Puppetry in Singapore

Our next SE Asia Creativity and Innovation Workshop tour will launch in early March in Malaysia and Singapore. Gary Friedman and Sharon Gelber travel internationally facilitating workshops, incorporating storytelling, puppetry, movement and improvisation. The objectives are to encourage and enhance team building, innovative thinking, creative problem solving and risk taking.

This short film provides a taste of their recent work at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, working with students, faculty, administration staff and business entrepreneurs.  The predominant purpose of the workshops are to use puppetry to challenge inhibition, and establish a 'safe' environment for opening communication and unleashing untapped innovative potential.

Puppetry performance using the medium of brown paper and every-day objects provides the opportunity to explore all modes of communication, demanding teamwork of a very profound and intense nature. Story telling enhances group empathy and opens up a level of frank open connection, which is unique and liberating in academic and business circles.

Humour is used throughout to put participants at ease and open the doors of communication for the sharing of opinions, as well as ‘safe’ and constructive self-analysis and group critique.  Participants are provided with the forum to uncover their own talents, see the strength of team members, work with members of their own faculty as well as other faculties to discuss and explore issues that are significant to them in their work and personal lives.

If you are interested to read the latest NTU evaluation report on this international work, just drop me an email here!

Back in Australia from an Asian Adventure

My apologies for not keeping you all updated on our SE Asia Tour during the past six weeks. It was just a really hectic time and especially traveling with a twenty-month old and doing 'Paper and Puppetry' workshops throughout Malaysia and Singapore, followed by a two-week break in Bali, which was great, despite the fact that I fell in the rain in the last week and fractured my spine. It was a really memorable tour and I believe it opened up the Asian market to our Creativity work.

The highlight of the workshops was our two-week stint at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (NTU). Our topic was ‘Demystifying Creativity and Moving beyond the expected, and into a space of novelty and uncharted territory in every aspect of life’.  Our brief was to carry out a pilot programme of study in the use of puppetry to break down barriers that currently exist: thus overcoming inhibition and establishing a 'safe' environment for unleashing innovative potential.

During the NTU season, we worked with Administration staff of NTU Ventures, a department which offers assistance to business start-ups in Singapore. We also had a two-day workshop with the Entrepreneurs of these start-up companies. (See the short video above!) We held a workshop for the Faculty of the university, where we worked with professors and lecturers from Engineering, Business School, Education, Humanities & Social Sciences and Arts. Even the Associate Provost of the university attended. The final workshop was the only arts-related one for stop-frame animation students. You can view a slide show of each workshop by clicking on the name links!

The evaluation outcomes of the workshops were extremely positive. One of the comments from the  faculty of education stated: "The workshop reminded me of the importance of communication and team work – critical in a big organization and in the area of education. It was also a humbling experience (there are so many creative colleagues around me!) It was a comfortable platform for me to meet people of other nationalities and from other schools within NTU. I also took comfort that creativity need not be in the form of a patent for a product which the engineers produce, but that we teacher educators are also being creative as we teach and prepare teachers for the next generation (abstract and not so measurable). My greatest take-away would be the reminder to celebrate life and humanity. I will make sure I pass this passion and compassion on to our student teachers."

We look forward to continuing our creativity work in Asia early next year. Watch this space!

Our Asian Puppetry Advenure begins here

Our Asian adventure is about to begin. On Wednesday we fly off to Malaysia, where we'll be conducting workshops for primary, high school students, as well as teachers in Penang. We'll be giving them a taste of creative thought and expression through our 'World of Paper'.  Exploring creativity is moving beyond the expected and into a space of novelty and uncharted territory.

After Malaysia, we'll be working ion Singapore at the Nanyang University for a few weeks. The purpose is to inspire creativity amongst students, faculty and small business start-ups. (You can read my previous post here when this work was first commissioned). After Singapore we are scheduled to explore Bali for a few weeks.

But let's discuss the creative process and reflect on the archaic educational system that still exists in most countries today. Universities and educational institutions that are worth their weight are starting to realise that a new approach is desperately needed. According to research (Watch Sir Ken Robinson's take on this here!) about 70% of jobs in the next twenty years, don't exist yet. So what does this mean in real terms? It means that we need to stimulate a new way of thinking and problem solving in our youth. Often our natural-born talents are ignored and the creativity that we may develop when we are young, gets forgotten as we are molded by our educational institutions. These skills will be most important, if we are going to be able to cope with an unknown future that faces us. So we have to encourage our youth to find their talent and passion and really nurture these soft skills to enable themselves to think creatively. What we are trying to do is harness these often-lost talents and assist our students in re-discovering their own natural creativity. Stay tuned to my Asian reports from next week!