UW-MANIAC Creative Placemaking Summer Forays

So what is creative placemaking?
"In creative placemaking, partners from public, private, non-profit, and community sectors strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood, town, city, or region around arts and cultural activities. Creative placemaking animates public and private spaces, rejuvenates structures and streetscapes, improves local business viability and public safety, and brings diverse people together to celebrate, inspire, and be inspired."
From Creative Placemaking by Ann Markusen and Anne Gadwa
http://www.nea.gov/pub/CreativePlacemaking-Paper.pdf

Come join us to explore some creative placemaking ventures in Madison and beyond:

1) Sustainable Atwood - An urban neighborhood with very interesting sustainability projects

"Sustainable Atwood is a plan to measure, evaluate, expand and create sustainable practices, designs and systems in our neighborhood of 6,000 residents." The historic Atwood neighborhood lies at the eastern end of the Madison’s Isthmus. We will meet with Twink Jan-McMahon, coordinator of Sustainable Atwood, and take a tour of Sustainable Atwood projects—a demonstration garden, a new community solar installation, the Little Urban Forest Library—and learn about their neighborhood garden co-op, urban-wood-reclamation project, as well as other initiatives. If folks are interested, we'll continue the discussion at a local pub with good food, Alchemy Cafe.
When: July 14, 2012, 4:30-6:00 P.M.
Where: 2018 Helena Street, Madison, WI
Register here!

2) Wormfarm Institute - A nationally recognized regional food, ecology, and cultural endeavor

"Dedicated to integrating culture and agriculture, the Wormfarm Institute is an evolving laboratory of the arts and ecology and fertile ground for creative work." "The Wormfarm expands the concept of the CSA, which helps reconnect consumers with the source of their food, by connecting urban and rural, people and land, culture and agriculture. It also expands the idea of ‘sustainability’ to include not just nourishment to live, but a vibrant creative community in which to thrive." "Wormfarm Institute is selected as a national leader through ArtPlace initiative. ArtPlace (artplaceamerica.org) is a collaboration of top national foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts and various federal agencies to accelerate creative placemaking across the U.S."
We will travel 50 miles north of Madison to take a tour of the Wormfarm Institute with founder Donna Neuwirth and learn about their Artist Residency program, Roadside Culture Stands, Fermentation Fest, Farm Art/Dtour, and other projects. Bring a snack to share after the tour.
When: Thursday, July 26, 2012, 4:15-6:00 p.m. (please note: you will need to leave Madison by 3:00 p.m. in order to be at the farm by 4:15)
Where: E7904 Briar Bluff Road, Reedsburg, WI (see http://wormfarminstitute.org/directions/)
Register here!

3) Hilltop Community Farm - A rural community-supported agriculture enterprise with experimental fruits and international links

"We are small-scale diversified farmers, dedicated to growing food sustainably and building community." "We offer both monthly and seasonal organically grown flower shares and provide custom flower service for special events. We also cultivate grapes, red raspberries, apples, pears, hardy kiwi, ginseng, and hops, and are expanding our orchards and brambles, using agroforestry practices, to include currants and plums as well as lesser-known fruits such as aronia, saskatoons, elderberries, quince, and hineyberry."
We will take a tour of the farm (located about 65 miles northwest of Madison) and its interesting fruits with MANIACer and Hilltop co-owner Erin Schneider, and check out her MANIAC-inspired Innovation Garden, hear stories gleaned and lessons learned in growing fruit and building community, and possibly even play with flower art. Please bring a dish to share for a potluck dinner.
When: Friday, August 3, 2012, 4:30-6:30 p.m. for tour (please note: you will need to leave Madison by 3:00 p.m. in order to be at the farm by 4:30)
Where: S850 Heidrich Rd., La Valle, WI (please check Google Maps for directions)
Register here!

In the Hands of Alchemy: The Art and Life of Jerry Wennstrom, Artist and Visionary Extraordinaire

Artist Jerry Wennstrom tells his inspiring story through his art and now presents all around the US. After producing a large body of work, at age 29 he set out to discover the rock-bottom truth of his life and questioned the limits of his creative life as a painter. After destroying all of his art and giving away everything he owned, Jerry began a life of unconditional trust, allowing life to provide all that was needed. He lived this way for 15 years, then eventually produced a large new body of art with a completely different mindset. Read more about his story and see some of his work at www.handsofalchemy.com.

Jerry will be presenting in Madison from June 14-17. See below the schedule of events:

Lecture and Museum Tour at the Chazen Museum of Art
Thursday, June 14, 5:30 p.m., Chazen Museum of Art, 750 University Avenue, Auditorium
A lecture with images of Jerry’s visionary multi-layered, interactive sculptural figures, gleaned and transformed from found objects, followed by a discussion of artworks in the Chazen permanent collection that make similar use of found/recycled/reclaimed objects. FREE

Hands-on workshop at the Children’s Museum
Friday, June 15, 1:00-3:00 p.m., Madison Children’s Museum, 100 N. Hamilton Street Join Jerry in a fun and fascinating process of creating an art piece from recycled and repurposed materials. You can bring some of your own objects to add to the museums rich supply. Children and adults are invited. FREE

Presentation and Dialog: Jerry’s Journey-Life on the Threshold
Saturday, June 16, 2:00-4:00 p.m. UW Arboretum McKay Visitor Center Auditorium, 1207 Seminole Highway
Jerry is an artist who found the courage to base his life on following the truth of his creative spirit. Through a cycle of death and rebirth of his creative vision, Jerry has been initiated into a place of mystery that is reflected in his artwork and his life, touching the vast complexities of the collective unconscious. His stories and insights deeply move and inform.
A donation of $10-$25 is requested.

Events sponsored by Art at the Threshold (www.artatthethreshold.org), UW-Madison Office of Human Resource Development (www.ohrd.wisc.edu) and UW-MANIAC (Madison Area Network for Innovation and Collaboration).

If you have any questions, email Harry Webne-Behrman at hwebnebehrman@ohr.wisc.edu.

Innovation and Collaboration Learning Cafe coming up on April 19, 830-1pm!

The “Innovation & Collaboration Learning Cafe Series” seeks to sustain learning about creative thinking and integrate it into the way we teach, research, and work together.

Process Improvement Strategies and Tools – How to get work done better, smarter, and be prepared for emergent challenges

Inspiration, Connection and Celebration – Feeling connected to your colleagues as they share success stories, and feeling energized by that experience so you can go back and take on new challenges

Best Practices Dissemination – This offers an opportunity for those who have come up with ‘bright ideas’ to share them with us and help us consider how they might be applied to new challenges (e.g., ThemeSeekr, Critical Friends Process, Integral Facilitation model).

Ultimately, seek Synergies and Build an Infrastructure to support collaboration, creative thinking and innovation throughout campus and community in a powerful partnership and sharing of resources. (This is the real prize, for it sets the stage for significant cultural change and systemic improvements)

We may have a funny name, and we have an enjoyable time, but the work in which we are engaged is seriously developing an increased capacity for creative, capable responses to complex challenges we face at the University, the community, and the larger society. Take some time to explore the Café Series! Bring creative energy to the experience and engage with others seeking to work collaboratively to address important challenges in their work and in their lives.

Come join us for part 3 of this cafe (note: you didn't have to attend the pas 2 cafe's to come to this one!) on April 19th from 8:30-1p.m. at the Pyle Center (702 Langdon Street)! Cost is $15 and includes lunch.

Maniac Breakfast on March 29: Designing Innovative Trainings: Moving beyond the "sit and get"

Join us for the next breakfast meeting of UW-MANIAC on March 29 from 8-9:30a.m. in the Memorial Union! This UW-Maniac Breakfast is titled "Designing Innovative Trainings: Moving beyond the 'sit and get'” and will be facilitated by Amy Climer of Climer Consulting.

Lectures are boring. After 10 minutes we get fidgety, start zoning out, and learning goes down the tubes. Research shows that experiential teaching results in greater learning and engagement by students. In this fast-paced workshop, learn how to make your classes, workshops, and trainings more active and increase learning through reflection techniques, even if you do “lecture” a bit. Make your classes more innovative and interesting, leading to happier students who learn more!

These bi-monthly UW-Maniac gatherings allow us to share creative approaches to professional challenges, identify new tools and strategies that can help us transform creative ideas into innovative solutions, and promote relationships that can help us address emerging needs as they arise. Make sure to keep an eye out on our "Upcoming Events" page for more opportunities! If you want to register for this event click here!

For additional information, contact Harry Webne-Behrman at OHRD, 262-9934 or hwebnebehrman@ohr.wisc.edu

Get involved! Become a MANIAC. Innovate. Collaborate. Inspire meaningful change.

Innovation & Collaboration Learning Cafe Explores "Moving Ideas to Reality"

The first UW-MANIAC "Innovation and Collaboration Learning Cafe" of the academic year will be held Thursday, Nov 17th, 8:30am - 1pm at Pyle Center. The focus is "Moving Ideas to Reality: Getting Started with Innovation," and it will feature an array of tools for defining, communicating, refining, and disseminating new ideas at the onset of the innovation process. Subsequent cafes in the series (February and April) will explore the later phases of the innovation process... but this one is all about getting started:

How do you get that creative idea off the ground? How do you refine your message so it is exciting to others and is readily conveyed? Who are the people you need in order to advnace that crazy notion so it gets off the ground? These are the types of questions we will explore, with stories, graphic communication tools, an exploration of Malcolm Gladwell's 'tipping point' methods, and other activities.

Come on over! The cost is $15, including lunch.

Getting Comfortable With Complexity on October 25th!

Sudden thunderstorms, unexplained traffic jams, ants finding food, sudden social change on a global scale—these are all examples of complexity. We live in a complex world—one that is interwoven and interdependent. Yet as our world grows more complex new and interesting properties emerge that never existed before.

This October 25th workshop, titled "Getting Comfortable With Complexity" will feature presenter Christine Kelly. Christine is an independent educational designer and holds a doctorate in Science Education from the University of Maryland. She has spent that last 15 years as an environmental and sustainability educator. Her expertise includes transformative learning, complex systems thinking, online communities of practice, organizational learning and sustainability and environmental educational curriculum design.

She has created a video to get you excited for the event, check it out here!

And after, make sure to sign up for this workshop and get a chance to begin your journey of getting comfortable with complexity!

Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity

Today, it seems like companies are "creatively bankrupt" and only focusing on cost cutting, efficiency and top-down control. But what they are forgetting is that creativity really is a fantastic competitive advantage and focusing on developing and expanding on creativity will make the business more successful!


Josh Linkner's book Disciplined Dreaming brings readers to a realization that creativity is the only sustainable competitive advantage for individuals and companies because it is innovative and cannot be exactly replicated. The book offers creative techniques that will prepare you to take this creativity challenge within your own organization, and will allow you to discover and ignite your own creative abilities. To do this, Linkner organizes the book in a 5 step methodology:

1. Ask: identify and clearly define your specific creativity challenge
   
2. Prepare: prepare yourself mentally and physically for the creative process to maximize creative output
   
3. Discover: explore every avenue that might lead to creative ideas
   
4. Ignite: proven techniques for sparking creativity and generating better, and more, creative ideas
   
5. Launch: make your best creative ideas a reality!

For this post, I'm going to focus on some of the techniques I found interesting from the "Ignite" phase of Disciplined Dreaming. This will give you a taste for the book, and hopefully sparks your interest to read the whole thing!

"If you're unwilling to be different, you'll never get to the next level. The very fact that the entire industry does something a particular way is a great reason to explore the exact opposite approach" -Josh Linkner

Linkner writes that one of the most common stumbling blocks is the feeling that you need to imagine and perfectly design the entire creative solution BEFORE beginning work...this is not true! Creativity is an evolutionary process. Below are a few of the techniques that I found especially innovative for sparking creative discussions. These techniques allow for creativity and are part of this evolutionary process:

• Imbizo Groups- a Zulu expression for "gathering"- this is a group of people from diverse backgrounds and disciplines who have come together to simply discuss an idea. This group has NO end goal in mind, other than the goal of exploring. The groups needs to let go of the outcome goal and simply allow for creative, diverse discussion.
• The Hot Potato-put everyone in a circle except for a note-taker then toss a football to random person who will then shout out an idea that is no more than one sentence. The person isn't allowed to think about it, analyze it, or contemplate phrasing. This allows for spontaneous creativity and creates a situation that removes obstacles such as fear.
  
• Personas-rather than thinking about a generic, one-size-fits-all audience, try crafting personas (EX: two kids in college, age 52 living in Chicago, risk-taker). This allows you to get inside the head of your audience and make them into a specific person you can relate to instead of a faceless, nameless target. Then have creative conversations while having this person in mind.
• TDWR (Think, Doodle, Write Repeat)- A doodle-unlike a chart, diagram or illustration- carries an unfinished quality to it that makes it the ideal breeding ground for new ideas. Let your mind wander without limitations or rules, don't edit, judge, plan or re-read your doodles. Many people learn and process things visually, so doodling can help spark ideas!

The book offers many more creative techniques that spark new, innovative ideas, this was just naming a few. After reading, I found that these ideas allow us to open up different paths and generate different ideas compared to regular, structured meeting that occur frequently within organizations.

Lastly, I will leave you with this quote:

“There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system” –Machiavelli

It might be scary at first to jump away from your normal way of doing things within your organization, but if you have a positive outlook in mind and are motivated from these new creative techniques, your organization could become more competitive in today's shifting marketplace through tapping into the power of creativity.

You can purchase Linkner's book here,
see it on Google Books,
...or find it at your local library. Enjoy!