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Creativity: Innovation and Industry
Enhancing creativity, innovation and productivity
A one day symposium exploring creativity
6th December 2007
De Montfort University
Advance Notice
No company ever cost-cut its way to greatness. Creativity is the path to greater productivity, new products, and new services. Sustained success in business depends on the ability to innovate. Creativity shouldn’t be restricted to the ‘creatives’, it needs to flow through the entire company.[1] <#_ftn1>
“To compete successfully in the global economy, we must foster a dynamic environment with innovative and creative businesses at its heart.”[2] <#_ftn2>
This one day conference will look at how new technologies and new ways of thinking can be applied to successful business innovation. There are four main themes.
What is creativity?
How can we be more creative?
How does innovation happen?
How is creativity managed successfully in business?
To explore and answer these questions will be thoughts, experiences, and insights from four distinguished speakers.
> Prof. Margaret Boden (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/profile276.html)
> Dr. Claudia Eckert (http://www.edc.eng.cam.ac.uk/people/cme26.html)
> Frank Boyd (http://www.unexpectedmedia.com/)
> Toby Moores (http://www.sleepydog.net)
There will also be a parallel strand of workshops should you choose to learn in a more practical way. These will be
> Enhancing Creativity: a creativity assistant
> Creative Collaboration: face to face
> Speaking the language of creativity
> Creative techniques
For more information please visit http://cii.dmu.ac.uk <http://cii.dmu.ac.uk/>
Mega-Events and Civil Societies
A two-day international conference held at Queen Mary (University of London), UK
Thursday 26 – Friday 27 June 2008
Call for Papers
Sporting mega-events, such as Olympic and Commonwealth Games and World Cups, have over the last two decades become increasingly central to the design and implementation of urban renewal strategies and the projection of local civic cultural and social identities to global audiences. They are widely held to act as key showcase opportunities for attracting external income investment, implementing major infrastructural development projects, creating new employment, reinforcing cultural democratisation and constructing enduring physical and symbolic legacies. They also, increasingly, function as key international governance regimes for the dissemination of current expressions of universal worldviews, such as human rights, civil equality, and environmentalism: indeed, major international tournaments, from World Cups to Olympic Games, now routinely demand the integration of sustainable development principles into event staging.
Yet for civil societies, sporting mega-events are also inherently problematic and controversial. Their staging has recently been associated by a number of academics and social actors with the channelling of public resources to transnational corporate interests, the attendant privatisation of public space, the suspension and loss of civil liberties, the reduction of democratic accountability, the downgrading of social policy priorities, and the entrenchment of social polarisation. This inter-disciplinary international conference, to be held in London four years ahead of the city’s 2012 Olympics and two months before the Beijing Games, therefore invites papers assessing the impact of sporting mega-events on civil societies. These may include, in general, the opportunities afforded to, and responses and resistances constructed by, social movements, community groups, NGOs and other civil society actors; more specifically, we would particularly welcome contributions addressing:
protest against mega-events in all its forms;
the re-drawing of urban space, population displacement, in/exclusion;
mega-events as opportunities for ecological modernisation, the implementation of sustainable development policies, and their evaluation;
mega-events, transnational civil society actors and local populations;
mega-events and social class;
mega-events and prostitution;
the gendering of social and cultural spaces;
the corporatisation of civic space, the development of counter-globalisation frames and mobilisations;
civil liberties and the implementation of new security agendas;
political and media representations of mega-events;
mega-events as social movement ‘venues’;
mega-events and North-South paradigms;
event staging and the development of international governance regimes;
other relevant topics
Please submit abstracts of up to 300 words to either Graeme Hayes (g.a.hayes[AT]aston.ac.uk) or John Karamichas (j.karamichas[AT} qub.ac.uk by Monday 17 December 2007.
Expressions of interest are welcomed, as are proposals for panels of three papers. Further information, including details of keynote speakers, will appear on the conference website in due course.
EMOTION, SPACE AND SOCIETY — New Journal for 2008
Emotion, Space and Society provides a forum for interdisciplinary
debate on theoretically informed research on the emotional
intersections between people and places. The journal aims are
conceived to encourage investigations of feelings and affect in
various spatial and social contexts, environments and landscapes.
Questions of emotion are relevant to a variety of disciplines, and
submissions will be sought from across the full spectrum of the
humanities and social sciences.
Submissions will investigate the multiplicity of spaces and places
that produce and are produced by emotional and affective life,
representing an inclusive range of theoretical and methodological
engagements with emotion as a social, cultural and spatial phenomenon.
The launch of this journal represents a unique and timely opportunity
to explore exciting new ways to think about natures, cultures and
histories of emotional life.
Contributions are anticipated from authors who call upon and develop
issues emerging from work on emotion from feminist, geographical,
historical, philosophical, psychotherapeutic, sociological,
anthropological, political and other disciplinary perspectives and
from the spatial turn in cultural theory.
The journal also has obvious connections with the recent resurgence of
interest in the importance of ‘everyday’ life as a social category and
with interactions between place, identity and felt values.
The journal will publish research articles, review articles, and a
variety of shorter opinion and editorial pieces designed to stimulate
debate, together with book reviews and book review essays. Innovative
presentational formats are encouraged.
For possible publication in 2008, submissions to Emotion, Space and
Society MUST BE RECEIVED BY JANUARY 15, 2008.
EDITORS, Emotion, Space and Society
———————————————————–
Dr. Joyce Davidson, Queen’s University, Canada
joyce.davidson [AT] queensu.ca
Dr. Liz Bondi, University of Edinburgh, UK
liz.bondi [at] ed.ac.uk
Dr. Elspeth Probyn, The University of Sydney, Australia
elspeth.probyn [at] arts.usyd.edu.au
Dr. Mick Smith, Queen’s University, Canada
ms24 [at] post.queensu.ca
Can Art Matter?
In a world of social crisis and looming ecological collapse, can art be anything more than a frill?
Opening Space for Engaged Art Practices
What is your creative work? Does it matter? Does it express and achieve what you want? Do you sense there could be more? Could you accomplish more if you had the right partners, if you could find the right people, if you had all the creative tools you need to become a catalyst for change?
Please join us! … as we open space for engaged art practices to flourish.
Come make new connections with people of vision, leadership, craft and opportunity. Give others the chance to learn from your own efforts and projects. Find models, mentors and mutual interests. Create Hubs, Nodes and Networks. Share resources and stories. Make new friends and forge new alliances.
October 12, 2007
to register email director@islandsinstitute.com
The purpose is simple and important: to open an online space where we can meet to foment a creative stew. We can co-create a space to argue and learn how to make art that matters, art that connects with communities, art that can change the world. Together we can foster creative solutions to real-world problems, connect practitioners with projects, and support, mentor and empower engaged art practices.
This online conference will occur in concert with the Vancouver, BC conference Live in Public: The Art of <http://www.grunt.bc.ca/engage/> Engagement. We will have access to information, images and conversation from the face-to-face gathering of artists working in the public realm.
Participants in the Vancouver conference will engage in dialogue with us, posting and developing their ideas online. There will also be a link with the Open <http://jendelosreyes.com/openengagement/about.html> Engagement
Conference in Regina, Saskatchewan.
Register now – it’s FREE and it’s EASY!
Simply email director [AT] islandsinstitute.com
<mailto:director@islandsinstitute.com?subject=Conference%20Registration>
What will happen?
Before the conference, participants are invited to introduce themselves and their work, beginning a conversation that imagines what we need and want from the online conference. We can create a book for distribution to online and real-time conference participants, introducing all who are registered, with information on their work.
On October 12, 2007 a facilitated online “Open Space” will be created where, over 24 hours, we can engage in dialogue on the important questions. Ideas and images from the Vancouver conference will be posted as they are created.
At the conclusion of the day, each online and real-time participant will receive a written record of the discussions and recommendations generated by the conference.
After the conference, there will be an opportunity for ongoing dialogue, networking and projects.
Caffyn Kelley
www.islandsinstitute.com <http://www.islandsinstitute.com/>
Phone: 250-537-2227
<http://www.islandsinstitute.com/>
RENEW Northwest Masterclass: Newlands – Land Regeneration for the 21st Century
Thursday 25 October 2007 @ MANCAT, One Central Park, Manchester
A free half day Masterclass, this event will outline plans for the Newlands 2 programme, identifying the sites that have been selected for treatment, which will take the Newlands scheme across the region.
Launched in 2003, Newlands is a £59 million land regeneration scheme that is reclaiming large areas of brownfield land across England’s Northwest, responding to local and regional economic and social needs by transforming sites into thriving, durable community woodlands.
Funded by the Northwest Development Agency, and delivered by the Forestry Commission (alongside a number of local partners), Newlands marks a step change in the way that brownfield land (which is at its highest within this region) is returned to community use.
The aim of this event is to provide public, private and voluntary and community sector regeneration professionals with an understanding of the national and regional context for ’soft-end-use’ brownfield land regeneration. It will highlight the Northwest region as a national frontrunner in innovative brownfield land regeneration, disseminating best practice in land regeneration from across all areas of the Newlands scheme.
The Masterclass: Newlands will be held on Thursday 25 October 2007 at MANCAT on One Central Park, Northampton Street, Manchester. View a map of the location of the venue.
Beginning with registration at 9.15am, the event will conclude with a networking lunch at 1.30pm. There will also be an optional tour of the Moston Vale site between 2.00pm and 3.30pm. Please indicate if you wish to join the tour at the time of booking.
To confirm your attendance and view more information and an agenda for the day, please book online by visiting www.renew.co.uk, no later than Wednesday 17 October 2007. Places will be allocated on a first come first served basis.
Please note there is no charge for attending this event, however, if a delegate registers and fails to attend without giving 48 hours notice, a nominal charge of £50 will be allocated without exception. This is due to costs incurred for that place at the event.
For further information about RENEW Northwest visit www.RENEW.co.uk
Contact Us
Telephone: 0151 703 0135
Email: info [AT] RENEW.co.uk
