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the team contract

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Everyday Creativity: Our hidden potential.

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Everyday Creativity: Our hidden potential.

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One of the most powerful capacities that we have as a person is the creativity that we use in our everyday lives. This creativity affects our health and wellbeing while also giving us other options to do everyday things. Creativity isn’t just about the arts, it is about any endeavour.

One of the fundamental principles to our survival is everyday creativity. With everyday creativity we allow ourselves to become flexible, improve improvisations and enable us to look for alternative solutions. Mooney (1999) describes the three P’s that are involved in creativity. They are process, person and press. The process and person elements of creativity often look at “who are you?” and “how do we approach this idea?” While some may ask the question of “why doesn’t our creativity get attention?” This essay suggests that everyday creativity is always overlooked, by explaining the three U’s of creativity. They are “under recognised, underdeveloped and under rewarded”.

This essay also looks at the nature of everyday creativity and its health benefits. It does highlight an important point: there hasn’t been enough research completed on the health benefits of creativity. This has huge implications on the way that creativity is implied in a work environment with service users. John Dewey (1934) believed creativity was heavily linked with innovative education for those who find mainstream education difficult.
Everyday creativity allows us to see our higher potentials and encourages personal development. Maslow (1968) believed everyday creativity was linked with self-actualising which results in peace of mind for service users. Self-actualising allows us to focus on things like truth, justice and aliveness (Maslow 1971).

This essay also gives insight into the negatives about creativity. Some researchers linked creativity with madness. Creativity is said to play a huge role towards coping measures.

There are both inner and outer obstacles to creativity. The inner obstacles that make creativity difficult are the problems that come from within you. With theses you are standing in the way of you. The outer obstacles are often environmental factors the cause problems with creativity.

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Dream catcher

Materials needed:
Paper plate
String
Paint (variety of colours)
Glitter
Glue
Decorations

Direction:
Cut the centre of plate paper.
Cut little circle around the plate.
Place the string in the little circles around the circle.
Decorate the string however ever you like.

YouTube Tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTIqX41Pmz4

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Melted Crayon shells

Materials needed:
Seashells
Crayons (variety of colours)
Hairdryer

Directions:
Heat drier
Melt crayon on to layers of different colours.
On different size shells.

YouTube tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg00UaAcZMU

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Valentine tree craft (hearts)

Materials needed:
Paper (white, brown, red and pink)
Cutters
Glue
Glitter

Directions:
Cut out big and small rectangles
Cut big and small love hearts out in pink and red
Stick the rectangles to the paper first then stick the love hearts.

YouTube tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1BoAI1Pkg4

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The facilitation that was carried out was the toothpick and marshmallow activity. Two people came to the facilitation to participate in the activity. The activity involved the participants creating man made structures out of toothpicks and marshmallows. It took half an hour to complete this activity. If I were to carry out the toothpick and marshmallow activity again I would love to have more people involved so that it could have been more enjoyable. As well as this, during the activity I accidently pricked my finger with the toothpicks, so if this activity was introduced to children or people with disabilities it would have to been well known to take caution with the toothpicks. I feel like I introduced the activity well to the participants and that they understood the activity however if I were to do this again I would have told participants to take care when handling the tooth picks. Due to the low number of participants I was able to explain the activity to them individually, I feel this made the activity run more smoothly overall. It was not difficult to control the group due to the small size of the group with more people it would have been more difficult to control if the group was larger. I was happy with the finished result of the activity as the participants understood and were entertained throughout.

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I feel that the activity went well overall and I was happy with it however I feel that some adjustments could be made.

I feel that if I were to use matchsticks or the sticks from cotton buds the activity could have been safer. I would have possibly used Bluetack or Playdough rather than marshmallows as it would have been easier to manipulate than marshmallows.

I as a facilitator felt I could have fun with the activity with the participants.

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Painting with tops (spinners)

Materials needed:
Paper
Paint ( variety of colours)
Spinners

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Masking tape-painting

Materials needed:
Paper
Paint (variety of colours)
Masking tape

Directions:
Place the masking tape on the paper in different directions.
Then add different paint to the different angles.
Take the masking tape off.

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3aH5ocSJ_k

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The activity for this facilitation is .
Materials needed:
tooth picks
marshmallows

I bought this items from the supermarket and they were inexpensive supplies. I practiced the activity several times in order to be able to explain it to the participants.

I ensured that the materials for the activity were set up so the group could easily access them. I set them up so in the order that the participants would need to use them.

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I learnt that the group worked well under close instruction from myself.

I learnt that a relaxed atmosphere is important for the best results from these activities.

I learnt that art allows people to open up about any problems or issues they are facing.

I discovered that creativity does not require a person to be good at art and that creativity can be found in simple activities.

I learnt that while a group likes close instruction they will know what to do with simple directions.

I discovered that groups work well when instructions are given in a confident and clear manner.

I learned that creativity while it can be simple requires some time to organise.