This week I visited the World of Wedgewood - the factory for the making of wedgewood pottery and the museum and archive that tells the story of Josiah and the generations of family and workers that have been part of this great enterprise. I feel quite inspired - firstly by the man who founded an enterprise through which so much creativity has flowed, but also by the creative way in which wedgewood are telling their story through the 'world' they have and are creating. Josiah Wedgewood was a visionary who wanted to make a difference to the world. He imagined and then succeeded in creating a world inhabited by people from all levels of society who used the pottery his business created. He combined craftsmanship and his insider knowledge of the making of pottery, with a commitment to experiment in order to innovate - to produce better kilns and better forms of pottery. He combined the imagination skill and creativity of an artist craftsman with the curiosity and discipline of an experimental scientist with the business acumen and vision of an entrepreneur and imbued his enterprise with the will to survive and flourish in an ever changing world for over 250 years.
Josiah Wedgewood teaches us that we all have the potential to be creative and that we all have potential to achieve great things by inventing a purpose for ourselves and committing everything to achieve that purpose. Josiah Wedgewood is amongst the Big C creatives - the people who impact culture and the world well beyond their own time. His creative genius teaches us that creativity is not necessarily contained in one thing we do but that it can be contained in connecting many things we do so that we bring something new - not just the invention of an object that might be creative in its own right but an ecology that can encourage and embrace the creativity of many people and outlive our individual efforts and grow and change over the decades and centuries.
During our conducted tour of the factory we met and chatted to man called Bruce (right). His quiet modesty, dedication to his work and wonderful skill and focus which enabled him to produce his exquisite gold designs impressed me greatly and epitomised the idea that “Beautiful forms and compositions are not made by chance” Josiah Wedgwood.
I can relate these thoughts to our latest Creative Academic project where we are trying to discover how teachers encourage and enable their students to use their creativity, I can see the parallels in how teachers use their knowledge and skill to create an ecology within which their students can learn to use and develop their creativity.
Why not be inspired by visiting https://www.worldofwedgwood.com/
Image credit Bruce : http://flat15.com/2016/07/25/the-world-of-wedgwood/
Josiah Wedgewood teaches us that we all have the potential to be creative and that we all have potential to achieve great things by inventing a purpose for ourselves and committing everything to achieve that purpose. Josiah Wedgewood is amongst the Big C creatives - the people who impact culture and the world well beyond their own time. His creative genius teaches us that creativity is not necessarily contained in one thing we do but that it can be contained in connecting many things we do so that we bring something new - not just the invention of an object that might be creative in its own right but an ecology that can encourage and embrace the creativity of many people and outlive our individual efforts and grow and change over the decades and centuries.
During our conducted tour of the factory we met and chatted to man called Bruce (right). His quiet modesty, dedication to his work and wonderful skill and focus which enabled him to produce his exquisite gold designs impressed me greatly and epitomised the idea that “Beautiful forms and compositions are not made by chance” Josiah Wedgwood.
I can relate these thoughts to our latest Creative Academic project where we are trying to discover how teachers encourage and enable their students to use their creativity, I can see the parallels in how teachers use their knowledge and skill to create an ecology within which their students can learn to use and develop their creativity.
Why not be inspired by visiting https://www.worldofwedgwood.com/
Image credit Bruce : http://flat15.com/2016/07/25/the-world-of-wedgwood/
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