This material-based hands-on workshop guides participants through the new culture of making. We argue that, regardless of role, making feeds the creativity that sparks innovative products, processes, and concepts. In this session, we will begin with an open-ended team making activity. As the activity goes on, instructors speak about current cultural and scientific beliefs about the making process--what are the myths and truths? How and why is making important to your everyday work? How can employees become self motivated to produce novel solutions within a dynamic business context by practicing maker techniques? Our instructors come from the fields of art/creativity, digital advertising, and digital production. We promise a lively and thought-provoking session: making is an empowering activity and an essential tool in digital contexts. Meet the instructors: Allison Kent-Smith:
Allison has spent the last decade or so in digital mostly in business development and strategy roles. She accidentally became involved in digital education at Crispin Porter + Bogusky as Director of Interactive Development. Co-launched Boulder Digital Works, then landed at Goodby Silverstein & Partners to launch a digital school within the agency. The past 5 years she has focused exclusively on digital education which has allowed her to experiment, practice, and found/launch smith & beta, a Boulder based digital education start up. Lori Kent:
Lori is a writer, arts education and creativity researcher, and PT professor of visual studies/art. For the past decade, she has lectured on the impact of digital technologies and has conducted lectures and workshops on creativity-related topics at RISD; Ordos Center for the Arts (Inner Mongolia, China), Hyper Island (Stockholm), TEDx Warsaw, and Alto University (Helsinki). Lori was a Fulbright Fellow at the Jan Matejko Academy (Krakow, Poland) and a NEH fellow at Stanford University (2012). She has been based in New York City since 1995 when she began her doctoral studies at Columbia University. Lori is now smith&beta’s Director of Learning Experience.