Interview with Creative Attitude: "to boost creativity at home we have to allow children to have the ability to choose"

The Creative Education Foundation (CEF) It is the creator of the brainstorming technique that is usually used in work centers for the development of new ideas and projects that become valuable products / services. CEF arrives in Spain through Creative Attitude It acts as a local partner. He Creative Attitude objective is to encourage and accelerate the learning of young leaders of the future using and applying techniques in the classroom to boost creativity. Creative Attitude has allowed us to make a interview with Juan Prego, Tim Dunne and Pim Vossen. Juan Prego is the founder of Creative Attitude and also of the First Online School of Creative Thought and Innovation in the World and represents the Creative Education Foundation (CEF) in Spain. Tim Dunne has more than twenty years of experience at CEF and has trained workers in creativity workshops at companies such as Astra-Zeneca, Deutsche-Bank, Cartier, De Agostini and Editions Atlas, Montblanc, Societe Generale. Pim Vossen also belongs to CEF, is responsible for training programs and speaks four languages.

In the interview we talked about many questions such as what is brainstorming, how can it be applied in educational settings, what skills do teachers need, how can parents work at home with these tools or what successful experiences exist. The interview is very open and intersperses written text with video interventions of the interviewees. He Video illustrating the article reflects on how parents can help in the process of boosting children's creativity at home. It includes a part in English, without subtitles, and a part in Spanish that translates the content into English and expands explanations and proposals.

Juan explained to us that Creative Attitude works with large and medium-sized companies, with independent professionals and with education professionals and in all these areas they benefit from the agreement with CEF and their more than forty years working in this area.

We talk about brainstorming as a group technique to generate ideas and its applications in children's environments. Thus we comment that we all have creative abilities and that we all work them in our day to day. In addition, that children are very creative and that the challenge is to get creativity to develop throughout the growth cycle. Because as age grows, creativity decreases, especially after 8 years. Juan explains in the following video perfectly what are the reasons that this happens.

We comment on how to break down barriers and Tim explains that children develop to socialize and stop keeping the creativity process alive. That is why their techniques can be applied so that children, from 5 and 6 years old, develop their skills. Tim explains in the following video.

Juan told us about the method used to develop creativity in the classroom. Thus he explained that with the schools the lines of action are to work with parents, teachers and students. It will be based on the needs of the school to choose the best way to do it. Apparently it is private schools that are moving faster to include these techniques in their training programs.

Before the interview I was seeing Juan, Tim and Pim working with adults in a creativity workshop using post-it, markers, music, dance, etc. so I asked them what materials they used with the children. Tim's answer is that It is adults who use material from young children in the workshops.

And the parents what. How do we have to respond to children's creativity to boost it, develop it, motivate it. And in the answer Tim offers us there are many keys that we can apply, especially to develop capabilities, leave them space and time so they can choose the best option. Tim explains that breaking the rules can be good because it allows you to develop creativity. Juan also helps to translate and gives more clues for parents to boost creativity at home. This content can be expanded with the video that illustrates the article.

We also talk about how the devices, as the iPad are allowing the creative capacity of children can be developed using the appropriate applications. In any case Juan told us that the most important thing is to develop the skills and confidence to create and then the support on which that skill will develop will come. This is critical of the practice that seems to place the tools before the capabilities losing much creativity potential along the way.

Finally we comment how creativity is maintained in business environments. Tim talked about how creativity can help workers and comments that in his experiences with students he observes that some of them can change their lives completely because they discover hidden talents, new illusions, changes in their behavior, new professional orientations, etc. All this means for Tim a challenge from which he obtains great satisfaction for how his students take advantage of creativity techniques.

They also mentioned other projects, still pending to come to light, in which companies, very oriented to sell products for children, worked with children between 12 and 17 years to identify opportunities and improve their processes and sales. Juan also explained how there are companies that encourage the participation of schools with visits to their facilities and making them collaborators in projects to improve and have additional visions of their processes / products / services.

Finally we mention techniques applied by schools such as the Waldorf we talked about here recently. Juan comments that these schools teach to think, to develop the skill and confidence ensuring that the process works. And it seems that Waldorf students have more capacity and ability to solve problems throughout their career in a way that is better than other students from other schools.

At the end of the interview Tim took the opportunity to invite us to participate in the Creativity conference organized by CREA in Italy from April 18 to 22 in which he will be one of the speakers. CREA develops these conferences since 2003 in any part of the world, this year 2012 it was up to Sestri Levante on the Italian Riviera making the visit even more palatable.

Finally, we thank Ana de Santos, from the communication agency, for her kindness to manage contact with Creative Attitude and Juan, Tim and Pim for their generosity in the time they dedicated to tell us these experiences, techniques and aids to ensure that our children have the skills and abilities to develop in the best possible way when they grow up.