Creative Thinking Random Word Games

An emotional block is one of the most common human traits that stop us from developing creative tendencies ie the ability to explore new possibilities in a childlike way (ie fun).

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This block typically results from past traumatic experiences and/or even the stress of everyday living.

At the core of most emotional blocks is insecurity. The fear of making a mistake, of making a fool or of taking a risk stops or limits us.

So, we decided to develop a game that could be done personally, publicly or even collaboratively in a group, which would work beyond the typical emotional blocks of our everyday life; to tickle our creative senses, to motivate us into action or thought, to stimulate our grey matter.

You know the saying, “to get the juices flowing”.

We just had to work out what and how. We considered, incubated, tinkered and pondered…

One of the social media’s frequented by students, and indeed the community as a whole, is Instagram. Not surprising because it is highly visual. It is also the place for anyone to tinker, dabble and release creative visions to the community. Instagram became the platform selected. 

Instagram is the communities social learning platform.

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To successfully generate new ideas daily that are fun and engaging, it’s good to include a random element. Why? Well, to keep a daily momentum, the task needs to remain spontaneous, casual and stimulating. The random element for this task therefore became the word or words provided at a designated time each day, with the participant generating an interpretation of that word visually.

Random elements or associations have been a common creative thinking tool for many a decade. Any random word can be included as a technique to come up with a new idea. The power of random is that it can lead you to explore possibilities that you would not intentionally have considered previously.

The game became quick paced and fun, with wide and varied results.

The visual element  provided by Instagram, made it attractive, simple and a pleasurable challenge.

Participants contributions spurred on thoughts and comments from others, inspiring them to create better results for themselves next time. It is the participants that give us the daily inspiration and motivation to continue; their contributions have sparked debates, conversations, memories and laughter.

Combining the random word with the idea generation process for considering all aspects, incubating, and verifying gave us this game that we have called the “unearthing Instagram challenge”.

Let the games continue.

Here are some examples of the Unearthing Instagram Challenge results !

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