Thursday, April 26, 2012
A Different View on Creativity
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Your iPad Creations
Hey all-
Thanks for participating with the Stravinsky group as audiences did with Stravinsky's works during our presentation. Here's a compilation of your creations on the iPads.
Friday, April 6, 2012
A Collaborative Creative
I feel as though it is common to categorize creativity into certain stereotypes in one's mind. There are the creative artists, those who see things differently in empirical art and seek to express themselves in a new way. There are creative inventors, those who create novel and useful tools to help make life easier or more fun for other people, and there are people who stumble into creativity, and just end up doing something that no one has done before. An example of a creative artist is Danielson, a creative inventor is Steve Jobs, and I think the Z-Boys kind of stumbled upon creativity in spite of themselves. And yet, sometimes, creativity cannot be compartmentalized or categorized, as it grows out of one particular field or genre and spreads like wildfire to become an entire social movement. This is the case for the collaborative creative movement known as recycling.
The recycling movement began in the 1960s, a time when people started to care more about the dwindling resources of the world. It was realized that the world--especially Americans-- were consuming too much of the world's resources too fast, and if we didn't slow down or make a change our children and children's children would be forced to live with less resources, eventually none at all. The recycling movement was both novel and unique--no one had ever before seriously considered the strange notion of sorting garbage into different piles...it seemed absurd at the time. There had been minor recycling initiatives in the past, but no one had thought to make it so mainstream and of such vital importance.
The most amazing thing about the recycling movement is that in its very nature it is a collaborative effort. Not one person can be said to have "invented" recycling. Although one person can do his part to recycle, one person throwing his can in the recycling bin as opposed to the trash can will not save the world entire. In order for recycling to have any meaning it must be accepted and done by many. This sort of collaboration, however, is different from collaboration we have studied so far. In most collaborative processes there are many people working together, sometimes under a leader, sometimes on equal footing, to brainstorm creative ideas. This was the case in the Bennis article, and the Brothers Danielson. It is so common to create a creative network. But in the case of recycling, that network must be the world, constantly working together to make our planet cleaner and more livable.
I think there are many who would argue that recycling is not a creative initiative. But the recycling movement was both novel and appropriate, and has come to play an essential role in taking care of our planet. It is an answer to a problem that the world faces, and though it cannot solve every problem it has been successful in diminishing the non-disposable waste products in our world, and every little bit helps.
The recycling movement began in the 1960s, a time when people started to care more about the dwindling resources of the world. It was realized that the world--especially Americans-- were consuming too much of the world's resources too fast, and if we didn't slow down or make a change our children and children's children would be forced to live with less resources, eventually none at all. The recycling movement was both novel and unique--no one had ever before seriously considered the strange notion of sorting garbage into different piles...it seemed absurd at the time. There had been minor recycling initiatives in the past, but no one had thought to make it so mainstream and of such vital importance.
The most amazing thing about the recycling movement is that in its very nature it is a collaborative effort. Not one person can be said to have "invented" recycling. Although one person can do his part to recycle, one person throwing his can in the recycling bin as opposed to the trash can will not save the world entire. In order for recycling to have any meaning it must be accepted and done by many. This sort of collaboration, however, is different from collaboration we have studied so far. In most collaborative processes there are many people working together, sometimes under a leader, sometimes on equal footing, to brainstorm creative ideas. This was the case in the Bennis article, and the Brothers Danielson. It is so common to create a creative network. But in the case of recycling, that network must be the world, constantly working together to make our planet cleaner and more livable.
I think there are many who would argue that recycling is not a creative initiative. But the recycling movement was both novel and appropriate, and has come to play an essential role in taking care of our planet. It is an answer to a problem that the world faces, and though it cannot solve every problem it has been successful in diminishing the non-disposable waste products in our world, and every little bit helps.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_did_the_recycling_movement_begin
Thursday, April 5, 2012
High-Flowing Collaboration Online
In class recently, there was a good deal of discussion into the way that large-scale collaborative efforts produce different results depending on how much the different members are able to see and compare with each other's information. The results of psychologists experiments showed that having too many people able to quickly share ideas with each other could have negative results, which it called group-think, saying that these people will not be able to find innovative ideas if they are transfixed and being judged by the ideas of everyone.
Myself, as one of many college students who spend large amounts of time online, argue that this may not be accurate when one looks at the wonders that have come from collaboration that has occurred on a MASSIVE scale through the internet in recent years. While my argument may not hold for strictly scientific research such as that which the DNA structure included, by looking at the creations that collaboration through the internet has made, creativity seems to come more freely. Looking particularly at Wikipedia, at open-source, and sites like Digg, the unstructured input of many people has produced wonderful results.
I'm sure that all of you have been on wikipedia - which in a way proves my point - but the basic concept is that it is an encyclopedia where all of the information is created by anyone who wishes to submit it. As it has advanced, wikipedia became far more reliable of a source of information by hiring members to check for irregularities and by requiring sources for any factual information, but what it really is is a giant collaboration of information submitted anonymously by members. It still amazes me the sheer mass of information that has been submitted by those who make no profit from it and are doing so simply for their own enjoyment. The product - the information in each of these pages - may have been affected by "group think," but is this a negative thing? The actual amount of information gathered is far beyond the efforts that any physical encyclopedia could try to contain, and it is quickly updating with new and modern information.
On a similar note, there are several famous open-source softwares that are made entirely by unpaid submission of information and programming and allow for a product that is not only cheap or free, but are able to far surpass the capabilities of similar softwares. Here again, by submitting information to a massive amount of collaboration by exposing it to the highest number of people possible, the result is something more innovative and advanced than what a few highly-focused individuals may be able to do.
Finally, considering sites such as Digg there is a huge amount of creativity found. The idea of that site - and others like it - is that anyone can submit information (articles, pictures, etc.) but that only the information which other people like gets further shared. The more that people like something the more attention it gets, anything which the group is not interested is discarded. This could not be a truer example of group-think, and yet there are some extremely creative results on that site. I think that much of the difference comes from the fact that when there is so much information being submitted, that the general public notices the value of unique information and it is valued, but that it is requirement that all of this information be able to be shared freely, and in high amounts.
As a further point to this, I have a video of a speaker who is the founder of another of these kinds of sites, but takes it to the extreme, allowing members to post completely anonymously with little or no rules on what topic, and having anything posted last only minutes if ignored, and hours at the longest. Here he is speaking about the creativity that has come from this kind of collaborative effort, which includes many of today's popular internet habits such as posting captions on pictures of cats, creating humorous pictures in the "demotivational picture" style, and many others; almost any kind of internet meme or humor probably has roots in his site.
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As a final idea to consider on the topic, if the research teams trying to discover the form of DNA had instead gone to every freshman year biology class in the country, handed out cut-outs of the four molecule shapes, and told them that there had to be equal amounts of the two matching pair, I would bet money that by the end of that semester at least one person would have figured out the combination which would create a model for DNA. Sometimes it isn't the focused quality of one person, but the combined quantity of groupthink that can create truly unique results.
Myself, as one of many college students who spend large amounts of time online, argue that this may not be accurate when one looks at the wonders that have come from collaboration that has occurred on a MASSIVE scale through the internet in recent years. While my argument may not hold for strictly scientific research such as that which the DNA structure included, by looking at the creations that collaboration through the internet has made, creativity seems to come more freely. Looking particularly at Wikipedia, at open-source, and sites like Digg, the unstructured input of many people has produced wonderful results.
I'm sure that all of you have been on wikipedia - which in a way proves my point - but the basic concept is that it is an encyclopedia where all of the information is created by anyone who wishes to submit it. As it has advanced, wikipedia became far more reliable of a source of information by hiring members to check for irregularities and by requiring sources for any factual information, but what it really is is a giant collaboration of information submitted anonymously by members. It still amazes me the sheer mass of information that has been submitted by those who make no profit from it and are doing so simply for their own enjoyment. The product - the information in each of these pages - may have been affected by "group think," but is this a negative thing? The actual amount of information gathered is far beyond the efforts that any physical encyclopedia could try to contain, and it is quickly updating with new and modern information.
On a similar note, there are several famous open-source softwares that are made entirely by unpaid submission of information and programming and allow for a product that is not only cheap or free, but are able to far surpass the capabilities of similar softwares. Here again, by submitting information to a massive amount of collaboration by exposing it to the highest number of people possible, the result is something more innovative and advanced than what a few highly-focused individuals may be able to do.
Finally, considering sites such as Digg there is a huge amount of creativity found. The idea of that site - and others like it - is that anyone can submit information (articles, pictures, etc.) but that only the information which other people like gets further shared. The more that people like something the more attention it gets, anything which the group is not interested is discarded. This could not be a truer example of group-think, and yet there are some extremely creative results on that site. I think that much of the difference comes from the fact that when there is so much information being submitted, that the general public notices the value of unique information and it is valued, but that it is requirement that all of this information be able to be shared freely, and in high amounts.
As a further point to this, I have a video of a speaker who is the founder of another of these kinds of sites, but takes it to the extreme, allowing members to post completely anonymously with little or no rules on what topic, and having anything posted last only minutes if ignored, and hours at the longest. Here he is speaking about the creativity that has come from this kind of collaborative effort, which includes many of today's popular internet habits such as posting captions on pictures of cats, creating humorous pictures in the "demotivational picture" style, and many others; almost any kind of internet meme or humor probably has roots in his site.
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As a final idea to consider on the topic, if the research teams trying to discover the form of DNA had instead gone to every freshman year biology class in the country, handed out cut-outs of the four molecule shapes, and told them that there had to be equal amounts of the two matching pair, I would bet money that by the end of that semester at least one person would have figured out the combination which would create a model for DNA. Sometimes it isn't the focused quality of one person, but the combined quantity of groupthink that can create truly unique results.
Wedding memories last a lifetime. Why keep the dress?
Most girls spend their life waiting for it: that glorious day when they don a flowing white dress, walk down an aisle, and say "I do" to their own personal Prince Charming. The day where they are a princess, and nothing can ruin it. I confess that--despite a very real disdain for marriage--being one of those girls. I blame it on a steady diet of fairy tales in my youth; those stories always end with a perfect wedding. Despite never wanting a marriage, I want a wedding. Specifically, a wedding dress.
The wedding dress figures more prominently in girls' wedding fantasies than the boy whom they will marry. I daresay that every girl who has put even the slightest thought into their wedding knows exactly what they want out of the dress. And these dresses hardly come cheap; designer gowns can cost brides thousands and thousands of dollars.
Josie Daga was one of these girls. Growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, she was "a sucker for weddings." She's attended hundreds and been a bridesmaid 14 times. When her own big day finally arrived, Josie refused to settle on a dress that was less than perfect; she spent a great deal of money on a designer gown, which she promptly wore for a day, took off, and never wore again. She tried to sell it after her wedding, in order to make back some of the money that had been spent, but she had no luck.
So, in 2004, the advertising executive who was by then pregnant with her first child, started www.preownedweddingdresses.com. This site serves to give former brides the opportunity to sell back their wedding dresses, rather than let them collect dust in a closet. It also gives brides on a budget the opportunity to have the dress of their dreams without the heavy price tag.
The website allows brides to buy and sell dresses, shoes, and accessories. Future-brides can choose from either new gowns that were never worn, sample gowns, and used gowns, at heavily discounted prices. Brides can search styles, designers, and locations to help them find their ideal dress at an ideal budget.
This idea is creative because it targets helps so many people. I've watched many a friend walk down the aisle (yeah, I'm the old maid of my high school friend group before even being legally allowed to drink champagne at the weddings--how weird is that!), and the dress is always a stress point. For younger brides, or brides with strict budgets, the dress can be problematic. You want it to look wonderful without sacrificing cost. After spending so long worried about the dress, you wear it for a few hours, and let it collect dust in your closet. This website fills the needs of everyone involved. It also does it in a simple way. I couldn't access the part of the website to sell a dress without giving information, but, from the parts I could access, everything is handled online.
So, ladies, if you've already spent a ton of money on your gorgeous dress (for eight hours), or see yourself needing one in the future, let Josie Daga help you out. Your bank account will breathe a sigh of relief!
The wedding dress figures more prominently in girls' wedding fantasies than the boy whom they will marry. I daresay that every girl who has put even the slightest thought into their wedding knows exactly what they want out of the dress. And these dresses hardly come cheap; designer gowns can cost brides thousands and thousands of dollars.
Josie Daga was one of these girls. Growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, she was "a sucker for weddings." She's attended hundreds and been a bridesmaid 14 times. When her own big day finally arrived, Josie refused to settle on a dress that was less than perfect; she spent a great deal of money on a designer gown, which she promptly wore for a day, took off, and never wore again. She tried to sell it after her wedding, in order to make back some of the money that had been spent, but she had no luck.
So, in 2004, the advertising executive who was by then pregnant with her first child, started www.preownedweddingdresses.com. This site serves to give former brides the opportunity to sell back their wedding dresses, rather than let them collect dust in a closet. It also gives brides on a budget the opportunity to have the dress of their dreams without the heavy price tag.
The website allows brides to buy and sell dresses, shoes, and accessories. Future-brides can choose from either new gowns that were never worn, sample gowns, and used gowns, at heavily discounted prices. Brides can search styles, designers, and locations to help them find their ideal dress at an ideal budget.
This idea is creative because it targets helps so many people. I've watched many a friend walk down the aisle (yeah, I'm the old maid of my high school friend group before even being legally allowed to drink champagne at the weddings--how weird is that!), and the dress is always a stress point. For younger brides, or brides with strict budgets, the dress can be problematic. You want it to look wonderful without sacrificing cost. After spending so long worried about the dress, you wear it for a few hours, and let it collect dust in your closet. This website fills the needs of everyone involved. It also does it in a simple way. I couldn't access the part of the website to sell a dress without giving information, but, from the parts I could access, everything is handled online.
So, ladies, if you've already spent a ton of money on your gorgeous dress (for eight hours), or see yourself needing one in the future, let Josie Daga help you out. Your bank account will breathe a sigh of relief!
Snow City Arts
The problem: "Being seriously ill [as a child] means friends and school are replaced by machines and
hospital." It means falling behind in school. The solution: "We use the arts to springboard them back toward their daily lives,
and work to keep them as academically in-step with their healthy peers as
possible during hospitalization."
Snow City Arts is an organization founded in 1998 by Paul Sznewajs through a grant from Ford Motor Company with a promise to "improve comprehensive health care for hospitalized children." Their goal was to provide them with educational outlets, while in the process, creating larger communities that are educated in arts and culture. As opposed to therapy or recreation, they focus on learning through advanced workshops. These workshops, run by trained professionals, are "benchmarked against 159 age- and skill level-appropriate
state and federal learning standards." Children take part in not only art and music, but also have the opportunity to work in filmmaking, writing, and photography.
The founder of Snow City Arts, Paul Sznewajs, got his inspiration while working with children in a hospital in Washington, DC. He felt that these therapy programs simply weren't enough. Sure they were providing a happy outlet. Studies show art, dance, and music therapy (which are most often seen being utilized in hospitals) can expedite recovery; however what about the children's education? Combining the researched benefits of therapy and integrating an intricate educational foundation, Paul planted the idea for the types of workshops they use today. After relocating to Chicago, he decided to found Snow City Arts to implement this idea.
Snow City Arts relies greatly on collaboration with organizations such as Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, Columbia College, Museum of Contemporary art, SMART Museum, University of Illinois Chicago, Young Chicago Authors, and many more. They are not only important for resources, but also aid in generating new ideas and educational backgrounds. "By working side-by-side with local arts organizations, performance groups, music
ensembles, and prominent universities, [they] help ensure our children are learning
from Chicago's brightest artistic minds."
Snow City Arts partnerships are also important to another way they are unique: the children's works get published or put on display. Their art has been featured in public spaces and galleries throughout Chicago,
in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Reader and the Chicago Sun-Times, and on
every major television network. At these galleries, the artwork is displayed around the room, the children's poetry and stories are printed into booklets for distribution, and there is also a special showing of the videos the children created. The children's work has even been featured at the Chicago
International Children's Film Festival, Chicago Children's Humanities Festival,
and at the Art Institute of Chicago. They have been recognized
in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, and on every major television
network. This organization hopes to show the children that they can be productive, valuable members of Chicago's cultural community. Snow City Arts is currently working on producing an "in-house" television series.
Snow City Arts' program is currently available at Rush Children's Hospital, John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County, and Children's Memorial Hospital. The children seem to love it. Many of them express that they are getting to do things they never thought they would be doing. They feel "more normal again." My younger sister was a part of the program for a short time last year. No words could express her visible joy, when she got the opportunity to do something she loved and get out of her hospital room for even that short time. She said it was like being in school, but more fun.
It appears many people in this field are great supporters, which is clear by their partners alone. To exemplify this acceptance, "Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois honored Snow City Arts as the corporation's
Community Organization of the Year. Simultaneously,
Rush Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago honored Snow City Arts
Foundation as its Innovative Program of the Year.
It was the first time in the more than 100-year history of the hospital the
award was given to an outside agency." The President’s Committee on the Arts
and Humanities honored Snow City Arts in 2007 with the prestigious Coming Up Taller Award, which recognizes Snow City Arts as one of the 15 best youth
programs in the United States. National Endowment for the
Arts recognized Snow City Arts as an “outstanding arts in
healthcare” program and profiled them as a national Best Practices organization.
I don't think anyone can deny that this organization has kept their initial promise to Ford Motor Company. To date, Snow City Arts has taught nearly 15,000 children.
It is currently the only program of its kind in Chicago.
For more information about this organization:
The Quietest Room on Earth
There’s a room in south Minneapolis that has been garnering quite a bit of attention for Steve Orfield and his labs ever since it was named Guiness Book of World Records’ “Quietest Place on Earth” in 2005. But, however remarkable the room itself is, it is not the only thing for which Orfield deserves a great deal of recognition. Orfield Labs is a corporate research and architectural consulting company, specializing in things like product performance testing. Sounds pretty boring. But as it turns out, it’s not. Along with his one-of-a-kind room, Orfield takes a very unique approach to product testing in general, going to levels that most people would never take into consideration.
The room itself is actually an anechoic chamber, designed to
absorb all noise. It is a room within a room within a room, insulated many times over with double steel walls to effectively eliminate any outside noise
pollution. The inside walls are covered with special acoustic wedges and the
floor is mesh to eliminate any echo. The measured background noise inside is
-9.4 decibels. It is so quiet that you can hear your body working, your voice sounds different because it has nothing to reverberate off of, and, if you stay inside long enough, it can cause visual and aural hallucinations. Yes, the room is a novelty in and of itself, but what makes it truly unique is the research that it is used for.
As a corporate research consulting company, Orfield Labs uses the anechoic chamber along with a separate reverberation chamber (among other labs, as Orfield does not ONLY specialize in acoustics) to test items such as windows or adhesives and give them ratings based on various acoustic factors. Taking things a step further, Orfield also specializes in perceptual research. The perceptual market research team uses the facilities to analyze how different sounds, usually the sounds of products, make people feel. According to Orfield, an anechoic chamber is the most effectively place to conduct such research, because their lack of sound reverberations allows participants to “hear critically.”
Focus groups come in and listen to the sounds of everyday items, from dishwashers to disc drives, and rate them according to how powerful and efficient or cheap and ineffective they sound. In some instances, such as a consultation with Harley Davidson, they even examine the power of acoustics as a distinctive branding quality, looking at what sound makes a Harley a Harley. In short, they analyze how the acoustics of an item affect consumers. In terms of traditional product testing it’s a far cry from giving out cut and dried performance ratings.
Steve Orfield, the man behind Orfield Labs, was originally a successful office furniture salesman. He became interested in research in the 1970s after getting many complaints from buyers about the acoustics and privacy of the office units that he was selling. Once he began, he became more and more interested in research, and by the later 1970s had completely switched over from sales. In 1990, after a slump in the 80s, Orfield bought the old recording studio that would become the current Orfield Labs.
Orfield opened the lab with collaboration in mind and meant for it to be a place "for professionals to gather and share their research on sound and space design." Shortly after the lab's opening, Orfield started the Sound Quality Working Group and later the Open Plan working group, the first working group focused on office settings. Collaboration continues to be an important aspect of Orfield Labs, especially between disciplines. They employ experts in varying fields, from engineering to physics to psychology, to get input on all aspects of a product.
Aside from an interest stemming from his time as a salesman, Orfield has a more personal connection to sound research: his mechanical heart valve. The mechanical heart valve that Orfield needed was making so much noise that it was keeping him up at night. Orfield used his own facilities and experience in sound testing to figure out which pillow would cause less sound reverberations and minimize the valve noise, allowing him to sleep. The anechoic chamber is now used by many heart valve manufacturers, to test the sound quality of their products.
From his world record setting room, to his unique approaches to product testing, Steve Orfield has been coming up with creative ways to help companies test products and solve problems for decades now. And if his recent claim that he is currently developing "a whole new area of psychology" in architecture is any indication, he won't be stopping anytime soon.
As a corporate research consulting company, Orfield Labs uses the anechoic chamber along with a separate reverberation chamber (among other labs, as Orfield does not ONLY specialize in acoustics) to test items such as windows or adhesives and give them ratings based on various acoustic factors. Taking things a step further, Orfield also specializes in perceptual research. The perceptual market research team uses the facilities to analyze how different sounds, usually the sounds of products, make people feel. According to Orfield, an anechoic chamber is the most effectively place to conduct such research, because their lack of sound reverberations allows participants to “hear critically.”
Focus groups come in and listen to the sounds of everyday items, from dishwashers to disc drives, and rate them according to how powerful and efficient or cheap and ineffective they sound. In some instances, such as a consultation with Harley Davidson, they even examine the power of acoustics as a distinctive branding quality, looking at what sound makes a Harley a Harley. In short, they analyze how the acoustics of an item affect consumers. In terms of traditional product testing it’s a far cry from giving out cut and dried performance ratings.
Steve Orfield, the man behind Orfield Labs, was originally a successful office furniture salesman. He became interested in research in the 1970s after getting many complaints from buyers about the acoustics and privacy of the office units that he was selling. Once he began, he became more and more interested in research, and by the later 1970s had completely switched over from sales. In 1990, after a slump in the 80s, Orfield bought the old recording studio that would become the current Orfield Labs.
Orfield opened the lab with collaboration in mind and meant for it to be a place "for professionals to gather and share their research on sound and space design." Shortly after the lab's opening, Orfield started the Sound Quality Working Group and later the Open Plan working group, the first working group focused on office settings. Collaboration continues to be an important aspect of Orfield Labs, especially between disciplines. They employ experts in varying fields, from engineering to physics to psychology, to get input on all aspects of a product.
Aside from an interest stemming from his time as a salesman, Orfield has a more personal connection to sound research: his mechanical heart valve. The mechanical heart valve that Orfield needed was making so much noise that it was keeping him up at night. Orfield used his own facilities and experience in sound testing to figure out which pillow would cause less sound reverberations and minimize the valve noise, allowing him to sleep. The anechoic chamber is now used by many heart valve manufacturers, to test the sound quality of their products.
From his world record setting room, to his unique approaches to product testing, Steve Orfield has been coming up with creative ways to help companies test products and solve problems for decades now. And if his recent claim that he is currently developing "a whole new area of psychology" in architecture is any indication, he won't be stopping anytime soon.
Muggle Quidditch
In 2005, a student at Middlebury College in Vermont named Xander Manshel decided to collaborate with some of his friends to create "Muggle Quidditch" ("muggle" being a term for describing a nonmagical individual), a game based on the fantastical sport made famous by J.K. Rowling's best selling Harry Potter series. In seven short years, the game has expanded far beyond Middlebury's small New England campus and is now governed by the International Quidditch Association, a registered nonprofit organization that oversees the sport in 45 states and 13 different countries including several different Quidditch teams on our very own Lake Shore Campus.
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| The International Quidditch Association Logo |
Acoording to its website, the three goals of IQA's mission are rooted in the three essential elements that were necessary for Manshel and his friends to create real-life Quidditch and promote it into being a national phenomenon: creativity, community, and competition.
1) The International Quidditch Association attempts "to foster a culture of creativity."
Muggle Quidditch founder Xander Manshel’s first steps toward creating real-life Quidditch required a creative solution to a very difficult problem – How do you recreate a magical game without having actual magical skills? The IQA suggests that "Quidditch was founded in the spirit of experimenting with new ideas and daring to promote, and participate in, a different activity. We [as human beings] are born into an entirely pre-fabricated world, and developing and sharing a new idea with others is important to show people that new ideas can exist, that they can be created by young people, and that they can take root and grow in meaningful ways."
Furthermore, Quidditch's roots lie in literacy, and the IQA hopes to help further the idea that many creative endeavors are rooted in reading as they believe books "have the power to change the world and unite and forge new communities and traditions." For this reason, the IQA and its teams continue to take strategic steps towards promoting literacy.
2) The IQA tries to create, connect, and enhance the communities that the game is played in to promote a spirit of cooperation and collaboration.
When Manshel had to debut his new creation in public, he had to "leverage, engage, and activate his friends and peers, essentially his community" if the game was to survive and grow. In this same vein, he IQA continues to expand on Xander’s original ideas by serving and engaging both the players and fans of the game as well as the communities the teams play in.
3) The IQA also works to facilitate healthy competition across the United States.
The founders of Quidditch believed that ultimately competition was what would keep people coming back for more and help the sport to grow. For this reason, the IQA continues to work "to provide, facilitate, stimulate, and promote as many opportunities for competitive Quidditch as possible."
Muggle Quidditch Founder and IQA Advisory Board Member Xander Manshel
But how does the game of Muggle Quidditch really work?
A Muggle Quidditch team consists of seven players. In the Harry Potter books, Wizarding Quidditch is grounded in magic, so Middlebury students were tasked with adapting the game to be played on the ground in a space comparable in size to a hockey rink. In Muggle Quidditch, three circular goals often made from hula hips and PVC pipe are placed on either side of the "pitch." All players actively engaged in play are required to carry a broom between their legs at all times. Volleyballs and dodgeballs often serve as substitutes to the Rowling-created "quaffles" and "bludgers". In the books, the Snitch is a small magical flying object, but in Muggle Quidditch the Snitch is simply a tennis ball contained in a sock tucked in the waistband of the "snitch runner", a neutral player affiliated with neither team dressed in all gold or yellow. After the game has begun, the snitch runner roams an area beyond the playing field with the snitch until he or she is "caught" to end the game. When played on a university campus, the snitch often is allowed to roam the entire campus. "Seekers" search for the runner around campus, and if they fail to catch him in a timely manner, the snitch will return to the field after a specified time. The game begins with the quaffle and bludgers placed in the center of the field and all players in line with their respective goalposts. After the snitch has been "released" and is out of sight, the referee yells 'brooms up!' and game play begins.
A Profile of Loyola University Chicago's Quidditch Program
How is Quidditch really creative?
Quidditch was created by a student being creatively inspired by a fantastical sport in a widely-popular literary series. It can be argued that Xander Manshel did not actually create "Quidditch" (as J.K. Rowling created the original concept), but there can be no doubt that Manshel brought the sport into reality to be enjoyed across the world. He did not do this to solve any real problem (though he did encounter many in establishing the rules, etc.), but rather he did it to bring a little joy into the lives of many people and make the world a better and more interesting place for all to live. We have talked many times in class about how important "play" can be for humanity and for creativity. It makes us healthier and stimulates our minds. Quidditch is an excellent medium to engage in to come to these results. Furthermore, while Quidditch was the brainchild of one individual, it took many people around the world to collaborate together to enhance and promote the sport. Quidditch's popularity cannot be attributed to Menshel alone, despite the fact that no one can deny that he is the "creative" behind it. The game was created in a "spirit of creativity", and the sport and its governing body continue to try to spread this spirit around the world.
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