The Idea Generator

I had a student this week who was stuck and couldn’t come up with an idea he was excited about. I sat down with him to brainstorm and we still couldn’t come up with anything, both agreeing that it would be nice if someone would invent an idea generator to come up with ideas for us (apparently some similar things exist - see the list at the end of the post for one) 

Then we started to talk about how something like that would look in a conversation that included the whole table, then he spent the rest of his class time listing. Next, I edited it and added to it. We came up with a smart document that I will use in my Studio class next week to support ideation.

Work from the first few weeks of class.

I’m teaching Studio this semester in the following three stages:

• Stage 1: students learn about and try the different types of work available. This helps us all be on the same page with shared vocabulary to talk about learning and clear expectations.

• Stage 2: students are responsible for selecting the type of work they will engage in and all other artistic decisions.

• Stage 3: for the last few weeks of class I ask everyone to create a collection of three related artworks for an end-of-the-class show. It’s worth 20% of their grade and helps with focus and direction when many students are running out of ideas. 

We are currently at the beginning of Stage 2. Over the next few weeks, I’ll use the idea list as the basis of my 100-idea challenge with this class. I’ll pick things from each category to discuss in short, daily lessons and ask each student to develop a list that has 100 ideas. The goal of this activity is to understand that collecting ideas is an essential artistic habit. The document pictured below is linked here. What would you add or change?

PS - if you are looking for TAB professional development this summer, check out this list on the TAB Website. There are many great options! I co-direct the TAB Institute at MassArt, which is a wonderful week-long experience on campus in the heart of Boston. I’ll also be the guest speaker for the Saint Louis TAB Lab.