This year I attended the 9th annual signature World Creativity and Innovation Week event in Toronto, called “Admit it. You’re Creative!” World Creativity and Innovation Week falls on the anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s Birthday – April 15 every year. My curiosity sparked from the time I heard the words creativity and innovation and upon further investigation I read the intentions of the week.
“Imagine the world united through it’s creativity. Where everyone takes a moment, a day, or the week to generate new ideas to create a brighter future wherever they are.” – a mission dear to my heart.
I went to 2 workshops, one about how Walt Disney thinks and the other on writing the Hero’s story.
Walt Disney used a very specific process when he worked, he had 3 stages of development with 3 different spaces for the activities. Disney animators would never know which Walt was coming to a meeting, the dreamer, the realist or the critic. Each Walt played a very important role in the process of developing a Disney production.
1. The Dreamer – The dreamer wished, imagined and created glorious scenarios and the animators were always excited by him.
2. The Realist – The realist animated each character with voices, personality traits and allowing the animators to get in his head and share his vision.
3. The Critic – The critic would come and seemingly ruin all the fun. He would dissect the pieces until he was happy, this was not fun for the animators.
I certainly value the ability to transform your mind and I would love to be able to have 3 different workspaces to take advantages of spatial triggers.
Secondly, I went to a storytelling workshop focusing on the Hero’s story template. This template is used throughout history in mythology and in Hollywood movies – most famously “Star Wars”. The plot is developed around a Hero’s journey, from original life, to facing challenges, finding a mentor and coming to new perspectives. It is not the first time I had heard of the Hero’s storytelling process, but it was a good exercise in looking closer at changes made before and after projects.
Overall, I wish everyone would embrace creativity and innovation for more than just a week a year.