Turkish delights

Here is the video reporting moments from the meeting in Turkey (29 February-5 March 2012): work, culture and leisure time in Istanbul and Sapanca.

Thanks to Jesùs de la Fuente from Guadalajara, who shot the movie.

Break the chains

This is the second short movie shot in Istanbul during the 1st workshop of the EVALT projects and produced by the participating educators (acting, direction, shooting, editing): Time of crisis.

Topic: problems can be overcome when the person reacts proactively and changes his/her own mental and behavioral stereotypes that reduce the possibility to grow.

Synopsis: a teacher has lost his job and is in a depressive mood. Everything is black and there are no future perspectives in his mind. But he has the strength to react and expresses publicly his will to go beyond the crisis.

Galatasaray Hamam

During the workshop held in Istanbul in March this year, the participants - all volunteers working in education with disadvantaged groups of adults in Italy, Lithuania, Portugal and Spain - experienced the methodology of movies applied to adult education for empowerment and for the development of soft skills.

After having attended a theorical introduction about the method and a presentation on the methodological guidelines, delivered by the hosting partner Şişli Teknik ve Endüstri Meslek Lisesi, the participants were divided in two groups and had the opportunity to create a short movie for education, from the elaboration of an idea and a scenario, to shooting the movie. Time to play around with was not so much, but at the end two short movies were produced.They are not professional, on the technical point of view, because everything (acting, directing, shooting, editing) has been done by the participants, who are educators in sectors other than filming.

Here is the first one: Hammam is glue for friendship.

Topic: the difference among languages is not a barrier if persons have good attitude towards each other, have a will to understand other people and try to use other channels to communicate.

Synopsis: tourists from Lithuania, Italy, Spain and Portugal are in Istanbul and want to go to Galatasary Hamam. They don't speak English and ask information to a Turkish person, who is not willing to help. Second scenario: same situation but with different attitude by the Turkish person.

Meeting in Istanbul, 29 Feb-5 Mar 2012

From 29 of February to 5 of March 2012, the EVALT partners have met to attend the 1st workshop of the project, coordinated by Şişli Teknik ve Endüstri Meslek Lisesi.

The workshop was about the use of movies in adult education, in particular movie-therapy and shooting short films. The participants have had the possibility to experiment personally how to elaborate a scenario and to produce a short movie with educational purpose. The movies will be soon available in EVALT website.

Below some pictures from the meeting.

Tolga Vuranok presenting the workshops and the Turkish colleagues

The Portuguese team

The Spanish team and part of the Italian team

The Lithuanian team

Creative Growth through Art

Creative Growth Art Center is an organization, located in California, that serves adult artists with developmental, mental and physical disabilities, providing a professional studio environment for artistic development, gallery exhibition and representation and a social atmosphere among peers.
For more information, news, activities, artists, click here!

Is there a hidden bias against creativity?

CEOs, teachers, and leaders claim they want creative ideas to solve problems. But creative ideas are rejected all the time. A new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people have a hidden bias against creativity. We claim to like creativity, but when we’re feeling uncertain and anxious—just the way you might feel when you’re trying to come up with a creative solution to a problem—we cannot recognize the creative ideas we so desire.

Generally, people think creativity is good. Before starting this study, the researchers checked that with a group of college students. “Overwhelmingly, the data showed that students had positive implicit and explicit associations with creativity,” says Jennifer Mueller of the University of Pennsylvania. She carried out the new study with Shimul Melwani of the University of Pennsylvania and Jack A. Goncalo of Cornell University.

But in experiments, people’s perceptions changed. In one experiment, the researchers made some people think about uncertainty—by telling them they might get some extra money after the study based on a random lottery. Other participants went into the study without that priming. They were all given a test that shows how they group concepts together. The people who had been made to think about uncertainty were more likely to subconsciously associate words like “creative,” “inventive,” and “original” with bad concepts like “hell,” “rotten,” and “poison.” In the other condition people associated creativity words with things like “rainbow,” “cake,” and “sunshine.”

“If I ask you right now to estimate whether or not you can generate a creative idea to solve a problem, you’re not going to know,” Mueller says. That feeling of uncertainty might be the root of the problem. When you’re trying to come up with a creative solution to a problem, you worry that you can’t come up with a good idea, that what you do come up with might not be practical, or that your idea might make you look stupid. “It feels so bad sometimes trying to be creative in a social context,” Mueller says.

This uncertainty may make leaders reject creative ideas. “But sometimes we need creative ideas. If you’re a company that makes radios and suddenly nobody’s buying them anymore, you don’t have a choice,” Mueller says—you have to come up with something new. Her research suggests that rather than focusing on the process of coming up with ideas, companies may need to pay more attention to what makes them reject creative ideas.

Source: Association for Psychological Science

Experiencing different cultures enhances creativity

Creativity can be enhanced by experiencing cultures different from one's own, according to a study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (published by SAGE).

Three studies looked at students who had lived abroad and those who hadn't, testing them on different aspects of creativity. Relative to a control group, which hadn't experienced a different culture, participants in the different culture group provided more evidence of creativity in various standard tests of the trait. Those results suggest that multicultural learning is a critical component of the adaptation process, acting as a creativity catalyst.
The researchers believe that the key to the enhanced creativity was related to the students' open-minded approach in adapting to the new culture. In a global world, where more people are able to acquire multicultural experiences than ever before, this research indicates that living abroad can be even more beneficial than previously thought.
"Given the literature on structural changes in the brain that occur during intensive learning experiences, it would be worthwhile to explore whether neurological changes occur within the creative process during intensive foreign culture experiences," write the authors, William W. Maddux, Hajo Adam, and Adam D. Galinsky. "That can help paint a more nuanced picture of how foreign culture experiences may not only enhance creativity but also, perhaps literally, as well as figuratively, broaden the mind.

Source: EurekAlert!

Complete article: When in Rome… Learn Why the Romans Do What They Do: How Multicultural Learning Experiences Facilitate Creativity