Creative Process

What I learned about the creative process...

The creative process in this workshop included research, analysis, and applied learning to help participants improve their understanding of urban design and gentrification. The format of the workshop's lesson plans encouraged active learning, a technique introduced in CPSA260, to help students assume academic responsibility, collaborate with each other, and think critically about the design processes. According to the Center for Teaching and Learning at UC Berkeley, "active learning approaches promote skill development and higher order thinking through activities that might include reading, writing, and/or discussion," which improves students' understanding and retention of content and makes the learning process more enjoyable and engaging (“Active Learning”). By including recommended activities such as case studies, gallery walks, and concept maps my participants were able to integrate the discipline of urban design with the concept of cultural identity in personally relevant ways. Each session began with warm-ups to support engagement followed by short lectures to introduce knowledge. The content/knowledge offered was then supplemented with hands-on activities like sketching and modeling before ending with a reflective discussion or informal assessment.

Over the course of the semester, our workshop followed the standard design process and included a sequential series of steps that offered time for: research, ideation, creation, and iteration to allow participants to develop and construct their final designs. The structure and creative process of this workshop gave students the creative flexibility to create meaningful and inventive designs in response to the workshop prompts. Architect and educator Duo Dickinson states that, “teaching design is understanding how the act of creation can be translated into education, not by defining aesthetically correct creations” (Dickinson 2021). This statement influenced my way of leading the workshop and fulfilling the goal of enabling students to imagine their own design ideas within the context of a social and cultural issue. In the same way the workshop is a critique of rigid and monotonous urban redevelopment, it also critiques rigid instructions/lessons and activities, thus allowing for unorthodox thinking and creative experimentation.

References

“Active Learning.” Active Learning | Center for Teaching & Learning, teaching.berkeley.edu/teaching-guides-resources/teaching-your-course/active-learning. 

Dickinson, Duo. “Why Teaching Architecture Is Difficult.” Common Edge, 10 July 2021, commonedge.org/why-teaching-architecture-is-difficult/#:~:text=Why%20not%20teach%20multiple%20perspectives,teach%20others%20what%20you%20do.