Creative Facilitation...

In todays creativity and concept lecture, our tutors explained to us the purpose of creative facilitation which is a skill used in many professions to lead groups to find solutions. In the lecture we went into groups of around 4 to 5 and were given the task of coming up with ideas that would be appropriate for a festival in Liverpool that would celebrate LJMU students and involve teachers. In turns we took on the role of the facilitator who's job was to help the other group members to come up with ideas and if stuck, guide them in a creative direction by (for example) telling them to think of the worst possible idea and eventually flip it round so we could present the best possible ideas.
On a whiteboard we jotted down our thoughts and i found this as a good way of getting us to stay active and alert as our minds were focusing on ideas and not just sitting down to a desk wondering what we could come up with as a group.

I found this technique useful in helping me take on the role as a facilitator as it gave me a sense of leadership and actually made me feel more comfortable around my peers. Furthermore, when i was acting as another member of the group, it became easier to think of ideas for the festival as we were able to stem ideas from previous ideas that me and my group members had already created. I believe this technique acts as useful tool in becoming more confident in your team and pushes you to be more dominant when neccessary.

Google Maps..

In last week's session we were briefed on our next assignment which is based on Google Maps. We were split into groups of 3 and each group were given a set location to start from, our group was given the Anglican Cathedral which we were really familiar with as one of our lectures is held opposite the building each Friday morning.
After a good half hour of discussion, my group decided that we were going to do a diary entry of the architect that designed the Anglican Cathedral and his journeys whilst designing other buildings across the country. As the assignment focuses on narrative i think this will help us to structure a clear storyline and help us improve our narrative skills for future assignments of similar nature. I look forward to seeing what we produce and hopefully the rest of the class will find our diary entry quite interesting.

It's Liverpool...

In our first lesson back after the Christmas holidays, our tutors basically went through what we was going to be doing for the upcoming semester. We got set two assignments which was to work on a project called 'It's Liverpool' which let's us film any part of Liverpool that signifies the city and enables viewers of the clip to easily recognise the city as Liverpool. We had a couple of new members join my group which i was pleased about as it gave us the opportunity to welcome new ideas.
At first we came up with the idea of creating a film that was based on the Albert Docks, so when we went to film we had our shots planned and were ready to go, however, the weather was a complete disappointment as it was dismal, grey and extremely windy which made our footage look utterly boring and uninteresting. After showing our tutors the rough edit, we had a little discussion and decided to change our narrative and base the film on the big wheel instead. Luckily when we went to film the weather was beautiful, although it was a little cold.. the sun was shining and there was barely a cloud in the sky which in turn made our entire footage look positive and gave a more positive feel to the film.