The Blog

So what happens when you get 15 creative people, from diverse sectors, in the same room to co-create solutions to the everyday challenges that they are facing? This was the challenge that Alison Coward from Bracket (insert www.bracketprojects.co.uk) and Sinead Mac Manus from Creatively Digital (insert (www.creativelydigital.org), wanted to test when they organised an interactive evening at co-working space THECUBE in Shoreditch last week.

The idea for the evening came about from the plans that creative business advisors Alison and Sinead are making for an unconference for the creative industries this summer in London. The evening event – part focus group, part workshop – was the first in a number of pre-events in the lead up to the summer event.

After a quick round the table introductions revealed the wonderful diversity of the group from architects to event managers to theatre makers, the duo showed a quick fire presentation (insert www.slideshare.net/Bracket/creative-industries-evening-18-march) of some of their influences and inspirations around collaborative working, digital technology and new business models to get the creative juices flowing.

Next, in pairs, the group tackled the question of what current challenges they are facing in their business and in their wider sector. The pairs fed back to the group and four major themes started to emerge: firstly, how to communicate a new idea; secondly, how to scale up a small business (we called it the problem of wanting a bigger boat); thirdly, how to use social media and digital technologies especially when you are working in one of the more traditional sectors e.g. theatre; and lastly, how to manage your time when facing with an every increasing workload.

Self-selected groups of three or four people huddled down to tackle one of the group problems using creating thinking and idea generation. One group used mind-mapping techniques to work through and display their thoughts; another used post-its. Whatever they method, the excitement and creativity that working with different people on new problems was tangible and made for an exciting exercise. Solutions from the groups were presented to Alison who captured them all brilliantly.

The final part of the evening was a ‘create your dream event’ group brainstorm where lots of great ideas for the Rewire London event in the summer were collected.

Feedback from the evening was great and two participants (@WillSudlow [insert http://twitter.com/WillSudlow/status/10867059252] and @andrewn [insert http://twitter.com/andrewn/status/10713654617]) tweeted about how much they enjoyed it.

Watch this space for details of more workshops from Alison and Sinead and visit Rewire London (www.rewirelondon.org) for more details about the summer event.