In order to do the best work, get new ideas and create amazing media campaigns, MEC prides itself on the nourishment of its internal specialisms and expertise. However, we also know that to do this even better it’s important we take off our media glasses and look for inspiration in other places. Therefore, last year we introduced the Yellow Hat team whose aim was to encourage the agency to get curious by running fortnightly sessions and sending weekly emails of inspiration.
In August, we wanted to do something a bit different – so we launched the Yellow Hat Month of Creativity. Several clever people including Albert Einstein, Sylvia Plath and Walt Disney have all championed creativity and the fact being creative can help you in any field. Therefore, in an attempt to make MEC Manchester as innovate as Einstein we decided to dedicate the whole month to getting people more creative. A hard task when so many people believe they’re “just not very creative”.
The Yellow Hat Team, however, were up for the challenge and took inspiration from Edward de Bono, a Maltese physicist, inventor and the man who invented the term lateral thinking. He said “creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way,” So we decided the best way to get people to be more creative was to get them doing different things. So what does this involve you may ask….
Well the month involved four sessions…
- Firstly we were taught to knit wooly hats, and office lunchtimes have been taken over by wool, needles and stiches. All of the hats will be donated to the homeless charity Barnabus as part of IPC’s charity initiative
- Next up we got painting, which turned out to not just be really fun but also really relaxing. All of our masterpieces will be donated to the Oncology Ward at the children’s hospital. These will then be displayed in the treatment room where doctors and nurses like to display artwork for the children undergoing quite horrible treatment. Research has proved this can distract them and make the ordeal, hopefully seem less bad. We thought we’d help them out with this and if nothing else give the kids a good laugh at our attempts to be Picasso
- The next session involves two MECer’s Nick Borland and Emma Drury, who are currently on a Rising Talent course, teaching us what they learned from their master class with a creativity expert.
- Finally, as a MEC initiative isn’t complete without a competition our final session will involve a mystery challenge with great prizes to be won
This month has proved really popular and has not only been great fun but we strongly believe these tasks will help people with their work. As another very clever lady Maya Angelou said: “You can’t use up creativity, the more you use and the more you have”, here at MEC we are keen to ensure people learn to be more creative and continue to implement this into their work.