Thinking like Disney: Supporting the Disney method using ambient feedback based on group performance

The Disney method is a collaborative creativity technique that uses three roles - dreamer, realist and critic - to facilitate the consideration of different perspectives on a topic. Especially for novices it is important to obtain guidance in applying this method. One way is providing groups with a trained moderator. However, feedback about the group’s behavior might interrupt the flow of the idea finding process. We built and evaluated a system that provides ambient feedback to a group about the distribution of their statements among the three roles. Our preliminary field study indicates that groups supported by the system contribute more and roles are used in a more balanced way while the visualization does not disrupt the group work.

Widening participation creatively: Creative arts education for social inclusion

University participation among students from low socio-economic backgrounds in Australia is low and nationwide strategies are in place to help bridge the gap. This article presents a preliminary evaluation of a creative arts-based outreach program to raise awareness and aspiration for university study among students from low-income backgrounds. The program is part of a national Australian federally funded initiative, the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program. It reviews an outreach advertising program facilitated by a Brisbane university. We argue that arts education has a particular role in provoking attitudinal change, due to the self-reflective, meaning-making and expressive characteristics of arts-based disciplines. In evaluating the advertising program, the value of creativity and trust as techniques of student engagement is considered. Evaluation occurred in two outer suburban high schools in Brisbane (a State capital city), using surveys and ethnographic fieldwork. The findings support an engagement model that employs creativity and uses student facilitators (undergraduate and postgraduate) to deliver the program, to meet the program's aims.

Embedding metacognitive skills in spatial design

Metacognitive skills are considered to be essential for graduates from higher education institutions. In teaching spatial design, a fundamental aspect of student learning is the ability to ‘frame’ problems, generate solutions and explore possibilities of different solutions. This article proposes an innovative approach to design education through the implementation of strategies into the design process. The externalisation of implicit and tacit learning through metacognition connects theoretical concepts to interior design process and practice, as well as allowing students to engage and critically analyse issues surrounding theory and practice, thus equipping them with the skills as future design professionals.

On imagining in spatial design

Using the imagination during the design process is a critical part of how designers design, using it in the synthesis phase to generate ideas and find creative solutions to a given problem. However, what designers imagine - see in the mind’s eye - during the design process is a complex and difficult to articulate phenomenon, which, until recently, has been not been greatly understood or articulated. This early study reports on an education context where exercises were integrated into undergraduate design studies aimed to enhance the imagining process. Outcomes suggest that exercising the imagination in this context assists future designers to become more skilled in design synthesis practices which explore various temporal, existential and physical qualities in future spaces, as well as be able to articulate the seemingly ‘mysterious’ aspects of the design process.

Terra Incognita: A symbolic mythical journey

This practice-led project is implemented in the context of rites of passage based on significant events in formative transitions of Self. It employs an intuitive methodology to examine and explore the 'Child archetype', mythos, symbolic imagination and self-narrative, through the manifestation of a visual symbolic language. The contexts, methods and processes enable empowerment, heightened awareness of personal and collective relationships, meaningful discovery and development of innovative ideas and forms. The implications for this project highlight the importance of intuition in creativity and innovation. Creative practice is a vehicle for personal and collective interconnectedness. I have discovered self-empowerment, meaningful learning and innovative forms of personal and collective communication as a way of enabling transition of a significant life event.

Place making facilitators of knowledge and innovation spaces: Insights from European best practices

Knowledge economy seeks its nourishment from diversity and dissemination of ideas and creativity of its talent base. This has led to the acknowledgement of place making as a major strategy to attract and retain the knowledge base into the emerging knowledge and innovation spaces. The study seeks to explore the adoption of place making in this context. Literature and practice provide information to understand the evolution of various spatial typologies and the specialised role of place making in such locations. This helps in determining the key facilitators of place making. The paper takes an interdisciplinary approach and develops an integrated conceptual framework considering dimensions and facilitators of place making. Through the lens of the framework, best practices across Europe—i.e., Cambridge Science Park (UK), 22@Barcelona (Spain), Arabianranta (Finland), Strijp-S (Netherlands), and Digital Hub (Ireland)—are scrutinised to highlight various approaches to place making. The findings provide insights and a discussion into the interplay of form, function, image and underlying processes in globally emerging spatial typologies of contemporary knowledge and innovation spaces.

We need to fund more than just science priorities for Australia’s future

Australia's Science and Research Priorities focus on activating STEM researchers (science, technology, engineering, maths). In this article in The Conversation, Professor Marcus Foth argues that we need to fund more than just science priorities for Australia’s future.

Using children's picture books and process drama to develop students' critical literacy responses

This workshop introduces a range of process drama activities to develop students' critical literacy responses. Whilst children's picture books and process drama strategies have not traditionally been seen as sophisticated resources and strategies for developing students' critical literacy responses, this workshop shows teaching strategies that can be used in language instruction in primary classrooms with diverse student groups. The teaching activities include ‘attribute lists’, ‘sculptures’ and ‘freeze frames’.

Using children's picture books to develop students' critical literacy responses

This lecture introduces a range of children's picture books from around the world and teaching strategies that develop students' critical literacy responses. Whilst children's picture books have not traditionally been seen as sophisticated resources for developing students' critical literacy responses, this lecture presents research that shows young children as code breakers, text participants, text users and text analysts (Luke & Freebody, 1999) of written, visual, oral and gestural texts. This lecture also outlines the teaching strategies as they have been used in language instruction in primary classrooms with diverse student groups.

Connecting the space between design and research: Explorations in participatory research supervision

In this article we offer a single case study using an action research method for gathering and analysing data offering insights valuable to both design and research supervision practice. We do not attempt to generalise from this single case, but offer it as an instance that can improve our understanding of research supervision practice. We question the conventional ‘dyadic’ models of research supervision and outline a more collaborative model, based on the signature pedagogy of architecture: the design studio. A novel approach to the supervision of creatively oriented post-graduate students is proposed, including new approaches to design methods and participatory supervision that draw on established design studio practices. This model collapses the distance between design and research activities. Our case study involving Research Masters student supervision in the discipline of Architecture, shows how ‘connected learning’ emerges from this approach. This type of learning builds strong elements of creativity and fun, which promote and enhance student engagement. The results of our action research suggests that students learn to research more easily in such an environment and supervisory practices are enhanced when we apply the techniques and characteristics of design studio pedagogy to the more conventional research pedagogies imported from the humanities. We believe that other creative disciplines can apply similar tactics to enrich both the creative practice of research and the supervision of HDR students.

"Like a monkey with a miniature cymbal": Cultural practices of repetition in visual social media

Looping media are recurring components of online content, from gifs to Vine videos, in addition to the conceptual repetition of memes and related practices. This paper analyses practices around looping visual media as examples of vernacular creativity, social media literacies, and internet culture, especially for irreverent and playful purposes. Focusing on the LGBTQ digital cultural context as a pilot study, this research examines multi-platform uses of looping media, including personal narratives through Vine videos and animated gifs on Tumblr. In addition to textual analysis of LGBTQ looping visual social media content, the study will further explore the platform context as part of the experience of looped media. The research will address how these factors may also contribute to practices of irreverence and play, both within the specific case of LGBTQ culture and internet culture more generally.

Job-related diversity and team performance: An empirical analysis of the US music industry

A significant amount of research has been carried out to investigate the existing bonds between team characteristics and team outcomes in contexts of social creativity. Specifically, how work group diversity affects its performance is of great relevance but unfortunately, there is no clear understanding of the diversity-performance relationship. Therefore, to improve our understanding of this phenomenon, it would be worthwhile to investigate further empirical settings. For this reason, we decided to study the music industry that, to our knowledge, has never been chosen as empirical setting for the application of the theoretical constructs linked to the topic of team diversity and performance. Our research aims at analyze the US music industry to study the relationship between job-related characteristics of team diversity and team performances.

Ambidextrous leadership and team innovation

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report the first empirical test of the recently proposed ambidexterity theory of leadership for innovation (Rosing et al., 2011). This theory proposes that the interaction between two complementary leadership behaviors – opening and closing – predicts team innovation, such that team innovation is highest when both opening and closing leadership behaviors are high. Design/methodology/approach Multi-source survey data came from 33 team leaders of architectural and interior design firms and 90 of their employees. Findings Results supported the interaction hypothesis, even after controlling for leaders’ transformational leadership behavior and general team success. Research limitations/implications The relatively small sample size and the cross-sectional design are potential limitations of the study. The findings provide initial support for the central hypothesis of the ambidexterity theory of leadership for innovation. Practical implications The results suggest that organizations could train team leaders’ ambidextrous leadership behaviors to increase team innovation. Social implications Identifying ways to facilitate organizational innovation is important, as it contributes to employment and company growth as well as individual and societal well-being. Originality/value This multi-source study contributes to the literatures on leadership and innovation in organizations by showing that ambidextrous leadership behaviors predict team innovation above and beyond transformational leadership behavior.

A daily diary study on ambidextrous leadership and self-reported employee innovation

Ambidextrous leadership involves a combination of behaviours that stimulate employee exploration (‘opening behaviour’) and behaviours that facilitate exploitation of ideas (‘closing behaviour’). We hypothesized that the interaction between leaders’ daily opening and closing behaviours (i.e., ambidextrous leadership) predicts employees’ daily self-reported innovative performance. Results based on diary data provided by 113 employees across five work days supported this hypothesis: daily self-reported innovative performance was highest when both daily opening and closing behaviours were high.

The first cut is the deepest: Repeated interactions of co-authorship and academic productivity in Nobel laureate teams

Despite much in-depth investigation of factors influencing the co-authorship evolution in various scientific fields, our knowledge about how efficiency or creativity is linked to the longevity of collaborative relationships remains very limited. We explore what Nobel laureates’ co-authorship patterns reveal about the nature of scientific collaborations looking at the intensity and success of scientific collaborations across fields and across laureates’ collaborative lifecycles in physics, chemistry, and physiology/medicine. We find that more collaboration with the same researcher is actually no better for advancing creativity: publications produced early in a sequence of repeated collaborations with a given coauthor tend to be published better and cited more than papers that come later in the collaboration with the same coauthor. Our results indicate that scientific collaboration involves conceptual complementarities that may erode over a sequence of repeated interactions.