Fostering lateral thinking through creative activities
It is known that creativity is able to improve humans’ mental conditions. Mental distress is one of the most common issues in British society for the last few years regarding mental health. We approached Changes Bristol, a charity support group that organizes weekly meetings for people who suffer from mental stress. Everyone shares their problems and how they improve their mental condition with each other. In order to enhance creative conditions within this group of people, an association has been created which brings this community to local creative spaces.
What is COMMECT?
Commect
Community
Connects
Community
Commect is a non-profit organization that aims to apply creativity in the individuals’ everyday life, by bringing communities suffering from mental stress and local creative spaces together. The main function of the organization is not only to create a connection between those communities but also to nurture creative thinking through workshops and related activities. This organization focuses on applying problem solving skills as a tool for everyday life situations.
A main form of workshop has been developed which target to foster creative thinking through several creative activities. The nature of this workshop is meant to be a very simple yet encouraging set of activities.
Connects
Commect
By working closely with both communities, a relationship has been developed where creative spaces hold workshops and activities for people suffering from this condition. This is not an art therapy as such but a space where they can put aside their usual problems and enjoy doing those activities together that are influenced by the environment.
Community
HAMILTON HOUSE
Creative Space
Hamilton House has all sorts of things going on in all different floors; they also have many studio spaces, meeting rooms, a community kitchen for the tenants and office spaces for the social entrepreneurs, creative people and charities. According to their volunteer, creativity is really all about making different connections with one another and they are doing their best to keep the building busy, so they maximize the space as much as they could such as organizing their own projects to enhance the quality of the space. Artists who rent the space also involve themselves to engage with all the projects. With various things going on at the same time in one building, it just turns Hamilton House into a really exciting place to be. “Try to make something with no money is a worth of art.� Ruth, Volunteer of Hamilton House
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Commect
changes bristol
None of the facilitators have councilor training but all of them have a personal experience with mental heath issues. A lot of facilitators were former group members, so it is more similar to a peer support group than a counseling group. It is more about sharing experiences. “I would say that people leave in a much better mood that when they came. Most of the people said that when they realized that they are not on their own, it’s comforting and people go back with a lot of ideas and strategies that they did not even think to start with. People are really keen on trying new things. Right now meditation is big thing, couple of months ago it was mindfulness, so this entire process brings up different ideas and possibilities.� Emma S., Facilitator of Changes Bristol
Bristol
Mental Health Charity
There is a central office that organizes all the Changes meetings, specifically for the Bristol area, there are ten different meetings across the city in different times and they all follow the same principle; so they have a set of rules to follow. They were also given a ground to work with such as sets that the participants have to read out, set of goals and reading the weekly announcement. Therefore all the meetings have a structure.
As you walked in to Hamilton house you’re blinded by posters displaying activities and workshops that are currently taking place. There are exhibitions on there all the time and lots of activities such as learning Spanish, salsa and drumming lessons.
welcome
Once we walked in we were greeted at reception, to find that many of the people working there are actually volunteers, and take on quite a lot of hard work. When we first entered we where given a talk by Ruth, a member of staff. She gave us a 15 minute talk explaining all recent activities in Hamilton house, as well as popular past work. Once the group arrived she continued to talk to them as well, explaining lots of interesting facts. We were then shown upstairs to the creative space we hired out, whilst approaching the space, we could hear people talking in other rooms, and instruments being played, as well as singing, a good indication that other workshops where taking place.
Workshop
By sharing their thoughts and opinions through the following activities, without being conscious about it they are already involving themselves in the creative processes that will enhance the group’s interaction.
WORKSHOP
Commect
aCTIVITY 01 Lateral Thinking
This exercise is based on riddles. The exercise has been planned for the first 25 minutes of the workshop. The person directing the workshop will read out the question loud (while the question or situation will also be projected on the screen). As this is the first workshop, the group was forced to shout out possible answers, helping them to become less shy and settled with the other members of the group. The idea is to stimulate each other and generate possible solutions. The most important thing in this exercise is to be imaginative, take in consideration others’ suggestions and try to be careless to some extent.
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Community
Commect
Activity 01
Community
aCTIVITY 02 Collaborative Collage
Activity 02
Commect
By taking references from the previous exercise, this one is based on a collage format, where interactivity is the main way to build ideas. By asking the group to work together they slowly begin to relax and interact with each other showing that its possible for them to begin to feel at ease with the activities. They were given 20 minutes to complete the task, and take in to consideration what was written down on an orange sheet of paper with problem solving techniques on them, which they where asked to look at when they first came in.
a C T
IV IT Y 03
Workshop
Write a statement on what
Commect
creative thinking is
As a last exercise to conclude the workshop the idea was to make a reflection of what they think creative thinking is. To add an element of excitement and also privacy, this exercise is executed by using UV markers and later one swapped and read with the UV light. It was interesting to find that two people on the table wrote down the same thing, but were not sat anywhere near each other. The conclusions were gathered and read out, everyone laughed and questioned some people’s answers, which helped to break the tension within the group, by the end of the session everyone was chatting to each other and the atmosphere felt very positive, a sense of achievement was felt.
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Activity 03
FEEDBACK
Community
OVERALL Conclusion
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Commect
After doing a trial workshop with a group of 6 participants, the results we got from our feedback forms were generally positive and encouraging. This is an on-going process therefore Commect will be taking further steps in relationship to improve the quality of the workshops. In a nutshell, we realized that everyone has the capability to be creative, in his or her own special ways; by introducing creative thinking to them, they are opened up to other pathways of thinking. This was also extremely beneficial for us, although the original group that we had worked with didn’t turn up, we made the workshop in to a test workshop, which helped us come up with better methods for next time, and also helped us to relax and know what to expect. Overall the workshop was really positive for both the group and us and showed there was a great mixture of interaction. We managed to get a taste of what the real workshop would be like with the group, and prepared us with mass confident to carry on this workshop and think of new creative solutions.