Sometimes it’s nice to look at a map like this…
… instead of the usual ones like this.
The first one is from The Universal Traveler: A Soft-Systems Guide to Creativity, Problem-Solving, and the Process of Reaching Goals — a sort of travel guide to creative problem-solving, originally published in 1971 by researchers Don Koberg and Jim Bagnall. I book I read about a few days ago and definitely would like to take a closer look at. What do you think? Sound interesting?
I’ve been sick for – I don’t even want to count for how many days. I’ve been working a little. Just what I absolutely had to do and I’ve been resting and sleeping a lot. Otherwise I find things to do that I normally don’t find time for when I’m sick. For example today after being at the doctor’s I made a short visit to the library and found some audio books. I’d already come to the conclusion that I don’t have enough energy to read, so I thought I’d give this a chance.
I borrowed Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, but thought I would start with something less hardcore (with not being used to listening to audio books and all) and went to the children’s department and grabbed two different audio books about Madicken or Maggie, as her name is sometimes translated, by Astrid Lindgren. So those two I’ve listened to today. I especially like them since they are the original Swedish ones and Astrid Lindgren is reading the stories herself. I like her style of reading!
Inspired by the story, I also made a small doodle in my doodle book :)
And later I took out my jewellery stuff and made some more to my already existing quite big collection. If anyone reading is interested in buying some necklaces or brooches, there are some nice festive Christmas-y ones. Just let me know.
I got orders to stay on bed rest for the remainder of the week, so I’ll have time to make even more jewellery and start listening to something a little more hardcore when it comes to the audio book world.
Creative Business, originally uploaded by wiikkis.
I started reading this book, Creative Business – 10 Lessons To Help You Build A Business Your Way, on the plane back from Berlin. It’s a really quick and easy read, but brings up some interesting points about building your own business within arts and culture. And It has short stories with cases from the Nordic countries to complement and support the points that are made.
The book is CC licensed and you can read parts of it here.
And this weekend I started making notes from it. Here you can see part of them. I’ll post the whole thing when it’s ready.
I’m back at work and at home again after some very needed Christmas holidays that I spent at my parents. The theme of my holidays was to enjoy arts and culture rather than produce it and here’s some of what I did:
1) The Christmas Market in Turku (crappy website) with my mom and my little brother. We bought my favorite, anise sweets.
2) The traditional Finnish Christmas meal with a lot of relatives :)
3) a Harry Potter movie marathon (movies 1-6) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 at the movie theatre with my brother, my mom, my aunt and my two cousins.
I really liked the movie, and although it was just part 1 and it kind of ended in the middle that didn’t disturb me really… I thought The Tale of the Three Brothers was very nicely done! And it all made me want to read all of the books again.
4) Read the book Leurs Vies Éclatantes (Väreilevä kaupunki in Finnish) by the Belgian author Grégoire Polet. I got it as a Christmas present.
5) Listened to some Bach while cleaning :) Works very well!
So this autumn I’m also writing my bachelor’s thesis for arts management at Novia University of Applied Sciences. I’m writing about community arts/sociocultural projects and why there should be arts managers as part of the team in those projects. I’ll post the whole thing here when it’s ready…
Sociocultural projects focus on the development of individuals. Part of a drawing for my bachelor's thesis.
But anyway, about the power of pictures. Part of my thesis is about visualizations and visual thinking (not necessarily the same thing…) and last week I got Dan Roam’s book The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures. The book I think has saved my thesis mostly because it got me working on it again after a long period of not finding where to continue writing. So while I was reading I started scribbling in the margins of the book and later on I continued working on the pictures, and now it looks like they will be part of my thesis.
And working on the pictures got me writing again, too. That’s what I call power of pictures :P
I’m reading this book called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey and I really like it!
So far I’ve read about the first habit: Be Proactive!
It describes how you can be active and responsible for what you do. I like how the word responsible is used. You are able to give a response in different situations. It doesn’t mean that you take on a shitload of work (if you relate this to work :P), it’s about how you respond to the amount of work. Do you see it as a burden from outside? Is someone else shoveling all that work onto your table? Or do you go to yourself and find a solution within and work from there? Covey talks about Have’s and Be’s. “If only I had this…” or “I’ll be happy when I have that…” versus “I can be more creative, resourceful, etc”
So now I’m trying to observe myself in work but also outside. Am I proactive? Where could I develop when it comes to being proactive? What should I do? In a later blog post I might discuss some results on that :)
Just very shortly today, I want to recommend this online magazine that introduces loads of cool projects made by young people around Europe. It’s called Young Innovations Europe and although at least I’m fed up with the innovations rhetorics where everything is innovative and creative, that magazine and the projects presented are good.
Norbert Schmidt on the Creative Network Economy and the main things that play into it.
I’m part of a network project called Produforum and today we had a discussion about it from the point of Creative Network Economy, my friend Norbert’s thesis (download here) on the subject with Produforum as the case.
Discussions were surrounding openness, who’s the network for, what are the inputs and the outcomes of individual members and how does this relate to the marked based economy outside of the network and even further how can we deal with the tax office when we are working like this without them getting all the money and we none? A lot of questions and not so many answers. What you could see was that there are many opinions and the network is different for everyone.
For me it’s okay that we don’t exactly know everything and that this is just a platform to test different ideas (that’s what the EU money is for, anyway), but after being involved with the network for a couple of years through my studies and only last spring becoming a member I’ve only started to realize how hard it is to try to create your own system of working within an already existing on, the network based one within the market based one, when you are working freelance. You still have to get that money from somewhere.
I also see the similarities between Produforum and To Culture With Love. Isn’t the ultimate goal the same in both of them? What makes them different? And should they be more focused? When you are trying to work for better working conditions for professionals within arts and culture, are you taking too big of a bite? Can you actually work for everyone? Is that realistic or is that just another utopia?
wiikkis ⎮ Riikka Wallin 