Malcolm Bellamy's Lifelong Learning Blog

The wonderful Ted Talks have covered many topics over the years. One subject that is close to my heart and head is “creativity“.

I have recently come across a list from the Ted Blog called “10 talks about the beauty — and difficulty — of being creative” This was an excellent list and I spent a useful period of time  exploring each of them. Of the 10 talks the following three are my favourites which I would recommend anyone to watch who is interested in the subject.

 

(1)     Tim Brown: Tales of creativity and play

Tim is the CEO of a wonderful innovative design company called “IDEO”  This talk is full of audience participation which includes drawing on thirty circles and pinging small handheld rockets at the stage. It explains how there is a need to create an environment that allows creativity to flourish and that play is an important part of life even when we are no longer children (see the slides at Google’s Swiss headquarters as an example).

Although full of fun it is a deeply serious talk about the need for everyone to explore their own creativity.

(2)  Tim is a colleague of David Kelley and his talk “How To Build You Creative Confidence” is my next choice:

This is a brilliant talk which is based on Kelley’s conviction that everyone is creative but many lose their creativity as they are growing up (particularly at school I hate to say). He refers to the great psychologist Albert Bandura and states that we must all regain our “efficacy” or in terms that Sir Ken Robinson states, discover our “element”.

(3) My last recommendation is Kirby Ferguson: Embrace the remix

This is a really interesting talk that gets us to challenge the idea of what creativity really is. The statement “there is nothing new under the sun” seems to be relevant here. Ferguson gives some excellent examples from the world of music (particularly focusing on the work of Bob Dylan) to show how we steal or borrow other people’s work (which no doubt they have stolen or borrowed before us) and then we “re-mix” these ideas and make them  our own.

What he is really saying is that the re-mix is the creative act and should be celebrated and not decried. I couldn’t agree more.

 

 

Related articles

• 10 TED Talks About Being Creative (designthinking.ideo.com)
• TED reaches its billionth video view! (ted.com)
• TED Talks Launches “Playlists” (larryferlazzo.edublogs.org)

Filed under: creativity Tagged: | Albert Bandura, Creativity, David Kelley, TED, Tim Brown