The value of a creative excursion

Image: Scienceworks

We’ve shared in the past how inspiration can be found just about anywhere, and why it’s so important to take a step back from your work and immerse yourself in a new environment to see it.

Being involved within a creative field means we are always conscious about finding new ideas and staying inspired for our clients.

Over the summer break we found a great way to do this as a family by visiting the latest Scienceworks exhibition Ground Up: Building Big Ideas, Together. This exhibit is focused on immersing the imaginative world of young children and their engagement with science, technology, engineering and maths.

Scienceworks: Ground Up

Balancing Act

Even if you don’t necessarily work within a “creative field”, this does not mean such create outlets are not needed. The use of our imagination is required in all workplaces and triggers an individual’s innovation and creativity, ultimately benefiting a business in their day to day activities. That’s why it is so important to get out of your environment and be influenced by not so conventional places to get new ideas.

‘Think about taking yourself and your team out of the usual environment. You just never know what new ideas they might bring back to the office with them.’

Some of the benefits of creative ‘excursions’ for your business include:

• Learning new trends and ideas
• Building relationships & team bonding
• Energized excitement leaving the ‘work’ environment
• Stimulating creativity which increases learning
• Increased workplace problem solving and productivity
• Fostering a creative and inspiring team culture

Whilst visiting the Scienceworks exhibit, the first thing that hit us upon entering was the array of colours, textures and interactive moving games in a huge dim room. Sure, this particular public display was aimed at babies to five year olds, so as you can imagine the room was abuzz with activity. There were little ones designing and flying contraptions, a wall full of light switches where little sparks could make patterns and pictures, and a giant colourful blue brushed car wash to be engineered into action.

Wall of Switches

Fluoro Building Blocks

So you’re probably wondering what does all this have to do with our work?

Well, everything and nothing. And that’s the whole point.

Although the aim of the displays was to highlight the sensory discovery world and enhance problem solving in young children, there was much to be said for us adults being in an environment watching our daughter learn things for the first time and just being in the moment. Flicking multiple light switches to create patterns and designs, stacking tetris style opaque fluoro blocks, gazing at her reflection in the mirror and aimlessly catching flying origami felt birds as they flew up the air sucking tube. New experiences, new ways of doing things and new ways of seeing the world. That’s what we learnt that day. And no it wasn’t directly about our business or our client’s work, but we definitely walked away with new ideas that we didn’t have the day before.

So we encourage you to think about taking yourself and your team out of the usual environment. You just never know what new ideas they might bring back to the office with them.

p.s – for those wondering, there are other expos within Scienceworks that had other fun stuff that adults could enjoy it too. Anthony might need to sharpen those ball handling skills though before our next visit ha ha…..

“if we were meant to stay in one place, we’d have roots instead of feet” Rachel Wolchin

If you would like to include some of our excursion-inspired creativity into your next project, be sure to get in touch with our team.

Or you can ask us for more information on our monthly graphic design and marketing support ProPackages here

Creatively Yours, Rosie & Anthony @ ideapro