter button to my blog and made myself spend 20mins checking out #Learning and found a really interesting link to Charles Jennings blogs. Its an area of learning and development I was not aware of and I have read his articles and re-posted one of them on the Lifewide Education website. The proof of the pudding is in the eating then I have eaten twitter and it tastes good. I was also pleased to see this post by David Roberts which showed that someone had taken an interest in my learning.

David C Roberts ‏@DavidCRobertsVery telling blog post by @lifewider1 about a learning exploration on#Twitter http://www.normanjackson.co.uk/scraps-of-life-blog.html#learning #heutagogy #LW1 #PhDchat

In thinking about my creativity in everyday experience I am struck by how much of it involves other people. Indeed, I guess a good use of one's own creativity is to help someone else be creative. My work with chalk mountain is very much like this. A few months ago I came up with a  business idea which we called storyshare. The idea is that storyshare will enable people to create a real or imaginary story involving themselves and other people who are important and special in their life and bring it to life through pictures, sound or animations that are created by freelance artists working for chalk mountain.

 The product offer includes
1)            Short story in words and pictures printed in colour
2)            Cartoon strip poster (could also be printed on a T-shirt)
3)            On-line digital story and pictures with or without spoken narrative and sound     effects
4)            On-line animation

To demonstrate the idea I wrote a short story called adventure on chalk mountain and included some photos for context. Then I commissioned an artist to have a go at interpreting the story. Ed created a small sound booth in our studio and we recorded a soundtrack and he added some great sound effects. He then set about creating a website. I got a bit frustrated waiting for the illustrations but eventually they came. Some of them didnt fit the story too well but with a bit of feedback and a bit of doctoring by Ed using photoshop we eventually had the images we wanted and Ed put them into a digital story book together with the narrative and sound effects. Take a look and see what you think.

Chalk Mountain Adventure - example digital story with narrative, illustrations and sound effects

When I reflect on the set of experiences I think it involved a lot of creativity. It involved generating an idea which I think was quite novel. An idea that could only have been born in the context of our Chalk Mountain enterprise. It was probably driven by the need to create new ideas for business that were consistent with our mission to enable organisations and people to share their knowledge and values. Then together we brought the idea into existence. Each of us making our own contribution and these were combined by Ed, using technology, in a way that achieved what we had imagined. My role was to create the conditions which enabled it to happen (idea, example story, capable people, relationships, resources and interactions).

But who is to say its creative? Well the example story was a true(ish) story and I wrote it for my grandson's 5th birthday. I sent the link to his mum and they read it together several times. He loved it and I know he did because he told me the story in exquisite detail. So it made me feel good that our efforts had been worthwhile and it made me realise how much my own creativity can be enhanced by combining my ideas and products with the talents of other people. But then I have always known this.