One-Day Conference on Creativity and Innovation Held at De Montfort University
26th November 2007
A one-day conference entitled Creativity: Innovation and Industry will be held at De Montfort University (DMU) next month to look at how new technologies and new ways of thinking can be applied to successful business innovation.
Held on the 6 December, the conference is run jointly by Creativity East Midlands (CREEM) and East Midlands New Technology Initiative (NTI) Creative Industries Centre for Knowledge Exchange.
"This day will be a chance to benefit from the various strands of research we have been carrying out into creativity: to find new ways of working; to understand old ways; to start new collaborations; and to work with some different people", said Thom Corah, Research Assistant for CREEM.
For more information visit creem.dmu.ac.uk.
CREEM is a network of researchers and practitioners based in the Institute of Creative Technologies (IOCT) at DMU.
Its participants come from a wide range of disciplines but share a common interest in creativity and innovation. They are investigating the terms used to describe creativity and innovation, and are looking at how creativity can enhance innovative practice.
"Creativity: Innovation and Industry is a chance to present what we have learnt about creativity to the wider community of both business and academia. It also gives us the opportunity to bring together people who are renowned for their work on creativity and innovation", said Thom Corah.
The conference will feature four distinguished speakers discussing four main themes looking at how new technologies and new ways of thinking can be applied to successful business innovation:
Prof. Margaret Boden, author of The Creative Mind will asks 'what is creativity?' and talk about the relation between creativity and artificial intelligence;
Dr Claudia Eckert, Assistant Director of the Engineering Design Centre and Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, will discuss the theme of 'how can we be more creative?' by drawing on business examples to describe modelling, process planning and change prediction to improve performance in complex engineering processes;
'How does innovation happen?' is the theme to be discussed by Frank Boyd, founder of Unexpected Media and currently working with Creative London. He will describe a series of innovative programmes to support creative, social and economic development in the UK's new media sector and the lessons he has learnt about successful innovation;
Toby Moores, CEO of Leicester-based new media and ideas company SleepyDog, will share experiences of working in the creative industries and the fostering of creative thinking to generate new business when he talks about the theme of 'how is creativity managed successfully in business?'
In addition to these speakers, four practical workshops will run simultaneously, designed to promote discussion on the following topics:
Enhancing Creativity: a creative assistant will give participants the opportunity to try a prototype tool, called the De Montfort Creativity Assistant software, designed to support creativity;
Creative Collaboration: face to face will look at aspects of creative process, collaboration and creativity within teams;
Speaking the language of creativity will teach participants the 'Semantic Web' and how computing and linguistic techniques can help express us express ourselves more productively;
Creative techniques will examine what is known about creativity and will teach a number of creativity enhancing techniques.
For further information or to be kept informed about IOCT activities, please contact:The Director, Institute of Creative Technologies,
De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH
Tel: (+44) 0116 250 6146
Email: eedmonds [at] dmu.ac.uk
www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk