Author: Oliver BroadbentPage 9 of 10
Journalist and author John-Paul Flintoff is this person who inspired me to start this podcast. He talks passionately about how to get people started on their creative projects…
This is the first of two episodes of the Eiffelovercast recorded in San Francisco earlier this month. I was in the city to run some Think Up workshops,…
Bristol Swing Festival is unique among swing dancing festivals because it offers the chance to learn circus skills alongside learning to dance. One of the things that I love about…
Ever since I was a kid my Dad has been sharing musical composition strategies with me, so I think music has been a lens thorugh which I’ve thought…
In this episode of the podcast I attempt a sonic recreation of a part of the London Underground that never got built, a stretch of the Northern Line…
We live in a time of rapid and accelerating technological change. It is the age of digital, big data and smart technology. The digital zeitgeist is presented with…
Photographer and photojournalist Nick Cobbing talks about photographing the Arctic, what happens to photographic equipment at minus 38 degrees, using drones to take photos, the role of the…
This is the second workshop I have run in the ‘Everyday Creativity for…’ series, this time for blues dancers in the London blues scene. A huge thank you…
Ever since I saw my first one zoom past as a boy I’ve loved TGVs. In January I travelled from one side of France to the other and…
We are trying to define the heritage of the future – the creativity and ideas in engineering that people will look back on – Andrew Scoones Andrew Scoones…
Recently in beginner’s swing dancing classes I’ve described the connection between lead and follow when dancing side-by-side Charleston as being a bit like how pre-stressed concrete works. I…
I’ve been promising friends this post for some time, especially those that have eaten in a restaurant with me recently. In the season of good will and consumption,…
If you own a big pile of Lego, then sorting it into separate boxes for different sorts of parts makes it much quicker for you to build anything…
We need distraction-free time to make progress on our creative projects. At the same time, we rely on online networks and information to nourish our ideas. The trouble…
The Happy Grid is a technique I devised a few months ago to help me use short and long-term happiness as a guide for daily decision making. Since…
I love packing. But until four years ago, I hated it. I would put off packing my bags, leave it to the last minute, forget things, bring the…
Persuasion is an important skill for designers: to convince the audience of an idea is it to allow it take root and evolve. Unfortunately, I never have…
One of the things that I’m learning through the design and creativity coaching sessions that I am running with engineers is that it is not a lack of…
Creativity doesn’t happen on its own, it happens in a social context. So if we want to build creativity in organisations, we need to focus not only on…
A recent weekend of conservation work Hazel Hill Woods has revealed to me another woodland analogy for the struggles of daily life, and how we might overcome…
I have just read an interesting piece on the Stanford university website, ‘Stanford study finds walking improves creativity’ (article found via this news piece on the Hazel Hill…
Last weekend 38 people came down to Hazel Hill for our annual Autumn Conservation weekend for two days of woodland conservation and human restoration. We design the weekend…
I recently read Daniel Goleman’s excellent book Focus, and I have been thinking about how our ability to focus affects our ability to design. This thinking was the…
I’m writing this on the train home from Towersey Festival to which I had been invited by my friends Nat and Sophie to help out with some swing…
Today I am working on course material related to defining what is a good conceptual design. I think, in construction at least, it is quite difficult to identify…
Every time I go to the woods I find new insight or inspiration that I can use in my teaching. Today’s comes from deer tracks. I know the…
A couple of time in the last year or so I have used what I call the ‘seedling analogy’ to explain what I believe to be is a…
Today at Think Up, Ed McCann and I had lunch with Mike Chrimes from the Institution of Civil Engineers. The main topic on the menu was how to…
Since April, through a mixture of parental leave and part-time working, I’ve been the primary carer for our daughter. Tomorrow I resume (almost) full time office work so…
[pe2-image src=”http://lh5.ggpht.com/-MY6w8huA6Ic/UchQA4uxxhI/AAAAAAAAAbU/Fi8B9PgfMl8/s144-c-o/13%252520-%2525201.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/101339256689884186918/62413?authkey=Gv1sRgCN3nl-Dng7iRGw#5893048088573101586″ caption=”Gillespie Park” type=”image” alt=”13 – 1″ ] I’m now several chapters into George Monbiot’s book Feral, and I’m enjoining it immensely. It is already making…