In the summer of 2008, nearly fifty thousand people traveled to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to participate in the countercultural arts event Burning Man. Founded on a commitment to expression and community, the annual weeklong festival presents unique challenges to its organizers. Over four years Katherine K. Chen regularly participated in organizing efforts to safely and successfully create a temporary community in the middle of the desert under the hot August sun. Enabling Creative Chaos tracks how a small, underfunded group of organizers transformed into an unconventional corporation with a ten-million-dollar budget and two thousand volunteers. Over the years, Burning Man’s organizers have experimented with different management models; learned how to recruit, motivate, and retain volunteers; and developed strategies to handle regulatory agencies and respond to media coverage. This remarkable evolution, Chen reveals, offers important lessons for managers in any organization, particularly in uncertain times.
In the summer of 2008, nearly fifty thousand people traveled to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to participate in the countercultural arts event Burning Man. Founded on a commitment to expression and community, the annual weeklong festival presents unique challenges to its organizers. Over four years Katherine K. Chen regularly participated in organizing efforts to safely and successfully create a temporary community in the middle of the desert under the hot August sun. Enabling Creative Chaos tracks how a small, underfunded group of organizers transformed into an unconventional corporation with a ten-million-dollar budget and two thousand volunteers. Over the years, Burning Man’s organizers have experimented with different management models; learned how to recruit, motivate, and retain volunteers; and developed strategies to handle regulatory agencies and respond to media coverage. This remarkable evolution, Chen reveals, offers important lessons for managers in any organization, particularly in uncertain times.
This volume explores an expansive array of organizational imaginaries, or conceptions of organizational possibilities, with a focus on collectivist-democratic organizations, to showcase how organizations can ultimately support and serve broader communities.
From award-winning musician turned communications expert Peter Himmelman, science-based techniques and simple exercises to get unstuck and unlock your creative potential. Do you want to stop procrastinating? Would you love to be more creative? Is there an idea you’ve dreamt of making a reality? Whether it's learning ragtime piano, losing 30 pounds, or starting an organic jellybean company, Himmelman's unique, inspiring methods will give you the tools and confidence you need to harness your fear and take steps to make your goals a reality. Using practices mined from his years as a successful musician, Himmelman shows you how to open your mind and unite left AND right-brained thinking through powerful and deceptively easy exercises that will enable you to: -Create more fearlessly, whether it's an ad campaign, a song, or a new business -Communicate more effectively -Finish projects that have stayed in the "bits and pieces" phase forever -Make your ideas take shape in the real world The perfect tool for anyone in a mental rut, Let Me Out will force you to stop listening to the negative thoughts that hold you back and achieve the professional and personal success you deserve. *SILVER WINNER OF 2016 NAUTILUS AWARD in Inner Prosperty/Right Livelihood*
The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve. “Might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”—Fast Company For nearly thirty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner eighteen Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable. As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the twenty-five movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as: • Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or come up with something better. • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them. • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. Creativity, Inc. has been significantly expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. It features a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and changes and updates throughout. Pursuing excellence isn’t a one-off assignment but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.
Everyone wants to turn their company into a creative power-house, but few understand how to do it. In Creative Clarity, best-selling author Jon Kolko will teach you how to manage the complexity and chaos of creativity, as you bring it into your organization.
Dramatherapy with Children, Young People and Schools is the first book to specifically evaluate the unique value of dramatherapy in the educational environment. A variety of highly experienced dramatherapists, educational psychologists and childhood experts discuss the benefits to the children and young people, and also in relation to the involvement of teachers, the multi-disciplinary team and families. This professional book offers a panoramic view to explain how through dramatherapy children and young people develop their communication skills, sociability and their actual desire to learn. Detailed case studies demonstrate individual successes in youngsters experiencing a range of emotional difficulties and psychological needs. These studies include: conquering a fear of maths; violent behaviour transformed into educational achievement; safe expression of feelings for a sexually abused child; and where children are diagnosed with mental health disorders such as ADHD and ODD, where the benefits of dramatherapy with children and families are carefully described and evaluated, suggesting that this therapeutic discipline can achieve positive outcomes. The practical advice and inspirational results included here promote a future direction of integration and collaboration of school staff, multi-disciplinary teams and families. Education and equality are high on the agenda, and the function of dramatherapy is not just as a treatment, but as an economically viable and valuable preventive therapy.
One of the world’s leading creative artists, choreographers, and creator of the smash-hit Broadway show, Movin’ Out, shares her secrets for developing and honing your creative talents—at once prescriptive and inspirational, a book to stand alongside The Artist’s Way and Bird by Bird. All it takes to make creativity a part of your life is the willingness to make it a habit. It is the product of preparation and effort, and is within reach of everyone. Whether you are a painter, musician, businessperson, or simply an individual yearning to put your creativity to use, The Creative Habit provides you with thirty-two practical exercises based on the lessons Twyla Tharp has learned in her remarkable thirty-five-year career. In "Where's Your Pencil?" Tharp reminds you to observe the world -- and get it down on paper. In "Coins and Chaos," she gives you an easy way to restore order and peace. In "Do a Verb," she turns your mind and body into coworkers. In "Build a Bridge to the Next Day," she shows you how to clean the clutter from your mind overnight. Tharp leads you through the painful first steps of scratching for ideas, finding the spine of your work, and getting out of ruts and into productive grooves. The wide-open realm of possibilities can be energizing, and Twyla Tharp explains how to take a deep breath and begin...
In this inside look at worker cooperatives, Joan Meyers challenges long-held views and beliefs. From the outside, worker cooperatives all seem to offer alternatives to bad jobs and unequal treatment by giving workers democratic control and equitable ownership of their workplaces. Some contend, however, that such egalitarianism and self-management come at the cost of efficiency and stability, and are impractical in the long run. Working Democracies focuses on two worker cooperatives in business since the 1970s that transformed from small countercultural collectives into thriving multiracial and largely working-class firms. She shows how democratic worker ownership can provide stability and effective business management, but also shows that broad equality is not an inevitable outcome despite the best intentions of cooperative members. Working Democracies explores the interconnections between organizational structure and organizational culture under conditions of worker control, revealing not only the different effects of managerialism and "participatory bureaucracy," but also how each bureaucratic variation is facilitated by how workers are defined by at each cooperative. Both bureaucratic variation and worker meanings are, she shows, are consequential for the reduction or reproduction of class, gender, and ethnoracial inequalities. Offering a behind the scenes comparative look at an often invisible type of workplace, Working Democracies serves as a guidebook for the future of worker cooperatives.
Bring more fun, unity, and love to your household through creative activities the whole family will enjoy—featuring ideas for imaginative play, arts and crafts, nature explorations, and more Embrace family life with creativity at its heart. The Creative Family Manifesto is a guide to using the simple tools around you—your imagination, basic art supplies, household objects, and natural materials—to relax, play, and grow together as a family. When you learn to awaken your family’s creativity, wonderful things will happen: you’ll make meaningful connections with your children, your children’s imaginations will flourish, and you’ll learn to express love and gratitude for each other. This book is just what you need to get started. Amanda Soule has charmed many with her tales of creativity and parenting on her blog, SouleMama. Here she shares ideas and projects with the same warm tone and down-to-earth voice. Perfect for all families, the wide range of projects presented here offers ideas for imaginative play, art and crafts, nature explorations, and family celebrations. Released on its ten-year anniversary, this revised and updated edition of The Creative Family, carries on Amanda Soule’s thoughtful perspectives on parenting.
