CreativeMix Conference a Beanfield of Inspiration

(Image: Jeremy Lim)

Vancouver creative types mingle at CreativeMix ideation conference hoping to get inspired and collaborate

 

If you’re an artistic type, you know full well that inspiration is the fuel needed to get anything done. Unfortunately that fuel is not the same as coffee, and isn’t always quite as accessible. If only it were found in abundance, like Starbucks in Vancouver..

 

The purpose of the November 4 CreativeMix conference was to be a beanfield of inspiration. Produced by Corwin Hiebert and Eileen Rothe, the day was divided into speaker talks—by creative types such as Pixar’s Dylan Brown, the PuSh festival’s Norman Armour, ballerina Chan Hon Goh and Vancouver son musician Dan Mangan—and workshops aimed at helping you maximize your creative potential.

 

As well, a creative exhibition was held all throughout the day in the lobby. 

 

The audience, which was about 50 percent Capilano students, came away notably inspired.

 

Jocelyn Lernout, student

“It’s an inspiration to hear people in a variety of industries who are being creative and making things happen. Hearing about their learnings and growth is a great thing. It’s great insight into our creative process.”

 

(Image: Jeremy Lim)

Mark Shein, architect designer

The first speaker was Mark Shieh, founder and director of Take Root, who spoke about how the hyphen is the connector between needs and solutions: diverge-converge; old school-new school; culture-commerce; create-share and so on.

 

He spent a lot of time talking about one of his projects, the revitalization of New Westminster’s River Market—a collaborative space for food, commerce and culture to converge to provide a public market that nurtures community—and how he was making it about the experience, as well as the food.

 

He also made a call out for a Downtown Eastside initiative by Building Opportunities with Business (BOB), which is looking for ideas on how to apply design thinking to creating and sharing value.

 

(Image: Jeremy Lim)

Dylan Brown, creative director of Pixar’s Vancouver studio

Next, was Pixar’s Dylan Brown, who spoke about how in order to be successful, you need to aim to accomplish goals that are slightly out of your comfort zone, keeping you stressed but not too stressed. When you succeed, it will feel good; if you don’t succeed, you will learn a valuable lesson. As well, on the best teams, he said, leaders are more effective when they consider the structure of their organization as more of an inverted pyramid, where the leader is at the bottom helping to facilitate the success and autonomy of the team at the top.

 

He also talked a lot about how great Pixar is.

 

Ken Ku, student

“There’s definitely a lot to see here. It’s a wide range of disciplines.”

 

For the first workshop we had to get into groups and each wrote our one biggest challenge on a piece of paper, which was then given to another group. Then we had to brainstorm solutions to the problems, using random words like “warthog” or “pot,” and then give them back. The feedback to my problem—being antisocial—was somewhat idealistic for my taste (“Join a sport you enjoy!”) but other people seemed really into the solutions they were given.

 

Kim McMullen, designer

“Being around creative people is what I want to do. It’s a great opportunity.”

 

(Image: Jeremy Lim)

Natalie Purschwitz, designer

The next speaker was Natalie Purschwitz, a Vancouver designer who spent a year wearing clothes she made herself, including shoes, socks and underwear. Her MakeShift blog chronicling the project attracted something of a cult following, much akin to last year’s The Uniform Project.  

 

“By having complete control every day over what I wore, I had to keep shifting my ideology,” she said, of the challenges that the elements brought her and what she learned from problem solving them. Purschwitz eventually got pretty good at making shoes, as well as her signature asymmetrical cardigans.

 

She showed slides of other projects that took up year-long goals, noting how the imposition of a “limit,” such as a 365-day daily commitment, means the art and the challenge become habit and are integrated into your life. Example included the 100-Mile Diet by Vancouver’s Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, the Grey Sweatsuit Revolution and, most notably, Dick Proenneke’s Alone in the Wilderness project.

 

“One year is just long enough to lose an old perspective and gain a new one,” she said. “Setting up parameters allows you to focus.”

 

(Image: Jeremy Lim)

Kris Krug, social media expert and photographer

 

Kris Krug, Vancouver’s veritable king of social media, spoke about the social media revolution and the importance of sharing and keeping things open when it comes to stuff on the interwebs.

 

Krug is a big fan of Creative Commons and encouraged everyone to get their work out there for all to use, because it will lead to more opportunities, as well as put the creators in control of their work, instead of the distributors.

 

He also mentioned how China has websites more popular than Facebookm, and when English becomes a second language in China, the Internet is going to completely change.

 

Kyrian Okane, creative director

 

(Image: Jeremy Lim)

Sean Carter, Vida Jurcic & Nigel Yonge, founders of Hangar 18

After a pretty delicious (organic) lunch, the trio who founder Hangar 18, an ad and creative agency, talked about how “three nuts make a tree.”

 

The point of the talk was about what makes collaborations work, or fail, but mostly it was just funny slides about each of the partners and what inspires them. They showed pictures of rock bands like the Police and Rush and graded them on how well they did as collaborators. (Rush are still together so they got a good grade. The Police aren’t so they did poorly.) Then they showed a jokey video made by their employees.

 

(Image: Jeremy Lim)

Norman Armour, PuSh Festival founder

They were followed by Armour, who stressed how important it is to connect with people whose work you admire—for him this included SFU alum Jeff Wall, John Cage, Patricia Gruben and Ken Lum (to name a few) as well as Boca del Lupo’s Jay Dodge, who was the one to suggest he get involved with CreativeMix—and the necessity for the avant-garde community to connect with the more mainstream creative community.

 

 

Now that Gordon Campbell has stepped down, Armour is pretty excited to see where Vancouver’s arts community will go. He encouraged the audience to find something that interests them, support local theatre and get to know the people behind it. Armour said you’ll never know what a connection will lead to.

 

His guiding principle for creative output: “Create work,” he said, “that forces audiences to interact with it,” to have epiphanies. (For examples of this kind of work, check out the PuSh festival in Vancouver in January and February 2011.)

 

Shannon Stewart, student

“I wanted to gain inspiration. I learned a lot of different ways to be creative.”

 

The next workshop talked about the different work types and the challenges each face. Apparently in the workforce, there are doers, planners and trackers. I don’t see myself as any one of these things, probably just a mix of all, so I didn’t really learn much here. Plus, I was fading fast.

 

Sharon Barnes, photographer

“I’m looking to connect with more creative people in Vancouver.”

 

(Image: Jeremy Lim)

Chan Hon Goh, dancer

The pentultimate speakers of the day was Chan Hon Goh. Goh was the lead ballerina with the National Ballet of Canada, though she recently retired from performing.

 

She talked about the unique life of a ballerina, and the importance of diversifying your talent. Dancers, like athletes, have a limited time in their career, so expanding their skill set is essential.

 

(Image: Jeremy Lim)

Dan Mangan, singer-songerwriter 

To round out the day, Dan Mangan spoke about combining the main themes of the day by finding inspiration in collaborations. 

 

The local musician, who just sold out two shows at the Vogue, recounted his rise to success and how important it was for him to connect with local musicians whose work he admired.

 

Then he showed this video, by Ok Go, to drive home the point that collaborations are what help artists thrive. A relevant way to end the day, considering that was all the conference’s organizers had hoped for: To inspire everyone in attendance to make room for collaboration.

 

Judging by everyone who stuck around to mingle and drink, I’m sure it was a start.