Break the Pattern: Safe idea is taking a break

What if the fastest way to a better idea is to stop trying to have one? Come and stretch your thinking at Disruptive Creativity.

We see creativity as a potential within everyone, not something mysterious or rare. You don't need to think of yourself as "creative" to find it — it's already there, waiting to be nurtured, if we only find the right conditions for it to grow.

Education and the demands of work can sometimes channel our thinking down narrow corridors. In these workshops, practical exercises give us a chance to step outside them: to make unusual connections, trust our intuition and give ourselves permission to follow an idea even when it first seems strange.

For example, what does a penguin have to do with your next big idea? Probably nothing. Which is exactly why we’re interested.

In this 90-minute workshop, we’ll take your thinking down the rabbit hole using surprise, random associations, strange constraints and unexpected prompts. We’ll start with ordinary problems, then deliberately make them stranger — following connections that seem irrelevant, or improbable.

You might find yourself enthusiastically defending an idea that, five minutes earlier, you would have dismissed as far-fetched — good, you’re doing it right.

Surprise captures the attention by breaking mind predictions. We’ll use it deliberately — alongside collaboration and a little productive absurdity — to loosen up habitual thinking and see what appears when the obvious route is blocked.

Bring your curiosity, leave your sensible shoes and your judgement at the door. Meet interesting people. Have some fun. Leave with techniques to disrupt the predictable.