We’ve just both signed up to take Tina Seelig’s online course on creativity, which is offered free through Stanford University’s Venture Lab. Yep, that’s right, free. Thousands of people from around the world will be taking the course, which “is designed to introduce you to a set of tools for generating new ideas individually and as part of a team, including opportunity identification, reframing problems, connecting and combining ideas, and challenging assumptions. We will also discuss team dynamics, creative communication, and cultures that support creative problem solving.”
Tina’s book InGenius: A Crash Course in Creativity, has already been extremely useful to me in thinking about my own creative practice and creative work in museums. I’m looking forward to deeper thinking and some hands-on project work guided by her–and multitudes of creative thinkers. The course, which begins the week of October 17, has several team projects and participants are encouraged to form their own teams. Rainey and I hope that some of our museum colleagues will join us in the course and we can work on team projects related to some of the thorny problems that museums face today.
We know that creativity happens when we gain new experiences and expand the networks we work with–both in and outside of the museum field. This is an amazing opportunity to do just that, so sign up, let us know, and we’ll figure out how to find each other on that first day of class!
Museums & Creative Practice 
Hi, thanks for letting me know about Venture Lab. I’ve also signed up!
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Great, Chris. There should be opportunities for us to find each other and collaborate on some of the group projects (although it’s unclear exactly how that will work right now).
Hi – I also signed up and am a independent museum consultant…maybe if we gather a few of us we can all share some thoughts after the course on how to use what we learn in the museum setting? I agree it would be fun to work together in the class as well. I enjoy your blog and loved reading some of the books you have listed as well.
Glad to hear you signed up (and glad you like the project), Tica. Until we start the course it’s hard to tell exactly how the group projects will work, but once we know more we’ll work on organizing a group project–stay tuned.
Looks like we can add names for people we may want to work with so i’ll put on there 🙂 I’m in there getting my feet wet right now- also signed up for Designing a New Learning Environment as I liked that you build a business model at the end around an idea about education in the 21st century – i don;t tend to use a lot of electronic media in exhibits I develop but there may be some way it can be incorporated to share ideas, virtual museums etc.